The Omnivore 's Dilemma By Michael Pollan

Farmers are paid to overproduce corn, which is sold for less than the cost of production. Much of the excess is used as a cheap sugar substitute in various products, and much of it used to feed cattle; to produce bigger, meatier cows. It is at this point we learn of the unintended consequences of constantly putting quantity before quality, in the chapter aptly titled ‘unintended consequences.’ Cows fed a corn diet produce deadly strains of e-coli, leading to numerous safety recalls of beef in recent years. Pollan at one point tells us that simply feeding cows grass for a period of five days would virtually eliminate any strains of the contaminate, but that this is seen as a fiscally excessive exercise by the corporations. He is presented as somewhat of an authority on the matter, but all we are really told is that he is an author with interest in mass produced foods, an attempt at ethos that falls somewhat flat. Instead of doing this however, a new industry has emerged: one that combines ammonia with hamburger filler for the companies, killing any strains of e-coli before they can reach the consumer. The film attempts to portray a deadly cycle, where untested solutions often produce deadly side-effects; which are in turn fixed with even more untested solutions, a technique that seems quite effective.

As a culture and as individuals, we no longer seem to know what we should and should not eat. When the old guides of culture and national cuisine and our mothers’ advice no longer seem to operate, the omnivore’s dilemma returns and you find yourself where we do today—utterly bewildered and conflicted about one of the most basic questions of human life: What should I eat? We’re buffeted by contradictory dietary advice: cut down on fats one decade, cut down on carbs the next. Every day’s newspaper brings news of another ideal diet, wonder-nutrient, or poison in the food chain. Hydrogenated vegetable oils go from being the modern alternatives to butter to a public health threat, just like that. Food marketers bombard us with messages that this or that food is “heart healthy” or is “part of a nutritious meal”. Without a stable culture of food to guide us, the omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance. We listen to scientists, to government guidelines, to package labels—to anything but our common sense and traditions. The most pleasurable of activities—eating—has become heavy with anxiety. The irony is, the more we worry about what we eat, the less healthy and fatter we seem to become.

The United States of America is the world’s largest corn overproducer. With such heavy focus on corn, I would like to draw attention to a measure taken by the United States government, the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996. This act increased the amount of farm land that is meant to be used in the States for growing corn from 60 million acres to a whopping 90 million acres. Such a significant increase cannot go without some kind of effect. Writer, Michael Pollan, in his book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, discusses the instability of the US farming industry as well as the negative environmental implications corn has on us. This instability and environmental impact has given rise to movements promoting a return to more

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollen utilizes elements of ethos and metaphors in the passage on pages 116 and 117 in order to persuade readers to believe that humans have become a “race of corn.” Ethos is one of the most notable forms of persuasion Pollen uses. He gets credibility by asking “Todd Dawson, a biologist at Berkeley, to run a McDonald's meal through his mass spectrometer and calculate how much of the carbon in it came originally from a corn plant...in the various McDonald’s menu items” (Pollen 116). Including a study written by a certified professional lends more support to his argument of the presence of corn. In addition, he also mentions that the research mentions menu items from McDonalds, a well-known, unhealthy company,

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan, gives light to the question, “What should we have for dinner?” that he thinks Americans today cannot answer simply due to the fact that there are too many food options. This book serves as an eye-opener to challenge readers to be more aware and accountable of what is consumed daily. In order to understand fully where our food comes from, we must follow it back to the very beginning. Pollan goes on to discuss three different modern food chains in which we get our food: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. By tracing our food back to the beginning, we can understand that most of the nutritional and health problems America is going through today can be found on the farms that make our food and the government that can decide what happens. America deals with many food related illness such as, heart disease, obesity, and type II diabetes. Majority of a human and animals diet consists of being corn-fed leading to a high cause of obesity in the United States these are just some of the many diseases that come with over processed foods and diets we are unaware of. In this study, we will highlight the environmental and health issues and impacts related with modern agriculture and how these systems can be made more sustainable.

In his book " In Defense of Food " author Michael Pollan takes an interesting and thought

Food dominates the lives of people. It is used as comfort and fuel. But the controversy is, what should people consume? Burkhard Bilger 's piece, Nature 's Spoils, explores the abnormal way of eating, which is the fermentation of food. It is usually a safe practice, and also produces vitamins in the making. The Omnivore 's Dilemma by Michael Pollan expresses the problem of how humans select food. In How Do We Choose What to Eat? by Susan Bowerman she points out the influences on people’s life that affects their eating habits. By using Bowerman’s article as the keystone, Nature’s Spoils and The Omnivore’s Dilemma can be compared and contrasted. Since the food that people consume daily can affect them in the future, it must be chosen carefully.

