Omnivore’s Dilemma

Pollan, M. (2009). The omnivore's dilemma the secrets behind what you eat. New York, New York: The Penguin Group.

            I thought this book was really cool and informative. I had to read a book one time for a class about being a vegetarian, and the author just bashed on meat eaters the entire time. It was sort of offensive and made me feel horrible because I eat meat, but this book was far from it. Thank goodness. This book gives the history behind our food, in a very interesting way. I was clueless about the background of everything I ate. I would have not connecting it back to corn.  Almost EVERYTHING comes from corn. I also like how the book includes the origin of where the name “corn” came from. It was initially called maize. Students will learn this term most likely when they are taught about Native Americans and the English in their Social Studies class and will be able to see the relationship to this book.

            It is interesting how the author describes corn as “taking over America”. At first I thought it was so dumb, but then I read further and all of my surroundings probably came from corn. So yea, corn is taking over America. The book also goes into photosynthesis, and how it relates to our food. The diagrams are very helpful so that my students will be able to visualize what is coming in and going out of plants. Pollan does an excellent job with presenting all of this information into a way that is really easy to understand. I do not feel as if the book is “dumbed down” at all. I liked how he traced where the food came from on your plate to the industrial factories and then back to the animals and plants. Students need to know that animals aren’t just raised on a happy farm with a white picket fence. This is very misleading. I like to picture it that way, but this is far from what the animals’ experience. I want students to be knowledgeable about this issue, so that they can make the choice for themselves of whether to eat meat or not. Quite frankly, I think there needs to be a better way to treat the animals, but when people only care about making a profit, they won’t go through those measures.

            I thought the Turning Bombs Into Fertilizer chapter was mind blowing. From WWII, the government had so much ammonium nitrate that they decided to dump this surplus from the war onto farmland. The ammonium nitrate is the leftover bomb material. Why in the world would the government throw stuff that was used to kill people on to the fields of crops that we eat? It sounds pretty dangerous to me. Another mind blowing event was when I found out about how potatoes are grown. The pesticide used on potato crops called Monitor is so dangerous to the nervous system that field workers aren’t allowed to go into the field until five days after it has been sprayed, so why in the world would this be a good idea for us to eat? And then there is the other pesticide that kills any bug that bites into a potato. This pesticide is infused into the potato protecting it from prey, but then we are expected to eat this potato six months later after the pesticide has “worn off”. WHAT. This is very disturbing to me. The world is trying so hard to come up with very advanced ways of growing our food that they will introduce us to anything as long as it still brings in a profit for them. We are ingesting so much poison I would not be surprised if this was the reason why cancer has become very prominent during our lifetime. It is kind of scary at what will be invented next.

            I will definitely be making my students read this book in my classroom. I have learned so much from it, and I know that they will too. Especially with all of the fast food industries around town, maybe it will make students re-think their choice of their next meal. Childhood obesity is on the rise, and students need to learn about calories and food options. This book informs students without pointing fingers at specific individuals. I know after reading this it has made me want to make healthier choices for what I eat, and I even want to start back up the garden in my backyard at home. I want students to be informed of where their food comes from, and what it had to go through to end up on their dinner tables every night.