Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (review)

Sarahina Borgia

Iva Petkova

Organizing Inovation

February 1st, 2017

Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, published in 2006 by Penguin Press, is the author's examination of Americans' overall eating habits. Pollan approaches this subject by looking at food as a naturalist does. He points out that all of our food originates as plants, animals, and fungi.The book is divided into three sections. The first section focuses on industrial farming, the second analyzes organic food, and the third discusses hunting and gathering one's own food. Each section ends with a meal, and Pollan's narrative traces the meal back to its origins.Economist Tyler Cowen argued, "The problems with Pollan's 'self-financed' meal reflect the major shortcoming of the book: He focuses on what is before his eyes but neglects the macro perspective of the economist. He wants to make the costs of various foods transparent, but this is an unattainable ideal, given the interconnections of markets."

Pollan argues that to "give up" human consumption of animals would lead to a "food chain [...] even more dependent than it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers since food would need to travel even farther and fertility – in the form of manures – would be in short supply". Given that, according to Pollan, other than raising ruminants for human consumption, no viable alternatives exist in such grassy areas, for growing any grains or other plant foods for human consumption. Washington State University, situated in an agricultural area of Washington state, chose this book to be part of its freshman reading program in 2009 but soon canceled the program.

"Life is confusing atop the food chain. For most animals, eating is a simple matter of biological imperative: if you're a koala, you seek out eucalyptus leaves; if you're a prairie vole, you munch on bluegrass and clover. But Homo sapiens, encumbered by a big brain and such inventions as agriculture and industry, faces a bewildering array of choices, from scrambled eggs to Chicken McNuggets, from a bowl of fresh strawberries to the petrochemical complex yellow log of sweet, spongy food product known as the Twinkie. "When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer," Michael Pollan writes in his thoughtful, engrossing new book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma," "deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety." (New York Times)

If I have any caveats about "The Omnivore's Dilemma," it's Pollan's tendency to be too nice. He doesn't write with the propulsive rage that fueled Eric Schlosser's blockbuster "Fast Food Nation," nor does he take a firm stand on figures like the "Big Organic" pioneer Gene Kahn, an ex-hippie farmer from Washington State who decided that the only way to sustain his company, Cascadian Farm, was to sell it to General Mills. Pollan wryly notes that Kahn drives a late-model Lexus with vanity plates that say ORGANIC, but he calls Kahn "a realist, a businessman with a payroll to meet." Does this mean that Kahn is striking the right balance between mammon and the mission, or does Pollan think he's a hypocrite?

Likewise, I wish Pollan would stick his neck out and be more prescriptive about how we might realistically address our national eating disorder. We can't all go off the grid like Salatin, nor can we just wish away 200 years of industrialization. So what to do? Is the ever-growing organic-food industry already on the right path? Or is more radical action needed? Should the Department of Justice break up giant, soil-exhausting factory farms into small, self-sustaining polycultural organic farms? Perhaps it's greedy to demand more from a book already brimming with ideas, 

but what can I say? I'm an American, and I'm still hungry.