The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Ethical treatment of the animals we turn into food What the American diet is doing to our health
What a great book! Michael Pollan explores the history of food that which is grown and that which is processed. How corn and wheat find their way into everything processed (food) or manufactured (products) in one of its many forms even into gasoline. His core premise is: “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” Soy is the third sister in the corn, wheat. Soy triad. These 3 ingredients are what are helping to make Americans’ waist bands increase, they are the evil that causes so many diseases in the American population costing billions in health care when if we would only go back to a more natural diet we could avoid many of the health care woes in America today (Heart Disease, Carroded Artery blockage, Diabetes, etc.). Pollan says these diseases could all be eradicated if the American public would only avoid processed foods with hidden starch/sugar and salt preservatives and eat only things that were once living things and not unidentifiable bits of sludge coated in pleasing to the tastebuds sweet or salty flavorings. He even cites how pet kibble comes out as a brown tasteless sludge before it is adulterated with colorings and fake flavors simulating lamb, fish, beef or poultry that give little change to the flavor of the sludge and along with the carefully produced marketing of brands and labels and jingles that are catchy and stick in our mind translating to dollars for the companies producing them. He talks about the horrible conditions of animals raised for food on the big industrial farms and how and why the corporate farms will not change their tactics its all about the money not the living (if you can call it that) breathing (in the ammonia of their urine and feces as they stand in their own filth through no fault of their own and are force fed diets their bodies were never meant to eat of corn, sometimes soy mixed in along with ground up dead animals from rendering plants in effect forcing these animals to become cannibals of their own species instead of being allowed time in the sun on grassland eating their natural foodstuffs and their physical make-ups aren’t fashioned to process the corn, rendered animal flesh and blood. This is where Mad Cow disease came from as beef animals force fed the concoctions strictly meant to put weight on them as they are forced to stand until they drop, cows kept perpetually pregnant to continue producing milk their calves either turned into veal or kept for their dairy production potential or slaughtered outright, Pigs having it no better, piglets getting their tails cut off with nothing to kill the pain and nothing to stop infection from the poor conditions they are maintained in. The chickens kept alive for 7 weeks fed the same cannibalistic load of corn, blood flesh mix along with steroids to produce extra large breasts that grow so fast the birds no longer retain the ability to stand. Americans ingest not only the animals brought up in these conditions but are also taking in the food that these animals are forced fed. It’s a wonder we don’t die faster from multitudinous causes given this toxic mix put on our plates everyday. Plants sprayed with pesticides we know not what. Americans die from more food related maladies than any other country. Statistics are proving that now the more fast food restaurants and the Western Diet is introduced into other cultures the more these countries are showing an increase weight and an increase in death statistics from the same top 5 diseases that are killing Americans. Michael Pollan decided to follow the food chain from beginning to end on both vegan and meat eating. He learns how to hunt both mushrooms with experts so as not to get poisoned and he learned how to hunt wild boar from a couple of chefs and one of their friends. He learned the proper preparation for wild mushrooms and how to kill, skin, clean and carve up the wild boar and cook it. He details his adventures along the way in lurid detail so not for the faint of heart. The reader has to read the book from an objective perspective and not from a compassionate one as many inhumane things happen to animals here. Excellently told, extremely informative. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who really wants to know the story behind the story. Well done. Cheers for Michael Pollan.
- Shirley J.
No comments:
Post a Comment