Andrea MacMichael

Food and Travel Seminar

10/31/16

The Omnivore’s Dilemma Into and Part I Reading Response

            In my first year seminar Roots in the Earth, we watched the film Food Inc. which is a documentary about corporations that have taken over the food chain in the U.S. This documentary included interviews from Michael Pollan himself. Many of the issues that Pollan raises in Part I of The Omnivore’s Dilemma were also touched upon in the film and yet, I was still equally as disgusted and amazed after facing the information a second time when reading this book. Pollan’s voice, scathing and didactic at most points, is distinct from the very first page and makes these serious, highly important stories about the food industry laughable and almost enjoyable to read about.  Scathing and didactic, though, do not serve to fully describe his tone. I think the Los Angeles Times says it best on the back cover, calling the tone “one of gleeful irony and barely suppressed outrage.” Pollan explains dense topics with ease to readers who are not well informed (ironically, because hardly anyone is truly informed about where our food comes from in this country), and along the way he points out the absurdity of decisions people in the food business have made, and I think he is an extremely skillful writer in this way. In short, I loved every part of this reading not just for the insights I gained on the topic of “the omnivore’s dilemma,” but also for the way in which this information was presented.

            Part I covers a plethora of interesting points surrounding the omnivore’s dilemma, but the few that stood out to me were the American food culture (or lack thereof) and the corn surplus. As Pollan points out, humans have the unique ability to choose what we eat for every meal, and to choose from many more options than any other creatures. In other cultures where food traditions are more prevalent, people don’t face as great a dilemma as Americans do. I find it astounding to think that, being such a rich mixture of different cultures, we have been driven to health issues based on the idea that we don’t have a strong food culture to ground us. As Pollan argues, we have been pushed as a society to change the way we eat, and this change is not turning out to be healthy. On top of this, we have an entire food system that is “out to get us” in a sense. While we try to eat healthy, food engineers and farmers are stuffing as much corn (cheap calories) as they can into everything we consume. I agree with Pollan when he says we are corn people, because corn is one of the main ingredients that makes up our diet, whether we know it or not. We are what we eat. I believe that we have a right to know what we are eating, but our food system keeps this from us. I think there is a sense of pride in knowing from where your food comes, and food should be a form of identity in which we can understand a certain culture. However, I believe, based on this reading that food identity in this country is almost nonexistent because we need investigators to tell us what we’re eating. The rich diversity of cultures in America does not come through in our food as it does in other countries. Sadly, looking at our country in this way makes us seem like a society of little cultural interest or tradition.