Review: The Omnivore's Dilemma

By Michael Pollan (Penguin Press, 2006)

Reviewed by Paula L. Fleming, Human Resources Generalist

Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma evoked for me memories of James Burke's Connections, a television series about the endlessly interlocking relationships between ideas, practical necessity, political ambition and technology. In a pithy, passionate voice, Pollan guides us through the macro and micro, historical and current, pragmatic and idealistic views of where our food comes from. He takes a highly complex subject, and without simplifying it in any way, makes it simple to understand. I recommend this book to everyone who eats.

The title's premise is that humans can choose what we have for dinner. Not only can we choose, but we must choose, unlike say, the koala who knows that its next meal will be eucalyptus leaves. Because we make choices, we can be influenced, whether by our culture, by marketing, by availability and price, or by education. No one will convince the koala to eat a fast-food hamburger, but we can even be talked into supersizing it.

The Omnivore's Dilemma unfolds in three parts. The first part, about the rise of conventional agribusiness, shows the impact of our dominant food paradigm on farmers, animals, the land and our bodies. Pollan shows compellingly how dependent our sustenance has become on two energy inputs: corn and petroleum.

The second part explores the resurgence of natural and organic food production and its retailing, and agribusiness' quest to subsume it. Here, Pollan shows us a cow's view of a pasture, a buffet of a multitude of greens exquisitely adapted to thrive under the intermittent grazing of roving bovines. He also coins the term "supermarket pastoral" to describe the marketing that appeals to our desire for food grown in a bucolic setting--food that may not, in fact, be remotely pastoral in origin. (An unexpected plus: His critique of Whole Foods Market has sparked a fascinating, thoughtful debate between himself and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. The back-and-forth is available at the Whole Foods website.

The third part takes us on a hunter-gatherer journey as Pollan harvests wild mushrooms and kills a wild boar, eliminating the physical and emotional distance between his body and the food that sustains it.

I felt that one of the strengths of this book is Pollan's self-awareness of his biases and his thoughtful acknowledgment of arguments on the other side. For example, modern agribusiness and the massive quantities of calories it provides, year-round, has largely freed the developed world from the chronic food insecurity and seasonal nutritional deficiencies that haunted us not many generations ago. (Though not, of course, entirely: According to a 2002 USDA study, 11.3% of households experienced food insecurity at some point during the year.) Few of us, if given a choice, would really want to live a working-class life in the eighteenth century.

Also, despite Pollan's evident distaste for large-scale organic farming, which has many of the same failings as largescale conventional farming, he restrains himself from demonizing these business-people as "sell-outs." Instead, he points out that at least the conversion of land to organic production saves the environment from millions of pounds of harmful chemicals. The system is not ideal, but it's better than the only practical alternative.

The mention of a "practical alternative" ties into my main criticism of The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's unclear what Pollan really wants us to do. Certainly we can become educated about where our food comes from and insist on eating only that which is grown sustainably, in relative harmony with the land and without bankrupting farmers. But it's one thing to wax idyllic about a delectably "green" meal; it's another, gutsier thing to lay out a vision of what our world would look like if a lot of people suddenly took the message seriously. I'd like to have seen some speculation about what the United States might look like if we converted our entire food system to a sustainable, healthful model. There are questions worth asking: Without massive inputs of corn and petroleum, would we generate enough calories to sustain our current population? Without antibiotic-sustained feedlots and jam-packed poultry barns, what would replace meat as Americans' dominant source of protein? If we limited petroleum products in our food delivery, how many fresh vegetables could Minnesotans eat in January?

However, wishing that Pollan extended his argument even further is really a backhanded compliment. I wanted the book to continue. I'd like Pollan to write another book that shows us the economics, environment, and dinners of a possible sustainable future. And if he writes that book, or any other, I'll certainly read it.

Rating: 4 servings (out of 4)