The Omnivore's Dilemma
Jul. 22nd, 2006 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonBlegh. I've been unhappy with my body lately and it's not getting any better. I'm much happier with the functions of my body than I used to be, but I'm also 10 pounds heavier than I was 10 years ago, and that little pudge on my belly isn't going away in response to a few days of avoiding junk food the way it used to. I'm so pissed off. I've got to find a way off this plateau... not before I try the banana coconut macadamia bread that's currently in the oven, though.1
End whining. It would be better perhaps to talk about the book I just read, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I strongly recommend to those of you who eat food. The title refers to a question that (for the most part) only omnivores really have to ask themselves, namely: I wonder if I should eat this or not? What should I eat? These questions don't often cross the minds of, say, koala bears, which only eat eucalyptus leaves and have that knowledge hardcoded in their brains. But they do cross our minds, and today the answers aren't even coded in our cultures as much as they used to be. To add to this dilemma, we also can think about ethics (unlike the rat, also an omnivore but an amoral one).
You guys already know I think Michael Pollan is an amazing writer, and again he outdoes himself with thoughtful research and coverage of several sides of every issue involved in the production of our food. Sometimes these sides are ones we don't usually think about -- as with The Botany of Desire, he also takes the plant's-eye view at times, especially when talking about how Zea mays (corn) has managed to practically take over the US (he ended up learning a LOT about corn when studying the industrial food chain in America today). There was so much in the book that I loved, like how it discussed the importance of learning to make chemical fertilizer -- this was the first time people learned to fix nitrogen in any way other than organically (i.e. planting legumes), and it allowed human population to almost double just based on the increased food it made available. (I would never have named fertilizer as one of the most important breakthroughs of the century before I read this, but now it would be #1. Wow.)
Pollan is sympathetic to vegetarianism and gives a lot of thought to the should-we-eat-meat question, though not until near the end of the book -- I think he didn't want to attack that topic until AFTER he'd made it clear what a thoughtful researcher he is by discussing the organic food chain2 and the industrial food chain and life on a small, self-sufficient farm. But attack it he did. He even went vegetarian for a while to see what it felt like (surprising himself by then discovering just how bad the life and death of an egg-producing hen really is -- worse than the life of most chickens that are intended to be eaten). In the end I agree with quite a few of his conclusions. Here's a gorgeous quote:
He also has a marvellous two-page smackdown of the concept of an all-vegan, all-local-food society. Basically, this would mean abandoning as human habitats all places where grass is the basis of the food chain; we need animals like ruminants to turn grass into protein. Not to even get into the fact that vegans are responsible for the deaths of plenty of animals already -- mice, woodchucks and anything that wants to eat the food we grow. And of course, the best natural fertilizer for most plants is manure... for better or worse, plants and animals evolved together, and it's doubtful anyone can create a truly sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients and support local food production. I suppose we could always use 'em without eating 'em... but then we're really wasting food.
My views, as of this moment and definitely in a state of flux:
The book ends:
1Lest you now think I'm a complete moral reprobate, the rest of my dinner is cottage cheese and 1.5 apricots.
2This one pissed me off soooo much, especially reading about "free range" chickens that basically have a small open door in both ends of their hen house for the last two weeks of their lives. Of course they don't go out the doors. But according to the current guidelines for what "free range" means, they're free range chickens... sigh. A more complicated question is whether we do any good by buying imported organic fruit from places far away -- pesticides weren't used, but plenty of petrochemicals were as the fruit was transported to us, and big organic still sticks with fragile monocultures and still feeds corn to its cows. OH SIGH. This book didn't really change the impression I got from The Skeptical Environmentalist, which is that big organic operations as they are today are really not worth supporting either.
End whining. It would be better perhaps to talk about the book I just read, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I strongly recommend to those of you who eat food. The title refers to a question that (for the most part) only omnivores really have to ask themselves, namely: I wonder if I should eat this or not? What should I eat? These questions don't often cross the minds of, say, koala bears, which only eat eucalyptus leaves and have that knowledge hardcoded in their brains. But they do cross our minds, and today the answers aren't even coded in our cultures as much as they used to be. To add to this dilemma, we also can think about ethics (unlike the rat, also an omnivore but an amoral one).
