...Book Review of Omnivore’s Dilemma ENGL135 Advanced Composition DeVry University Book Review of Omnivore’s Dilemma The Omnivore’s Dilemma written by Michael Pollan has been written with an aim to address the confusion of every omnivore, or human being to address the need to decide what should be consumed when nature has such a huge variety and bounty to offer. The book starts with a fairly simple question aimed to make us think deeper about our evolved lifestyles and gastronomic tastes. The author asks his readers to answer a fairly simple question, which is “what should we have for dinner?” and goes on to show how complicated the answer can be. The book is divided into three sections: - Industrial/Corn, Pastoral/Grass. Personal/The Forest, each of which brings out interesting sights and happenings in the food chain. The first section which is the Industrial/Corn section describes how corn is the most important ingredient in the industrial food chain, while the second section on Pastoral/Grass section talks about organic farming. The final section on Personal/The Forest finds the author describing how to make a meal out of whatever he could hunt, grown or gathered by him only. This article presents a book review on the first section only. Michael Pollan shows us how difficult it is actually to choose what we eat given that nature has such a wide variety of bounty to offer. Yet if the American industry is scrutinized deeply, one basic ingredient seems to be the magical...
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...America’s Dilemma According to Michael Pollan in the year 2009 in the novel Omnivore’s Dilemma, chapter 8 “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” we don’t know what to eat because we don’t have a food culture to fall back on. We question what to eat because we have never built a culture of food. “We have never had a national food culture in the United States. There’s really no such thing as ‘American Food’”(92). Since America is very diverse, and full of different people from all over the world, nothing has ever been established as to what to eat, what is healthy, and what the average human really needs. Thus, creating what we now know as The Omnivore’s Dilemma. “We have few rules, about what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat, we don’t have any strong food...
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...| The Omnivore Review | A review on Michael Pollans “The Omnivore dilemma” | | Cody Windsor Harrington | DeVry University | The Omnivore Review As agriculture technology continues to advance in the new world most of us have lost our pre historic skills of basic survival when it comes to hunting and gathering. America’s agriculture logistics are so well developed that most Americans relay on this system to stay alive. A small portion of people out there still remain intact with their pre historic agriculture skills. That is what Author Michael Pollan writes about In Part 3, Chapters 15, 16, and 17 of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Michael Pollan talks about looking for different foods, the ethics of hunting animals and harvesting the meat as well as giving a brief look into what brought about the paradox of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Chapters 15, 16, and 17 bring up a lot of good points about foraging and hunting. Pollan provides in depth detail and research on the topics. The difficult part is staying focused on the story the author is illustrating. Pollan tends to bounce around on different topics and drags out details making it difficult to keep the reader entertained. Chapter 15 of Omnivore's Dilemma discusses how Pollan is preparing to make a meal from all of the foraging groups. Fruits, vegetables, fungi, and meat were the components that made up this meal. His goal was to find and gather enough from each group to make his first meal from nature. Pollan discusses...
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...Running head: The Omnivore’s Dilemma: First Draft The Omnivore's Dilemma: First Draft Introduction Reading The Omnivores Dilemma, The Forest section goes over the life, killing and processing of animals as food. The process of killing these animals comes into question in many people’s minds, as they fear or worry the animals were treated badly in their lives, or were killed in an inhumane way. This will explain on how it is hypocritical of an individual who eats meat to have an issue with and against the ways these animals are processed. The Feeding of Animals Animals that are raised as livestock are there for the reason of eventually being killed and processed for food. They are fed as an animal being raised for such purposes. One would not feed an animal high grade food whenever they are going to be slaughtered and used for consumption; because they will be eaten, their food quality needs to be good, but not top end food. These animals just need to be healthy. The argument for animals needing to be fed high quality foods in these situations is absurd to say the least. The Containment of Animals The perception that animals are contained inhumanely is largely incorrect. While of course some operations would not adhere to the set standards, for the most part confinement of livestock is done according to established guidelines. Take the opening scene from the movie Babe...
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...The Forager’s Dilemma Christopher K. Johnson DeVry University The Forager’s Dilemma In the book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, which was written by Michael Pollan, I read a story about a man’s journey to find a meal he could call his own. Part III, “The Forager” is about reconnecting with the earth and its nature. From pages 277-286, the text will give the reader a taste of what it is like to forage. Pollan is a self-proclaimed “Great in-doors man” and only has a few fond memories of dealing with nature. He has never owned or shot a gun nor has he ever hunted mushrooms due to his fungi phobia. Even with all his lack of natural experience, he is set on showing the reader how different it was to hunt, gather, and grow our own foods rather than depend on the present day agriculturalist. After struggling with everything that has happened throughout the story, he never gives up, even though his doubt gets the best of him in the end. In the first three chapters of Part III were well written and a good read for anyone interested. The purpose of this review is to give you my point of view in hopes to provide a good evaluation for my fellow readers to compare their notes with. There were quite many facts in this reading that caught my attention. One fact in particular was how agriculture brought about infectious disease and malnutrition. Anthropologists venture to say that the typical hunter-gatherers work week was about 17 hours long. These work ethics...
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...The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan talks about the food chains that keep America sustained and the effects that we have made on the environment. Pollan tries to convey that the good treatment of animals and their environments is beneficial to the quality and taste of the food. My favorite part of the book was when Pollan went to Polyface farm and learned about grass farming. The farmer at Polyface wanted his farm to mimic a natural ecosystem where all the animals and plants would live mutualistically to better the environment around them. The biggest takeaway from this book was that every single thing in the food chain has an effect on the food on our plates. How the animals or plants are grown, killed, and shipped all matter to the...
