Student Name
DeVry University Industrial/Corn Summary
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, analyzes the eating habits and food chains of modern America in an attempt to bring readers closer to the origin of their foods. Pollan’s blend of humor and philosophical questions about the nature of food serves both to enlighten readers about the environment from which their food is harvested and to teach readers about alternative ways of eating.
In the first chapter of Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, we are introduced to the topic of industrial corn and its origins some thousands of years ago. Originally known as “Zea Mays”, corn started off slow in biological terms but blew up after the discovery of Christopher Columbus. Now that there was corn the settlers were free from the Natives and could now support themselves on the agriculture of corn. Now in modern times we have created new types of corns to feed humans and animals but also to create over 25000 products in supermarkets today.
Pallon mentions in Chapter one the differences between American and Mexican diets. Stating that the Mexican diet is that of a corn-based nature, where as Americans is on the other side of the spectrum eating more meats than anything. In truth it’s the opposite, it’s the Americans that are eating more corn. It all comes down to the way we feed our animals and process our foods. Americans feed their livestock with corn, and pump corn-based products into readily available food. Whereas Mexicans although they eat a wide variety of corn and grains still feed their animals with grass and sweeten with sugar cane versus corn-based sweeteners. So the Americans really do beat out the “Corn walkers”, I guess you could say they’re walking corn from the high levels of corn consumption.
Pollan pulled me into chapter one with the information he provided about corn. I was enlightened by this chapter and decided to do some research of my own. I