(It is always my goal to read 12 new books a year – one a month, if possible. So, I thought it would motivate me even more to write reviews of each one. I meant to post this in January, but it got so long and involved, that I kept having to leave it in “draft” form and come back to it periodically. February’s book is read as well, but not reviewed. I can’t wait to tell you about it though – we’ll see when that happens!)

Isn’t that how you learned the space notes for the F clef in piano lessons?

All Cows Eat Grass

Turns out it’s not true. Beef cows in America don’t eat grass, they eat corn.

Investigative journalist, Michael Pollan reveals this in his recent book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. With fascination I consumed this book during our recent stay in Texas. Food is a big deal in our house. Not only because of having intolerances, but also because simply feeding everyone is such an ongoing effort. 7 breakfasts, lunches, and dinners a week, and countless snacks, food for trips, food for guests, food for church, food for the road, food for the future, shopping for food, cooking the food, cleaning up the food, etc. So, why was I reading a book about food on vacation? The truth is, I couldn’t get enough. It was quite an education in farming, economy, politics, the food industry, and the history of our eating habits.
What Pollan does is partake in 4 different meals. For each one he traces all of the ingredients back to their sources. His first meal is probably the most unsettling. It is a fast food meal from, where else – McDonald’s. Now, I’d already been completely horrified while watching Supersize Me last year, so I knew that the verdict on this meal probably wouldn’t be glowing. Prior to eating this meal with his family, he spent time on a corn farm in Iowa. These 1000’s of acres of corn, he referred to as a monoculture – as opposed to the polyculture of the farmyard with its vegetables, chickens, and cows. Much of the discussion with this farmer had to do with the falling price of corn, the reasoning behind continuing to plant it, and the answers being found in the government’s willingness to subsidize it year after year. Another place Pollan spent time was on a cattle feed lot. He went there to see the living conditions of a young steer he had purchased for the purpose of following it from farm to feedlot to table. What does the feedlot have to do with corn farming? Well, that’s where most of the corn ends up – in cattle feed. By eating corn, the beef industry has shortened the time it takes for a cow to reach a good weight for slaughter. What took 4-5 years decades ago can today be accomplished in about 14 months. Problem is, cattle aren’t designed to eat corn. Back to piano lessons: All Cows (should) Eat Grass. But it’s cheap feed, so they pump in all kinds of antibiotics, enabling the rumen and liver of the cow to tolerate it. The feedlot vet’s answer to the question about returning the cows to grass and space: “I wouldn’t have a job.”

The meal at McDonald’s illustrates our country’s unhealthy addiction to and dependence on corn. Of the 38 ingredients (yes, 38!) in a Chicken McNugget, thirteen of them are derived from corn. Things like modified food starch, corn flour, dextrose, and hydrogenated corn oil. And this is only the beginning! The 32 oz. soda contains 86 grams of high fructose corn syrup as does the Paul Newman’s salad dressing, and the “flavor solution” injected into the chicken that tops the salad. Do you know what corn syrup does to your liver and kidneys?

“Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.” p. 108

All ingredients for his next meal come from a shopping trip to Whole Foods. “Supermarket Pastoral” is the term Pollan uses for the literary genre found on all packaging of products at Whole Foods – one in which “farm animals live much as they did in the books we read as children.” His all-organic meal consisted of a whole chicken, vegetables including salad, potatoes, kale and asparagus, vanilla ice cream, and fresh blackberries. He then takes the reader with him on a tour of the so-called organic farms from whence they come. His quest is to determine whether organic is truly that – food grown without pesticides and growth hormones, is grass fed and cage free, and actually tastes better and provides more nutrients. His findings are somewhat disheartening for the health and politic conscious Whole Foods shopper. This is mostly due to the fact that the demand for organic food has forced most companies into an industrial model. Earthbound Farm, where the bagged salad came from, began as a roadside farm stand, but as word caught on, and they were approached by companies like Costco, Albertson’s and Wal-Mart, they knew “their days of washing lettuce in the living room and selling at the Monterrey Farmer’s Market were over.” They now operate from over 25,000 acres of farmland in California, pack 2.5 million pounds of lettuce per week in a 200,000 square foot packing facility kept at 36 degrees Fahrenheit around the clock. The fuel required to keep up this type of volume and then truck it to grocery stores across the nation is noteworthy: 57 calories of fossil fuel for 1 calorie of food. The fossil fuel issue comes up again when considering that the asparagus came from Argentina and the blackberries from Mexico.

The organic whole chicken came from Petaluma Farm in California. Here, 20,000 chickens per shed are raised for niche markets: organic, kosher, and Asian. Because the demand for these markets has increased so dramatically (the fastest growing area of the food economy – an $11 billion industry) they, too, have had to industrialize. This means lots of chickens housed together but with “access to the outdoors” per federal rules. Since they are not given antibiotics, the risk of infection is great, so the farmers hope that the chickens don’t actually use the small door that gives them access to grass – “Seldom if ever stepped upon, the chicken house lawn is scrupulously maintained nevertheless, to honor an ideal nobody wants to admit has by now become something of a joke, an empty pastoral conceit.”

