Fast and Slow Food

This morning I finished reading Michael Pollan's new book "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals." It was a feast on all levels. Pollan is maybe the best writer out there among the national journalists (he teaches journalism at Berkeley) and every page of this, his fourth book, offers a full course of style, humor, and first-rate reporting on a subject that's near and dear to us all: what we eat.

The title comes from the idea that we as humans (unlike cows or wolves) can eat practically everything, and therein lies our dilemma. Pollan follows the food chains and explores how something once as simple as eating has reached a place where "we need investigative journalists to tell us where our food comes from"

Pollan grounds his narrative in four personal mealsa drive-through of McDonald's with his family eaten in the car, a dinner he cooks entirely from ingredients purchased from the "big" or industrial organic movement (you know, mass market stuff like you buy in the new organic supermarkets), a "grown local/consumed local" chicken and corn dinner from a "grass farm" in Virginia, and finally a feast of wild boar and mushrooms hunted and foraged from the Northern California forests. It's a simple idea to hang a book on: consume four meals and then do what a journalist does bestback-track to the origins of every one of them. As Pollan puts it, "What AM I eating? And where did it come from?"

The McDonald's meal is the first in the book and (as you would guess) it's pretty disgusting what's really behind (and inside) the Cobb salad with Caesar dressing, the classic cheeseburger, the large fries, the Chicken McNuggets, even the super-sized Coke.

Pollan shows where food comes from if you take part (as almost all of us do) in any way in the industrial system of food production and distribution. He shows how our "Republic of Fat" came to be: It all starts with corn. We are "the corn people" Pollan says, since industrial corn (and the petro-chemicals used to grow it) is now the origin of almost everything processed we eat.

Michael Pollan wants to make the industrial farming and meat production process concrete, so he buys a calf and follows it from feed lot to box of steaks. We quickly see what a terrible price we have paid by letting the capitalist system drive our food production. And for Pollan seeing is believing: "What you see when you look is the cruelty" at the center of industrial "protein production."

But don't start feeling holy if you've decided Whole Foods or Earth Fare is your answer to this problem. In his "Big Organic" chapter Pollan shows clearly how complex the food landscape has now become in America. Organic food is an $11 billion industry, and because of this, it has become a place where consumers with plenty of disposable cash can easily fall for the "wordy labels, point-of-purchase brochures, and certification schemes" meant to convince us we are more noble if we buy our food from a low-light grocery with hardwood floors, rather than Bi-Lo.

"Big Organic" recounts, among others, the story of tracking down "Rosie the organic range-fed chicken" and discovers that, if you look behind the curtain, Rosie's life isn't a great deal different from those chickens processed by the factory poultry farms, even though she does get to nibble organic feed. Technically, Rosie is "free-range" as the colorful label claims. What this means though is that the doors to the shed she shares with 10,000 other "range-fed" chickens are left open about two weeks, and she's welcome to go outside (which she never does), so her 'free-range" lifestyle is really no better than "a two-week vacation option."

By far the best story in the book comes when Pollan describes a way of life called "grass farming" practiced by "Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer" Joe Salatin in the valley of the Shenandoah. Salatin moves his cows around in his pastures in small fenced enclosures and follows each move with his "egg mobile" and lets the chickens loose to do what chickens do. "The animals come and go," Pollan explains, "but the grasses, which directly or indirectly feed all the animals, abide." The beef and eggs Salatin gets are prized by both local food enthusiasts and the chefs in nearby Charlottesville. Grass farming is an intensive way of life, but quite rewarding and these chapters are deeply inspiring. The story of Polyface Farm makes me want to find this area's Joe Salatin and spend whatever it takes to eat from his pastures.

The conclusions Pollan comes to after eating four meals are practical. He know that we're not all going to buy our food from Joe Salatin, but he also hopes his readers will think twice the next time they eat two fast food meals in a row or purchase Publix broccoli brought to our table from far-away California by the petro-wonders of our contemporary industrial food network.

So, I know the summer's quickly drawing to a close and that valuable beach reading time is probably already past, but go out anyway and get a copy of "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Read it and think about it as you walk among the pickups pulled up to sell organic and local at the Farmer's Market next Saturday. Your own personal omnivore's dilemma will be right there in front of you.