The Omnivore's Dilemma

“The Omnivore’s Dilemma, A Natural History Of Four Meals.” by Michael Pollan is an incredibly information-dense review of our modern day food industry. Pollan promises to use facts, statistics, and personal experience to take the reader on a journey that will ultimately discover a definitive answer to “what should I have for dinner?” This book had an interesting effect on me which I will discuss by first explaining my food industry related knowledge prior to reading the book, what the book has taught me, and finally, go over what I call “The Omnivore's Dilemma’s Dilemma.”
I myself tend to be keen to understand how the world around me functions. I am passionate about all knowledge regardless of topic and prior to reading Pollan’s piece, I had a firm understanding of what we ate and how it was linked economically to major corporations. Cutting down on costs was and always will be every food company’s number one priority.
Unlike most other products that can be judged by terms such as “quality” or “reliability,” food can only be judged by the numbers featured on the labels. What do the numbers mean? Well, unfortunately, the answer to that question is “nothing.” They can serve merely as guidelines capable of guiding people towards a potential solution but they will never be able to truly answer the question of what one should and shouldn't eat. Modern industrial eating has completely separated man from earth and ostracized the chicken you eat from the chicken your ancestors used to eat. “What is most troubling, and sad, about industrial eating is how thoroughly it obscures all these relationships and connections. To go from the chicken (Gallus gallus) to the Chicken McNugget is to leave this world on a journey of forgetting that could hardly be more costly, not only in terms of the animal's pain but in our pleasure, too” (Pollan 10).
Despite having a relatively adequate understanding of how and where our food comes from only after reading Pollan’s book did I truly understand why such an epidemic occurred and why it is especially relevant in the United States, a country obsessed with the idea of being healthy and physically fit. Pollan explains that older countries have had thousands of years to form eating cultures and habits relevant to a specific area populated with its specific resources. The United States however simply borrows and alters cuisine from other countries and is hence populated with a variety of Chinese, French, German, and many other countries’ eateries. This lack of culture leaves Americans with no direct answer to the question of “what should I eat for dinner?” Pollan writes that “Eating's not a bad way to get to know a place” (Pollan 408). This statement holds true virtually anywhere besides the United States where our industrial eating lifestyle has become so separated from the grasslands and forests of our country that one could easily argue that all American food is produced in a laboratory. It is this catastrophic lack of culture that I was never aware of.
Bringing together both my prior knowledge and the knowledge bestowed upon me by Pollan, I have decided to call what the country now faces, “ The Omnivore’s Dilemma’s Dilemma.” The problem now is that even after having read the book, an American citizen can do very little in the ways of pushing towards a viable solution.
Pollan’s solution is simple. “All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse” (Pollan 260). Regardless of how promising it may sound, however, where our food comes from is not going to change overnight. Major companies such as Coca-Cola have bought out our legislation a countless number of times and will continue to do so for as long as people continue to feed them money. Unless a sharp, major nationwide movement is started, there will never be an “American Food Revolution.” Despite the efforts put forth by many food orientated communities, the availability, low cost, and popularity of terrible industrial foods will time and time again grant victory to the
corporations.