You think the oil companies are evil! A must read for anyone that eats. This all started last year with a trip to Illinois for a funeral. My wife's family are big farmers in Illinois and all they plant is corn. Corn everywhere right up to the edge of the roads, no ditch just corn. At first I thought this was impressive, America at its best....super production feeding the world. But then you start to get a little nagging in the back of your mind, "Man corn is everywhere...where does it all go?"
Micahael Pollen answers this question with several disturbing explainations: 1. You drink it by the boat load with every 20oz soda. 2. You eat it by the truck load with EVERYTHING.
This book will definetly screw you up...you will begin reading labels and see the corn EVERY WHERE! As a farm kid, hunter and parent, this book uncovers many answers to America's problems with food. A must read for anyone that eats!
Thought-provoking This was a great book - very interesting and thought provoking.
The premise was that Pollan wanted to eat different types of meals and find out exactly where the food came from. The first section is his meal at MacDonalds and then following the path of factory farmed animals and commodity corn. The second section was pasture-raised animals in which he profiled this amazing farm that tries to mimic the natural diets and styles of animals - really inspiring to hear about this farmer fighting against the goverment to raise his animals naturally, and then he creates a meal that he hunted and foraged for himself (though did I miss something - he baked bread and made pasta but didn't mention growing the wheat!).
The book was well written and I think will encourage people to really think about where their food comes from.Is it Truth or Fiction? Representative Examples, Please. Pollan's book lacks balance. He uses two farmers in Iowa (who between them farm<1000 acres) as exemplary of all corn farmers -- overfertilizing, using either new equipment they cannot afford or old equipment that damages their hearing, wearing out the soil, etc. My midwestern farm-raised parents laughed out loud, countering with as many stories of well managed farms whose founding family owners are doing quite nicely, thank you, without raping the land.
In the section on pastoral farming, he uses the example of a farmer who will not ship product from Virginia to New York because of the inherent conflict of using fuel to ship 'truly organic' food such a long way, but who invites Pollan to drive down and pick some up - which would use proportionally more fuel than Fedex'ing the damn chicken.
The historical and scientific discussions are interesting, and (no pun intended) food for thought, but the lack of factual basis inferred by Pollan's generalizations makes the veracity of these discussions difficult to accept.
