I can't stop talking about Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma." It is exquisitely well-written, and the first section, about corn, has made one of the world's more mundane members of the plant kingdom utterly fascinating.
Did you know that corn coevolved with humans to the point that only animals with opposable thumbs can properly eat corn--because of the husk? Did you know that our bodies are made almost entirely of corn? If a scientist took a fingernail clipping from almost any American and carbon-tested it, the results would be: corn. We don't eat it in the raw form, but all the animals we eat, eat corn: cows, chickens, pigs, even salmon are being engineered to eat corn. Sweeteners? Corn syrup. And all those mystery ingredients in your food--the mono and tri, di, glycerides, etc. =derivatives of corn.
Pollan describes our dependence on corn in a chicken nugget--made of a chicken fed with corn, held together with binding material from corn, fried in corn oil, battered in corn flour that's been flavored and sweetened with you guessed it--corn. Corn on corn on corn on corn. That's us.
Pollan concludes his family's fast-food meal by saying:
if you include the corn in the gas tank...the amount of corn that went into producing our movable fast-food feast would easily have overflowed the car's trunk, spilling a trail of golden kernels on the blacktop.
He also has an entire section on "corn sex" that I shared with my class that makes some really dull writing material (plant reproduction?) quite steamy. It's brilliant. It'll almost make you blush.
A few questions after reading Pollan's book:
What is the alternative to cheap corn?
Okay, so, our dependence on corn is bad news in many ways, including our dependence on oil (petrochemicals provide the fertilizer needed to grow our monoculture corn, energy for transporting and processing corn), and serious soil and water poisoning (fertilizers and pesticides for large-scale monoculture agriculture), and our beef is pumped full of steroids and antibiotics because cows aren't meant to eat cheap corn, but grass, and farmers barely make it and most of the farm subsidy goes toward producing cheap corn for corporations. All right.
But what would be the cost to our food chain, and economy, to change it up? My feeling is that Americans are pretty ingenious at finding smarter/better way to do things, but are we so entrenched in corn that switching to large-scale sustainable agriculture would be a huge threat to the economy, price of food, and national security?
Related question: Does cheap corn really mostly benefit corporations that process it in various forms and sell it to us at an increased price? Or is it really a boon to the average Joe consumer, too?
Is being a "gourmand" or "gourmet" irresponsible, in that it makes one less concerned about the sacrifices and indulgences necessary to provide such food? (Ex. most of us would agree someone who harms animals regularly is a criminal, yet we eat animals raised in inhumane conditions all the time)
Would I be willing to pay significantly more for my food if it were grown sustainably? Would this cost really be off-set by less cancers, better health, healthier environment? Could many people afford it?
Is eating now a political act?
Last: Is there anything left to eat? Between diet fads (low carb, low fat, etc.), fear of eating too much corn, or meat and dairy that might be cruel/packed with chemicals, and vegetables that don't come from sustainable agriculture/are packed with chemicals, I don't know what to eat anymore.
Michael Pollan's book has made me smarter; and left me hungry.
