Omnivore’s Dilemma

Pollan,M. 2006. Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin Group, New York, New York.

In the first part of this book, Pollan tells us the story of corn. I can’t say that corn has ever been a thing I have thought particularly hard about, however, Pollan manages to write over 100 pages on it. Pollan uses corn as a device to tell the story of the rise of agriculture. He begins before colonization, telling us about how the Mayans used the ancestors of our modern-day corn and ends with the most modern meal there is: MacDonald’s.

When starting off the story of corn, Pollan first gets us to understand how plants work. He uses an effective analogy to demonstrate the cost of opening up stoma in a way that is more digestible than just explaining the process. He compares it to humans so we can better grasp the concept: “It’s as though every time you opened your mouth to eat you lost a quantity of blood.” (pg 21). He then goes on to describe the impact that the settlers had on native peoples. He uses effective language to communicate how devastating colonization was in more than the normal sense. He describes settlers bringing a “biotic army” with them, something they likely did not think about having an impact (pg 24).

Pollan takes us through the rest of the story using characters. We follow Naylor through the early 1900 to observe the changes that commodity corn has brought to agriculture. We learn about Naylor’s father and the struggles he faced, some of the same challenges facing farmers today. Then, of course, we switch to steer number 534. By introducing 534, Pollan can create a personal link to the journey on which our food embarks. I found myself feeling sorry for 534 when Pollan noted “534’s eyes looked a little bloodshot”. While Pollan created a character which the reader can sympathize with using steer 534, he also did what the industry did, depersonalizing the steer. If Pollan had named the steer like we would name a pet it would have taken away the reality of the industry.

Pollan ends this part with a trip to MacDonald’s, a pretty common event today. The difference with Pollan’s trip, however, was the analysis he did along the way. The amount of corn found in the meal he had astounded me. The fact that even your French fries (arguably the simplest thing on the menu) was 23% corn got my attention. At the beginning of this book, I cannot say I had given hardly any thought to how prevalent corn is in our market. Pollan managed to get me thinking about how much corn was in my dinner last night.