Download Exploring the Omnivore's Dilemma: A Personal Journey into Food Sources and Ethics - Prof. and more Quizzes World Religions in PDF only on Docsity!
HRS 190
Nov. 9, 2008 Word count: 1,
Reading Analysis of The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Michael Pollan has gotten past the idea of the pastoral to the idea of becoming a hunter
and gatherer, therefore eliminating the omnivore’s dilemma or at least give himself a better
understanding of what constitutes the dilemma itself. Indeed, Pollan realizes that not only do
omnivores have a dilemma, but also the vegetarians’ of this world may have a greater dilemma.
He decided to do an experiment and try to cook a meal using food that he grew, foraged, or
hunted himself, with a little (a lot) help from some friends. Inexperienced in hunting and
foraging for food, Pollan was unprepared for the outcomes and learns quite a bit about him and
the views of other hunters and foragers.
And this, I suppose, points to what I was really after in taking up hunting and gathering: to see what it’d be like to prepare and eat a meal in full consciousness of what was involved. I realized that this had been the ultimate destination of the journey I’d been on since traveling to an Iowa cornfield: to look as far into the food chains that support us as I could look, and recover the fundamental biological realities that the complexities of modern industrialized eating keep from our view (281).
Angelo Garro is the man who helps Pollan in his quest for foraging various mushrooms
and hunting wild pig for his meal. Pollan was surprised at what he had to endure to get his
hunting license, but getting the rifle was in comparison rather easy. As far as foraging for
mushrooms, that was a different story. This brought about a dilemma for Pollan; how do you
know which mushroom is good and which is poisonous?
My encounter with the chanterelle- or was it a false chanterelle?-put me in touch with one of the most elemental facts about human eating: It can be dangerous, and even when it isn’t dangerous, it is fraught. The blessing of the omnivore is that he can eat a great many different things in nature. The curse of the omnivore is that when
HRS 190
Nov. 9, 2008 Word count: 1,
Reading Analysis of The Omnivore’s Dilemma
it comes to figuring out which of those things are safe to eat, he’s pretty much on his own (287).
Pollan details how our bodies are equipped for eating meat and why we are omnivores.
Other animals, for example, the koala bear, who only eats one thing, eucalyptus trees. Humans
can eat a variety of foods and food types. This is attributed to our higher brainpower and the
sense of taste, whether it is sweet or bitter.
Disgust turns out to be another valuable tool for negotiating the omnivore’s dilemma. Through the emotion has long since attached itself to a great many objects having nothing to do with food, food is where and why it began, as the etymology of the word indicates. (It comes from the Middle French verb degrouster , to taste.) Rozen, who has written or coauthored several fascinating articles about disgust, defines it as the fear of incorporating offending substances into one’s body….”Disgust is intuitive microbiology” (292).
Pollan describes cooking to be one of the best tools that omnivores have come up with,
and stating that:
…we depend instead on the prodigious powers of recognition, memory, and communication that allow is to cook cassava or identify an edible mushroom and share that precious information. The same process of natural selection came up with both strategies: one just happens to rely on cognition, the other goes with the gut (294).
But, cooking our food eventually led to fast food and the dilemma we have now, obesity
and the need for dieting and the different fads that come with the need to watch our diet and
the human response of impatience.
HRS 190
Nov. 9, 2008 Word count: 1,
Reading Analysis of The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Now the next question is who and how can a person slaughter an animal? Perhaps one
should think as Joel Salatin, and believe that they do not have a soul as humans or as Pollan
feels in the next passage.
Religion, and ritual, has played a crucial part in this process. Native Americans and other hunter-gatherers give thanks to the animal for giving up its life so the eater might live. The practice sounds a little like saying grace, a ceremony hardly anyone bothers with anymore. In biblical times the rules governing ritual slaughter stipulated a rotation, so that no individual would have to kill animals every day, lest he become dulled to the gravity of the act. Many cultures have offered sacrificial animals to the gods, perhaps as a way to convince themselves it was the god’s appetite that demanded the slaughter, and not their own. In ancient Greece, the priests responsible for the slaughter (Priests! Now we give the job to migrant workers paid the minimum wage) would sprinkle holy water on the sacrificial animal’s head. The beast would promptly shake its head , and this was taken as a necessary sign of assent (331).
Pollan feels that we have taken out all the rituals regarding the slaughter of our meat.
Realizing this, he was prepared to try to slaughter his pig for his meal. This was quite a process
for Pollan, since he had never killed an animal before and never experienced the sharpening of
his senses for that brief time while in the woods. I believe he was almost embarrassed at the
feeling that overcame him after he shot the pig. He actually swelled up with pride at his
accomplishment. Dressing the pig led to disgust for Pollan. He would never eat the meat if he
had stayed near the smell of the entrails. Instead, he would take the picture of the event and he
was then able to look back on the event.
There it was, one of the food chains that have sustained life on earth for a million years made visible in a single frame, one uncluttered and most beautiful example of what is.
HRS 190
Nov. 9, 2008 Word count: 1,
Reading Analysis of The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Then, Pollan was able to go hunting for mushrooms in the Sierra Mountains. He also
explained about the social dos and don’ts when it comes to foraging these wonderful
mycorrhizal species. He also explained that some societies are mycophiles and some are
mycophobic, depending on where you lived. The phobias involving mushrooms stems from the
poisonous and hallucinogenic properties of some of the varieties. Pollan feels you must trust
someone who knows on a first hand basis the differences between the good and bad types.
Finally, Pollan was ready to prepare his meal of different foods he killed, planted, or
foraged. Angelo, of course being a chef, assisted him with his endeavor of the perfect meal. He
realized that this was a slow process and he could not do this every day.
But imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we’re eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in true accounting, it really cost. We could need any reminding that however we choose to feed ourselves, we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we’re eating is never anything more or less that the body of the world (411).
2. Evaluation:
Pollan makes great arguments for the humane slaughtering of animals for our use as
food. Although, as he pointed out, most people would rather not know where their food
actually came from and how it got to the supermarket. He was also very passionate in his
endeavors to try to make the best possible meal he could with what he had. The omnivore’s