You guys already know I think Michael Pollan is an amazing writer, and again he outdoes himself with thoughtful research and coverage of several sides of every issue involved in the production of our food. Sometimes these sides are ones we don't usually think about -- as with The Botany of Desire, he also takes the plant's-eye view at times, especially when talking about how Zea mays (corn) has managed to practically take over the US (he ended up learning a LOT about corn when studying the industrial food chain in America today). There was so much in the book that I loved, like how it discussed the importance of learning to make chemical fertilizer -- this was the first time people learned to fix nitrogen in any way other than organically (i.e. planting legumes), and it allowed human population to almost double just based on the increased food it made available. (I would never have named fertilizer as one of the most important breakthroughs of the century before I read this, but now it would be #1. Wow.)
Pollan is sympathetic to vegetarianism and gives a lot of thought to the should-we-eat-meat question, though not until near the end of the book -- I think he didn't want to attack that topic until AFTER he'd made it clear what a thoughtful researcher he is by discussing the organic food chain2 and the industrial food chain and life on a small, self-sufficient farm. But attack it he did. He even went vegetarian for a while to see what it felt like (surprising himself by then discovering just how bad the life and death of an egg-producing hen really is -- worse than the life of most chickens that are intended to be eaten). In the end I agree with quite a few of his conclusions. Here's a gorgeous quote:
.... For although humans no longer need meat in order to survive (now that we can get our B-12 from fermented foods or supplements) we have been meat eaters for most of our time on earth.... [cultural traditions blah blah]... Meat eating helped make us what we are in a physical as well as a social sense. Under the pressure of the hunt, the human brain grew in size and complexity....
This isn't to say we can't or shouldn't transcend our inheritance, only that it is our inheritance; whatever else may be gained by giving up meat, this much at least is lost. The notion of granting rights to animals may lift us up from the brutal, amoral world of eater and eaten -- of predation -- but along the way it will entail the sacrifice, or sublimation, of part of our identity -- of our own animality. (This is one of the odder ironies of animal rights: It asks us to acknowledge all we share with animals, and then to act toward them in a most unanimalistic way.) Not that the sacrifice of our animality is necessarily regrettable; no one regrets our giving up raping and pillaging, also part of our inheritance. But we should at least acknowledge that the human desire to eat meat is not, as the animal rightists would have it, a trivial matter, a mere gastronomic preference. By the same token we might call sex -- also now technically unnecessary for reproduction -- a mere recreational preference. Rather, our meat eating is something very deep indeed.
He also has a marvellous two-page smackdown of the concept of an all-vegan, all-local-food society. Basically, this would mean abandoning as human habitats all places where grass is the basis of the food chain; we need animals like ruminants to turn grass into protein. Not to even get into the fact that vegans are responsible for the deaths of plenty of animals already -- mice, woodchucks and anything that wants to eat the food we grow. And of course, the best natural fertilizer for most plants is manure... for better or worse, plants and animals evolved together, and it's doubtful anyone can create a truly sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients and support local food production. I suppose we could always use 'em without eating 'em... but then we're really wasting food.
My views, as of this moment and definitely in a state of flux:
- Animals should have rights, including the right to more or less indulge their instincts, the right to eat what they would eat in nature (cows eat grass, goddammit) and the right to humane termination.
- There should be a lot more transparency about what our food is made of and where it comes from. The public should be able to see slaughterhouses. Farms too.
- I think I'm more concerned with eating locally produced food than I am with whether I eat meat sometimes; I worry that we're not properly pricing the food that comes to us from far away, burning oil as the ships and planes travel, and I agree with Pollan that the desire to eat meat is deep-seated in human nature. On the other hand, we must be able to reconcile ourselves with the fact that we do cause animal deaths if we eat meat, and, if it's gotten through today's industrial food chain, animal suffering as well. (I'm in the middle of seriously considering my grocery-buying habits on the basis of that last one.) It's healthier to acknowledge that price.
- The current industrial food chain really does worry me. Food items are irresponsibly priced more cheaply than they should be, with long-term costs not externalized at all, and we're relying on petrochemicals rather than the sun for the energy that grows our food.
- Mushrooms are surprisingly interesting.
- This post is about twice as long as I thought it would be.
The book ends:
...imagine if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost.... we would no longer need any reminding that however we choose to feed ourselves, we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we're eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world.
1Lest you now think I'm a complete moral reprobate, the rest of my dinner is cottage cheese and 1.5 apricots.
