HW#7: Reading Response

The Omnivore's Delemna-A Natural History of Four Meals By: Michael Pollan

Chapter 1: The Plant-Corn's Conquest
Precis:
The marketplace seems as though there are many food biodiversity, but in actuality most of these food originates from the same thing: corn. Corn is an unique plant that makes an extra carbon compound than other plants, providing humans the second most common element in our bodies. Corn also reproduces in a complex way that humans has helped in by taking one corn's pollen and dusting it on the silk of another corn. Humans have heavily inpacted the traits of corn by their intervention in sex arrangements, and made corn adaptable to their climate.

Gems:
"without the "fruitfulness" of Indian corn, the nineteenth-century English writer William Cobbett declared, the colonists would never have been able to build "a powerful nation."-page 26
"Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass; much of their protein comes from legumesl and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar. So that's us: processed corn, walking."-page 23

Thoughts:
1. What is NOT made out of corn? On page 19, the author says that more than a quarter of marketplace goods has corn in them...what's the three-fourths of the items?
2. Why is it that most people in today's society do not even seem to care where our food comes from?
3. Is the reason for high obesity rates today have a connection with these corn?

Chapter 2: The Farm
Precis:
Agriculture has changed so much over time: at first farmers in Iowa grew a variety of plants and animals, but now farmers have no choice but to grow corn for American Capitalism. Most farmers today are broke because everyone thought about planting the popular corn by government policies, except overproduction lead to a decline in prices. Also, ammonia nitrate (which was used in explosives during WWII)-is now used as fertilizer as an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Corn produces itself very easily, so places like Churdan are like ghost towns with no sign of people.

Gems:
"In corn's case, humans have labored mightily to free it from either constraint, even if that means going broke growing it, and consuming it just as fast as we possibly can." -page 56
"A farm family needs a certain amount of cash flow every year to support itself, and if the price of corn falls, the only way to stay even is to sell more corn....Yet the more bushels each farmer produces, the lower prices go, giving another turn to the perverse spiral of overproduction." -page 54

Thoughts:
1. Why can't farmers just revolt against the government? My mother made a remark that in Japan, farmers are free to grow whatever they want and can make a fair living-there are even rich farmers for planting rare plants and food.
2. Why does it seem as though in today's society-people really don't care about the issues surrounding them unless the gov't or professional says its a huge problem?
3. What would happen if lots farmers decide to quit and find other jobs?

Chapter 3: The Elevator
Precis:
Million leftovers of corn gets piled up in grain elevators, then dumped in a railroad car. Many types of corn is piled together in this mess, where quantity is valued more than quantity. Farmers are used in a system where the only way to earn a living is to produce more corn-which leads to even more of a decrease in prices. Even previous farm animals are fed corn for their meals.

Gems:
"What is much harder to see is that all this corn is also the product of government policies, which have done more than anything else to raise that mountain and shrink the prices of each bushel in it." -page 61
"Both companies declined to let me follow the corn river as it passes through their elevators, pipes, vats, tankers, freighters, feed-lots, mills and labratories on its complex and increasingly obscure path to our bodies." -Page 64

Thoughts:
1. It is ironic that companies that are involved in these corn productions (Cargill) do not let people learn the process of how our food is processed due to "food security." Dosn't this mean that the process of our foods is extremely unhealthy?
2. It was surprising that previous farm animals are now gathered and fed corn-a diet that is unnatural for them. Isn't this a major cause of animals getting sick?
3. How would things change if corn just stopped growing?

Chapter 4: The Feedlot-Making Meat (54,000 Kernels)
Précis:
CAFO’s converted America’s river of corn into feed-lots for gathered animals, (which causes several health/environmental problems) all because of the mountain of corn and their cheap calories. Cows were very healthy for being able to digest the grass we can’t into high protein-the only reason their diet changed was because eating grass took too long to reach slaughtering weight and to increase the protein in corn. Cows suffer from the unnatural diet of corn and the dirty environment of feed-lots.

Gems: “You are what you eat” is a truism hard to argue with, and yet it is, as a visit to a feedlot suggests, incomplete, for you are what what you eat eats, too. And what we are, or have become, is not just meat but number 2 corn and oil.”-page 84
But the use of antibiotics in feedlot cattle confounds this distinction. Here the drugs are plainly being used to treat sick animals, yet the animals probably wouldn’t be sick if not for the diet of grain we feed them.” -page 79

Thoughts:
1. I felt disgusted at the thought of these mistreatments towards cattle/cows, all for the purpose of profit and “efficiency.” Why can’t this be considered animal cruelty?
2. The sad reality is that even after reading where the food I eat comes from, I would still continue to eat the food that came from corn sprayed with fossil fuels and cows that aren’t supposed to be eating corn.
3. What is safe to eat then? Don’t humans need protein and some amount of starch?

Chapter 5: The Processing Plant-Making Complex Foods (18,000 Kernels)
Précis:
The corn that isn’t fed to the poor feed-lot animals are taken to “wet mills,” which breaks down corn in multiple parts to create infinite products science has figured to do. Corn has helped liberate ourselves from the restrictions and limitations of nature. Food industries are continuing to get people to buy or eat more corn by using cheap corn to create complicated food systems. Corn has helped industrialize what we eat.

Gems:
“When fake sugars and fake fats are joined by fake starches, the food industry will at long last have overcome the dilemma of a fixed stomach: whole meals you can eat as often or as much as you like, since this food will leave no trace. Meet the ultimate-utterly fantastic!-industrial eater.” -Page 99
“One of the truly odd things about the 10 billion bushels of corn harvested each year is how little of it we eat.” -page 85
“The primary difference between the industrial digestion of a corn and an animal’s is that in this case there is virtually no waste at the end of it.” -Page 90

Thoughts:
1. It’s disgusting to even imagine how corn is in almost everything we eat just because there are mountains of it and their price is so cheap.
2. Corn has ruined the flow of nature, because corn itself has made people dependent and greedy for this plant.
3. Is the government regulating these corn uses so that people can get sick?