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...pushed on society with the intention to bring awareness to sustainability. In Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the issue of agriculture sustainability is presented. True sustainability is not just agriculture; it is all the natural renewable resources available in the world. Humans do not realized the amount of packaged products they consume in a day or the harmful chemicals that we pollute the earth with when we drive or apply them to agriculture. As consumers we look for convenient, cheap, and accessibility to minimize the time needed in order to perform everyday tasks. Until humanity grasps how these every day products are hazardous not only chemically but also on our natural resources; we as a people will continue to consume un-renewable resources. By increasing the concept of a sustainable development, humanity will use fewer nonrenewable resources such as petroleum’s and fossil fuels and rely on renewable resources such as solar energy. Without a defined structure of true sustainability; governments, corporations, businesses, companies and individuals will continue to depreciate the Earth’s natural resources until it is uninhabitable. “All definitions of sustainable development require that we see the world as a system—a system that connects space; and a system that connects time.”(EurActiv, 2004) Sustainability as referenced in Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma is referring to human sustainability. The use of sustainability in this form has yet to receive a...
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...The Right vs. The Wrong Matt Kimball DeVry University THE RIGHT VS. THE WRONG The battle of determining what is right and what is wrong is one that we all face. The depth of that battle is one that varies across a wide array of topics, ranging from a moral dilemma that has consequences to a simple decision like what to wear that day. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan explores this battle as it relates to determining what is right and what is wrong for our dietary needs. Society has drastically changed over the years in the U.S. especially when it comes to our eating habits and the frequency in which we eat out at restaurants and fast food chains more regularly than ever before. The increased volume by which we eat out is not what has caused what many are calling an epidemic as it relates to our country’s obesity but rather it’s the decisions we make about what we eat when we eat out. The ability to eat out and still eat healthy is quite alive but it’s up to you. The act of eating out whether it be for a special occasion or simply because we can has become far more frequent than it ever was even ten or twenty years ago. In fact, at some point not too long ago, the notion that you were not sitting down at the dining room table and having dinner with the family was considered absurd. The evolution of our society and the need to always be on the go has drastically changed our way of thinking about what a “family dinner” means. In the 1950s a “family dinner”...
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...more vulnerable because we are so ethnically and culturally different. We as Americans have no massive religious and cultural ties to food so it makes us more vulnerable to be persuaded into eating no necessarily healthy things. 4. The American Paradox is the people here that are unhealthy and are obsessed with the idea of being or becoming healthy. The French paradox is a healthy group of people that live and eat in ways that we look at as unhealthy. 5. An omnivore eats both other animals and plants. 6. The omnivore’s dilemma is that as omnivore’s we have such a huge selection of possible items of food, but we have to base possible items off of what is healthy or what could eventually kill us. A koala is an omnivore but it has less an issue finding food because it has a specific gene that tells the koala to eat eucalyptus leaves. Humans do not have a gene telling us what to eat so it is easier for us to eat the wrong thing. 7. He believes that the omnivore’s dilemma is the fact that...
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...CORN AND CULTURE: THE INFLUENCE OF ZEA MAYS ACROSS CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL BOUNDARIES BY GINNY MARIE MUELLER Undergraduate Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the University Scholar distinction The University of Montana Missoula, MT May 2011 Approved by: James C. McKusick, Dean The Davidson Honors College Kathleen Kane, Faculty Mentor English David Moore, Faculty Reader English 1 Mueller, Ginny, B.A., May 2011 English Literature Corn and Culture: The Influence of Zea mays across Cultural and Historical Boundaries Faculty Mentor: Kathleen Kane Second Faculty Reader: David Moore Corn's status as a critical food crop, and its location within indigenous new world cosmographies, illustrate the important sociocultural role the plant has played for millennia. However, modern society has elevated Zea mays far above the status of mere plant, fashioning it into a commodity intimately connected to systems of control and capitalism. Consequently, corn has played an essential role in colonization, industrialization, and the advent of overproduction. The beliefs and literature of numerous new world cultures, along with the literatures of modern Western cultures, offer a striking analysis of corn's current position in western society. The far-reaching impacts that corn has on our socioeconomic and subsistence systems reveal a great deal about globalization, commodification, and dominance. This paper examines corn through a cultural studies lens, documenting...
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...with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli--the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farms' Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms' Joe Salatin,...
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...Collapse- book is about a history topic about how societies choose to fail or survive. The main characters are historical people and unknown kings of Mayan cities or Easter Island villages. Jared Diamond tells the story of the Viking explorer Erik the Red, who discovered Greeland and Vinland (Terranova, in Canada). Another character is captain Olafsson, a norse sailor who wrote the last news about Greenland in 1410. Another main character is Christopher Columbus, who arrived at Hispaniola in 1492, but now this island is two countries, the Dominican Republic and the Haiti. Diamond studied the politics of two presidents. the dominican Rafael Trujillo, who protected the enviroment and the dictator François, Papa Doc, Duvalier, who decided on politics of deforestatation of his country, Haiti. The author considered the bad politics of another main character, king George II, who was interested in sending merinosheeps from Spain to Australia, an idea which was succesful from 1820 to 1950 but then the farmers understood their lands lost fertility. Another main character is Tokuwaga Jeayasu, a shogun of Japan in 1600, who prohibited Christianity in 1600 and protected his country againt deforestation. The book takes us to a lot of places around the globe: Mayan cities, Rwanda, Viking colonies of Vinland or Greenland, Haiti and Dominican Republic, Easter Island and Polynesian colonies in Pacific, and the Chaco villages in New Mexico (United States). The time period was from 800 AC, when...
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