2This one pissed me off soooo much, especially reading about "free range" chickens that basically have a small open door in both ends of their hen house for the last two weeks of their lives. Of course they don't go out the doors. But according to the current guidelines for what "free range" means, they're free range chickens... sigh. A more complicated question is whether we do any good by buying imported organic fruit from places far away -- pesticides weren't used, but plenty of petrochemicals were as the fruit was transported to us, and big organic still sticks with fragile monocultures and still feeds corn to its cows. OH SIGH. This book didn't really change the impression I got from The Skeptical Environmentalist, which is that big organic operations as they are today are really not worth supporting either.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-23 02:55 am (UTC)i am 5 pounds heavier than i was 7 mos ago and it can't be all muscle and it's really annoying me.
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Date: 2006-07-23 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-24 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-23 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-24 03:05 am (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2006-07-31 10:56 pm (UTC)As for my reactions...I'll give the book a chance, but the quotes listed didn't do much for me. For example, I've never been a fan of the reasoning behind "choice X is just as bad (or worse) as choice Y, therefore don't bitch at me about choice Y." I don't know anyone who eats chicken but not eggs, but that would be the only person from whom the "egg-laying chickens suffer more than meat chickens" argument would make any sense.
Another example would be the suggestion that vegetarians claim vegetarianism is just a simple food choice. I can only speak for myself, but I've never said it was easy. Hell, I wish I got a little more credit for doing something that is very difficult at times. I say sometimes to people that it's not that hard, but frankly that's usually just a way of heading off their impending need to try to get me to justify the choice. I've found that if I say it is easy, it takes the sting out of their own self-judgement, and they don't feel the need to attack.
The aspect of the book that most interested me was the local/organic angle.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 11:18 pm (UTC)It all sort of depends what we're measuring, I guess. To eliminate chicken suffering, we should probably eat neither (industrially obtained) chicken or eggs. To cap the acceptable level of chicken suffering at A (but not B) we might eat chicken but not eggs. To minimize the number of animal deaths, the best meat would seem to be beef... the death of one cow feeds a lot more people than the death of one chicken. To strike some sort of workable balance between human nutrition and human responsibility for the animals... we may draw any of several conclusions. Some people choose to limit themselves to animals at or below some level of perceived sentience, and that actually has some attraction for me.
The aspect of the book that most interested me was the local/organic angle.
Yeah, me too. :)
By the way, I'd be the first to admit that I'm not eating according to my own principles. Of course, I can't be, entirely, as I'm still figuring out what the hell they ARE.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-08 12:17 am (UTC)Ah, you're right, sorry, I'd seen the discussion about egg-laying hens from Pollard's book before and your brief mention of it reminded me.
I think it's valid for anyone to say something like "the life of an egg-laying hen sucks worse than the life of a hen that is meant to be eaten, so it's worse to eat N eggs than it is to eat one chicken."
Not if you can't quantify the suffering and N. And my point was that anyone who eats both chicken and eggs and brings up that issue looks like they are trying to salve their meat-eating conscience. Now, if someone only ate chicken and no eggs, that'd be an interesting discussion.
To minimize the number of animal deaths, the best meat would seem to be beef... the death of one cow feeds a lot more people than the death of one chicken.
It's not "animal deaths" that is necessarily the problem, it's how they live and die. And it IS disturbing that organic farming and cage-free eggs etc aren't the panacea they were initially presented as, but I do think they are still industries worth supporting (as well as critically reviewing) because they represent progress.
I think I need to read the book before discussing it further. I've seen a lot of blogging about it, a lot of various quotes, and because it's a book attacking vegetarianism I'm curious to see what it has to say - I'm hard-pressed to imagine an argument for anything other than a vast reduction in meat eating (particularly among western cultures) can be justified morally and environmentally. And of course, having not read it myself, I will reserve judgement. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-08 02:00 am (UTC)NOT SO. A person could be a vegan and saying "I don't do either of these things but I happen to think A is worse than B" or a person could be a carnivore and saying "of these two somewhat destructive or negative things I do, I'm pretty sure this one is worse than that one." What's invalid about either of those?
I, personally, think it's more environmentally destructive to drive an SUV all alone than it is to ride in a moderately sized car with three other people... but I don't do either of those things. I also think it's probably worse to air condition my bedroom all summer than it is to spray Raid on the basement spiders once a week, but I do both those things. Everyone finds their own level.
Anyway, I don't think this book is an attack on vegetarianism. :) If you read it, I think there'll be some scenes you don't enjoy but I really don't think you'd feel attacked at all.