I’m pretty late to the party on this one, but I’ve finally started reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
My initial reaction can be summed up as:
Quietly, inexorably, corn is trying to kill you.
Seriously.
Mr. Pollan points out that modern agribusiness in America has labored mightily to increase crop yields of corn, and they’ve succeeded beyond our ancestor’s wildest imaginings. The result is a massive glut of corn that exceeds what people and livestock could normally eat.
The solution? Agribusiness proposes that people and livestock begin to eat abnormally.
What is surprising to me is how totally they have succeeded.
As was pointed out to me by my brother in law not too long ago: “Go ahead, try and avoid consuming a corn based product. It’s practically impossible in this country.”
The really jarring observation in the book (so far, I’m barely halfway through it) is the way Mr. Pollan turns the notion of the “French Paradox” upside down.
As in, “the French eat fatty food all the time, why are their rates for obesity and heart disease not on par with ours?”
Pollan points out that plenty of other countries illustrate this same characteristic, and pointedly says: “What is happening is more of an American paradox.”
Something is wrong with the way food is made in America. The idea that beef cattle are made to eat an unnatural diet of corn isn’t all that alarming – until you realize what this diet is doing to them, and that we are eating meat from these animals. BSE never made me very nervous, but Mr. Pollan definitely got my attention.
There is more of the book to go, and there is still room for Mr. Pollan to turn out to be another well-intended alarmist who is missing key facts, but I’m serious – if you haven’t read this book – go to a bookstore and read the first few chapters or download the free sample (PDF) and skip to the section on Industrial Corn.
You’ll freak. It’s The Jungle for our times.
2 comments:
I read that the rise of all this e.coli O1:H57 has arisen from change to corn-fed diet in cows. Corn, it seems, changes the nutrient contents and pH balance of their stomach/ intestines/etc to enable e.coli, and the particularly nasty strains in specific, more readily than a grass-fed diet.
Of course, the double-whammy here is that cows don't naturally tolerate grains and so they're fed a constant diet of antibiotics to keep them from dying while they're being fattened up on corn.
It's why I buy the grass-fed beef from the Pecatonica guys. At least I feel a little bit better about the beef I feed my family.
I especially love the fact that when it was pointed out to the cattle industry that they could lower the O1:H57 ecoli count by 80% by feeding their cows grass just for the last few weeks of their lives - they reacted as if it was the silliest idea they ever heard of.
"Feed cows grass? Are you serious??"
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