Assignment #3

1) The book Omnivore’s Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan is an incredibly engaging book that jerks readers into an upright position on issues such at health and nutrition, the treatment of animals, the health of our environment, the inefficiencies of our corporate food system, the bureaucracy that dictates what will sit on the shelves of our supermarkets, the longevity of our local economy and so on. All of these are presented in ways that provoke us to thought; thought that hopefully will in turn provoke us to change. What kind of change though? This is a question that I have had to ask myself.

After reading Michaels book I have come to the following conclusions. Our food system is driven primarily by money, not social values or health or taste but money. People want to buy food cheap and producers want to produce food in the cheapest possible way to make a profit. As long as people will continue to buy these cheap foods then corporations will continue to sell them. Whatever the corporations need to produce is what in turn the farms will grow, usually corn and other high capacity foods. The only way to change this if you believe in higher quality food that is local and produced in an environmentally safe way is to show the farmer and the corporation that we are willing to pay for those beliefs. We must “put our money where our mouth is”. We live in a consumer based economy, which means that production will eventually go where the consumer wants it to go or at least where the consumer will pay for it to go. If I want grass fed beef, which I do, I must be willing to pay more for it until the point at which there is enough supply that the price will come down.

As far as what should consumers be eating? I personally feel that consumers should do their best to eat foods that are grown organically, treated humanely (if animal products) and comes from local growers and suppliers. There are several reasons for this; to understand exactly what you are eating by knowing where it came from and how it was made, to cut down on the use of fossil fuels to transport food & to support our local economies to ensure that farming is not outsourced, to maintain health by eating foods that have not been produced with chemicals, the use of GMO’s or produced in a manner that negatively affects the land and environment.

I would encourage people to eat whole foods as much as possible rather than foods that are highly processed because even if a company is local or the food is organic, when it is highly processed it can be difficult to fully understand just how the food was made and all the details of the ingredients and their quality. To ensure a healthy and safe product it is best to stay local, go with producers you know who grow organic and to keep it all unprocessed so you can do the processing yourself and cook food in a healthy way.

Fruits, vegetables, nuts and berries are reasonably simple to choose by seeking out a local organic farmer. When it comes to animal products however, choosing becomes much more involved. With meat, poultry and dairy not only are you choosing the product itself but all the food that was fed to that steak producing steer, milk producing cow or egg producing chicken. In many cases these animals are fed for a year or more until they are slaughtered; which means that so many items have potentially entered the body of that animal. How these animals are raised affects quality, taste, nutrition and fat content of the animal). What they are fed, how their feed was grown, if they are given hormones or antibiotics, whether the animals get exercise and clean air, do they sleep in their own feces. As you can see there are so many factors.

In the book Omnivores dilemma, there was a narrative about the life of steers on cattle feet lots. In the many examples it was found that these steers live in bare dirt pens crammed in with thousands of other steers. The quarters are tight so that the steers cannot move and will gain weight faster without exercise. For grass fed animals it was unusual to find that these cows are fed no grass as all. Their diets consist of 75% corn along with hormones, antibiotics to keep healthy, protein and liquid fat. The antibiotics are necessary because the animals are in such abhorrent conditions that if not for the antibiotics the steers would become sick and die; not only because of the feces and close quarters but because of the large amounts of corn in their diets which is very difficult for the rumen(digestive system) to tolerate. The protein and fat are necessary to achieve 4 pounds of growth a day so the cows will be ready for slaughter in a cost effective time amount of time. The protein comes from ground up byproducts of other cows and chickens and the liquid fat also comes from other cows that have been slaughtered.