Back in the 1920s, everybody knew that fillintheblank was bad for you. In the 1950s, they knew the opposite thing, that something else was good for you, say, fillinanotherblank. In some instances, we still think the same thing as they did, and in others we think something completely different. Gone are the days when a …
Farms With Their Own Zip Code
In chapter 8, “All Flesh Is Grass,” Michael Pollan introduces us to Joel Salatin, a “Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer” (p. 125). When all is said and done, Salatin sounds like a fun guy, like someone who has made his small farm productive in multiple ways, on multiple levels. So three cheers for him, in the most neighborly …
We Are All Vegans Now
I am finally resuming my hiatus-ridden review of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Let’s all hope that I quit getting distracted. Chapter Seven is on the “Fast Food Meal,” in which Pollan demonstrates that he is a fine writer, fluid with prose that is easy on the eyes. I often think he is just crazy nuts, but …
An Epidemic of Hot Water in the Morning
I had been working my way through Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma when I was, as I put it, overtooken by events. Having hacked my way through those events, I am now prepared to return to the pleasant task of enjoying Pollan’s prose and personality, and the less pleasant task of pointing out his wowserism. …
No Profit
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Food and Drink #9 “Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein” (Heb. 13:9). The author …
Nothing Wrong with Little Bugles
This is not writer’s block, but I don’t have a lot to say about Michael Pollan’s next chapter either. In this case, it is because the kind of stuff that others find scary I find pretty mundane. Either that or pretty cool. In this chapter Pollan describes the processes that cause food to be called …
Let Us Not Inquire About the Chitlins
In his next chapter, Pollan does yeoman’s work in putting us off our feed. He does this by taking us to a feedlot in Kansas, an animal city where multitudes of cows are fed corn until the day of slaughter. In the olden days, it took 4-5 years before a cow was slaughtered. Now we …
Okay, Bad Example
Just a quick note on another important aspect of the food debate, one that doesn’t relate to the food itself directly. At the same time, it does reflect on the nature of the debate about food. I speak of the issue of “food corporations,” “making money,” “product disparagement,” and “coercive competition.” It is difficult to …
There Wasn’t Any Food, He Explained
Chapter 3 is a short piece on “The Elevator.” Pollan doesn’t have a lot to say here, except to point out what a large amount of corn there is out there, and to state it in such a way as to make us a bit disgusted with certain aspects of handling that much. For example, …
Fall Into Fruitfulness
In his second chapter, Michael Pollan reveals two important things. The first is that he believes that ethical norms are created by a mythic state of nature. And since that mythic state of nature was long ago, far away, and mute on top of that, the standards that come from this state of nature need …