Corn even turned up in French fries (23 percent).” (Patrigenaru) What is wrong with all this corn? Growing corn involves an abundance amount of pesticides and fertilizers that release chemicals into the soils that eventually make it to the water tables underneath. the ground. That can be terrible for the environment. Also, eating too much corn can cause an abundance of calories in a diet and not enough nutrients necessary to sustain a healthy body. In other words, corn replaces nutrients with an excess of calories. Patrigenaru also points out, “More than a quarter of products in the average American supermarket now contain corn or its derivatives.” (Patrigenaru) Since corn replaces nutrients with calories and is in almost everything that is consumed in America now, it is plain to see why the United States is one of the fattest countries in the world. Processed food are becoming more and more prevalent in the American diet day to day. Kim Rhyssdal wrote in an article based on an interview, “Processed foods are, plus or minus, 70 percent of what most of us eat.” (Ryssdal) 70 percent is a very damaging piece of evidence to the conviction of the American diet. While corn is the leading source of the unhealthiness of Americans, added sugar and fat are not far behind. Tim Philpot wrote in an article, “As for added fats and sugars, their 2008 levels reached 459 and 641,

I chose Omnivore 's Dilemma for various reasons, one being to learn more about current food issues within our economy, ecosystem, and environment; and two, to learn more so I am not a hypocrite to my beliefs. My entire life I have grown up learning and practicing sustainable mannerisms. Learning to turn off the water while I brushed my teeth, using reusable tupperware and grocery bags, and not idling are a few of the many practices I was taught. I spent my middle and high school years surrounded by many individuals whose views about the environment were much different than my personal beliefs. Listening, observing, and learning from those around me drove me to apply for school and pursue a degree in

Corn is not the ideal nutritious food. It wreaks havoc on the animal;s' digestive system and gets turned into sweeteners that makes people obese, aside from giving us an unhealthy diet. In other words, the industrial food chain that American man is sustained on is largely based on corn, whether in its direct form, fed to livestock, or processed into chemicals such as glucose, and the cheapest forms of these are high-fructose corn syrup and ethanol. The former, particularly, through a combination of biological, cultural, and political factors, appears in the cheapest and most common of foods that constitute the American diet. It is the ingredient that results in obesity, and, since it appears in the cheapest products, the ingredients that more poor, than wealthier individuals, consume.

In the educative essay “What’s Eating America,” Michael Pollan designates the history of corn, a good and healthy food if cultivated properly. This essay is very informative because it talks about American’s diet. In this essay, Pollan examines the way of growing the corn as an influential example of using the chemical fertilizers in food. Also, He complains “Growing corn, which from a biological perspective had always been a process of capturing sunlight to turn it into food, has in no small measure become a process of converting fossil fuels into food…” (Pollan 302). While it might be very useful when used in a prudent way, in reality the usage of chemical fertilizers is higher and the farmers are feeding their corps more than it needs which affect the ecology’s system. In other words, his focus is on corn and not only does him just points out corn presence in nearly all food products; but he comes up with other matters like fossil fuels and the factories polluting the atmosphere. Thus, it’s astonishing when someone stops and thinks about how many things are composed from corn.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan is a comprehensive look into the present day food culture of the United States. Throughout the book the author tries to find out the true composition of the diet that is consumed by Americans on a daily basis. There is an excessive dependence by the American population on the government to know which food is good for them. This paper will critically analyze the book as well as the stance that the author has taken. Since there is a deluge of information about diets and health available today, the relevance of this well researched book in the present day world cannot be emphasized enough. Its relevance is not limited to the United States alone but to the entire human society which is moving towards homogenous food habits.

The phrase “ you are what you eat” has been used for centuries. The healthier your food the healthier you can be. However, as time goes on, I hope this phrase is no longer true. The documentary Food Inc. shows our food and what farm fresh really means; things are not always what they seem. The documentary is dark and gruesome in the way it displays our food and what goes into making it, but it also opens our eyes to the world of production and similarly what we see and what we should be seeing. Although it is a gut wrenching documentary, there is an educational informative truth behind it to see if food is really food anymore.

In the documentary, Food Inc., we get an inside look at the secrets and horrors of the food industry. The director, Robert Kenner, argues that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from or what happens to it before they put it in their bodies. To him, this is a major issue and a great danger to society as a whole. One of the conclusions of this documentary is that we should not blindly trust the food companies, and we should ultimately be more concerned with what we are eating and feeding to our children. Through his investigations, he hopes to lift the veil from the hidden world of food.

Internal Preview: So let’s start with some reasons as to why so many people are confused about what to eat: misinformation and marketing.