The Omnivore's Dilemma

I finally finished reading the popular and award-winning book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. He's a magnificent author -- incredibly articulate. The way he can describe mundane experiences, like shopping in a supermarket, is just amazing, and a pleasure to read. He handles his topic as an intelligent, thinking person, presenting the issues in all their magnificent complexity. Because of this, the book requires patience and thoughtful reflection. I wouldn't call it an "easy read".

The basic question that the author considers is, "since we're omnivores, and we can eat just about anything, what should we eat?" He starts with a significant motivation -- contemporary human health issues in the United States -- and parlays the question into a lot of detailed research into (1) modern, industrial, processed food systems, based largely on huge monocultures of corn, soy beans, meat/egg farms, and fossil fuels; (2) the "organic" movement, including the industrialization needed to get it into supermarkets around the country, and related farming methods, such as grass-fed beef; and (3) the hunter/gatherer experience, in which he fully analyzes the ethics of eating animals.

Michael Pollan emerges from his research with an answer to his question that is best articulated as he does in his next book, In Defense of Food, "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I still need to read the sequel, but I like his answer. "Food", in case you couldn't tell from his terse statements, means "whole foods", as differentiated from "highly processed edible substances". As a chemical engineer, I can appreciate the engineering triumph epitomized by a twinkie, but there is a line of logic here that makes a lot of sense to me: in the same way that baby formula is a hollow, manufactured substitute for the rich goodness that is a mother's natural milk, our highly processed industrial foods (with a focus on "nutrition") have had a lot of complex, natural goodness stripped out of them; complexity that we don't fully understand yet, and we suffer by its absence.

Michael Pollan recently wrote a lengthy letter in the New York Times addressed to the President-Elect, our future "Farmer in Chief", on "The Food Issue". It's an excellent summary of the issues, along with his policy proposals on how to address them. Both the book and the article are excellent, and definitely worth reading -- highly recommended.