So is organic really better? Turns out the answer is yes nutritionally, but possibly no, if organic’s definition in any way includes the idea of a truly natural, seasonal, and local setting.

The third meal that Pollan partakes of was the most fascinating and appealing to me. All components of this meal came from Polyface Farm, where the author actually spent a grueling week baling hay among other unpleasant chores. The farmer, Joel Salatin describes himself as a Christian libertarian, environmentalist. He and his wife homeschooled their children and have “opted out” in his words on industrial everything – especially government. He describes many of his customers at the farm as those who have also “opted out.” His intentions in farming are to stay within God’s design for the land and the animals – “The way I produce a chicken is an extension of my worldview,” says Salatin. He refers to himself as a grass farmer, though he raises cows, chickens, pigs, and vegetables. Grass, though, is the most important commodity on his farm, because it is what the animals eat. The cows eat grass which is what they are designed to eat. Therefore they need no antibiotics and other additives to help them digest a cheap form of feed. The chickens come behind and not only eat the grass, but the larvae, insects, and other substances that give the chickens the proper vitamins and minerals for producing quality eggs and meat. Salatin even constructed a type of “chicken-mobile” – a movable coop, so they can be “free range” yet, monitored. Manure from the cows plus the chicken droppings provide a rich fertilizer for, you guessed it – more grass. Salatin sells his meat and produce locally to residents and restaurants. Chefs in the area are willing to pay extra for the eggs and other produce because of the quality – both taste and texture. Pollan experiences every part of the life of the local and organic farm – even participates in the regularly scheduled slaughtering of chickens, for which people drive from miles around to purchase these delectable and truly organic birds. (He stays under the federal radar here by selling them immediately after butchering, and unpackaged.) Pollan buys a chicken, and other farm produce to create a meal for friends in the area. Upon finishing the meal, all agreed that food never tasted quite so much like food! ( I’m sold – so, guess what the Krumrey children may be getting for Easter this month? Baby chicks and fresh eggs for the coming years!)

Michael Pollan’s final meal is one foraged locally and by himself. He does enlist the help of some acquaintances and food foraging experts, but strives to forage an entire meal with his own two hands. The main course is the first challenge – wild pig. On two separate jaunts, he hunts for the creatures, finally shooting one on the second day’s attempt. He describes his experience, both emotional and physical in great detail – “Walking with a loaded rifle in an unfamiliar forest bristling with the signs of your prey is thrilling. It embarrasses me to write that, but it is true.” In this final section of the book, Pollan also discusses the ethics of both hunting and eating animals. For many pages, I thought he might conclude that vegetarianism is the only way to go, but he doesn’t. After discussing many of the finer points and arguments of the animal rights movement, he then counters those with evidences that the very existence of some animals is dependent on their being eaten – especially domesticated animals, who, for the record became domesticated through an evolutionary process in which they discovered they thrived better coexisting with and being eaten by people. Pollan writes, “If our concern is for the health of nature – rather than, say, the internal consistency of our moral code or the condition of our souls – then eating animals may sometimes be the most ethical thing to do.”

The second most important ingredient of this meal was fungi in the form of wild mushrooms. Here, too, he calls upon experts out of fear of eating the poisonous variety, which can mimmick the edible variety. It was so interesting to me to find out that mushroom foraging is such a secretive and lucrative niche. Pollan describes the unwritten rules and vocabulary of the trade which include being very guarded about the location of your mushroom discoveries – even using GPS to track locations and altitudes. He spends a long day foraging morels in Eldorado National Forest with two other men who forage and sell to restaurants as a hobby and side job. Morels grow most plentifully in burned pine forests, and the men return covered in dirt, but with a crate full of morels which a restaurant would purchase for upwards of $20 per pound.

The final and foraged menu consisted of boar pate’, fettucini with morels, leg and loin of pig, bread made with wild yeast, salad, cherry galette and more. It was quite an undertaking, as one of the author’s self -imposed rules was that he would gather and cook the entire meal himself. His guests included those who helped him in his foraging efforts. Summing up this final meal he states,

“Perhaps the perfect meal is one that’s been fully paid for, that leaves no debt outstanding. This is almost impossible to ever do, which is why I said there was nothing very realistic or applicable about this meal. But as a sometimes thing, as a kind of ritual, a meal that is eaten in full consciousness of what it took to make it is worth preparing every now and again, if only as a way to remind us of the true costs of the things we take for granted.” p. 409

Michael Pollan, in the end, makes no final judgment on how we should eat. I thought I might be the only one who wanted a final verdict, but evidently not. He was asked his opinion so often after writing The Omnivore’s Dilemma, that he’s now written book called In Defense of Food. In it you can read more about his recommendations which follow this simple advice: “Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly Plants” I have not read it, but enjoyed this one so much, that I may have to!