Book Reviews

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan
Penguin Press, 2006
450 pages, hardcover, $26.95
ISBN 1594200823

“What should we have for dinner?”

Opening the book with this seemingly innocent question, Michael Pollan then leads the reader through a journey of four very different meals that serve as templates for just about everything that could be right or wrong with what you might be having for dinner tonight.

How and what we eat, especially its variety and quantity, is what made man the dominant species on Earth. As omnivores we are supremely adaptable — we thrive on a greater variety of food over more of the planet than any other creature. Seeking the answer to Pollan’s question is what drove us out of the trees and caves, and if we continue to find inappropriate answers to the question, it will be what drives us back again.

Pollan’s four meals highlight the dilemma that we face; meal one, the modern industrial convenience meal, we immediately think of McDonald’s, but it could just as easily come from any of the drive-up, grab-and-go joints that cluster our major roads. For a good reason, 19 percent of America’s meals are eaten in a car, and the metaphor of the gas-powered meal goes further — the “burgers and fries” meal that Pollan’s family ate as they sped down the freeway required 1.3 gallons of oil to produce, 10 times the calories that the actual food provides!

Behind the post-Supersize Me convenience meal, Pollan reveals one supersized ingredient. Excepting water, 100 percent of the soda, 78 percent of the shake, 65 percent of the dressing, 56 percent of the chicken nuggets, 52 percent of the cheeseburger and 23 percent of the fries come form one raw ingredient, corn. Heavily subsidized and much of it genetically modified, if we are what we eat, we are becoming corn.

Gaining ground against industrial food is meal two, the modern organic meal. Even WalMart carries organic foods; every major food giant has its boutique labels. From Northwest Washington, Cascadian Farms, which started life as the radically alternative New Cascadian Survival and Reclamation Project, is now a subsidiary of food giant General Mills.

In order to gain entry to the contemporary kitchen, behind the image of the hippie farmer and the happy scratching hen, large scale organic farming had to bend a few rules and perceptions. The happy cow cartooned on the carton of Horizon Organic Milk — we imagine organic milk must come from happy cows grazing contentedly? But in truth Horizon, which controls over half the market, runs its cows in large-scale industrial dairies, no grass, just concrete and corn-based feed.

Pollan dubs this sleight of hand “Supermarket Pastoral:” that happy scratching organic hen lives cramped in a barracks-like building with 20,000 of her kin. The organic standards require that she have “access to the outdoors,” and indeed she does, a small door, open to a patch of grass only from week five onward in her seven-week life. By that time her habits and the food and water inside the shed make it unlikely she will choose to range free.

How far industrial organic has strayed from what the eager throngs at the Bellingham Farmer’s Market have come to expect might best be exemplified by the pending approval of “organic farmed salmon.” The horror, indeed.

To prove that all is not lost, Pollan’s third meal returns to the farm as one would like to imagine it. Crops, chickens, rabbits, cows, timber and grass, above all grass, are rotated and interwoven on Joel Salatin’s “Polyface Farm” in the Shenandoah Valley.

A self described “Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer,” Salatin and his extended family and crew work a complex 550 acres, work it hard, but restore and sustain it as they go, and so too Pollan’s and the reader’s faith in what organic food should be.

From a lesser writer’s pen, meal four would be self-indulgent slop, even poison. This is the meal Pollan sets out to make himself, completely. He shoots the pig, bakes the bread, hunts the mushrooms and picks the berries. It is a long and painstaking gathering of food and fact. On the way he dabbles in vegetarianism, to throw in stark relief to what point he, a Berkeley academic, should go if the tale of the omnivore’s meal is to be all it should.

The meal is impressive, everything raised, found, made and got by those at the table. The writer and his urban friends celebrate it, as they should, as an achievement, but this reader could not help the thought that such an authentic meal, in Whatcom County, might not be quite so unique as the author supposes.

“Eating,” said Wendell Berry, “is an agricultural act.” It is too a political, social, cultural and economic one. It is one act that we all share. In order to live, we must all eat. It is quite natural that most religious, and irreligious, celebrations involve food and drink.

Omnivorousness made us the creatures we are today, drove us from the caves, onto the plains and eventually into the cities; which meal we choose will determine where we go from here, or if we are to eat ourselves truly out of house and home. §

Gardening When it Counts

Growing Food in Hard Times
by Steve Solomon
New Society Publishers, 2006
360 pages, paper, $19.95
ISBN 0-86571-533-0

Reviewed by Helen Brandt

This is a book about how to grow your own vegetables and become more self-sufficient. Based on the author’s extensive first-hand experience and study, it is filled with practical advice from how to select tools and seed to how to compost and water the plants.

Solomon admits that using his approach requires “a fair bit of land” because he does not advocate intensive gardening. His thesis is that vegetables are healthier and require less attention when they are allotted plenty of space around each plant. One section describes how to remove sod and convert the lawn into a vegetable garden. A most surprising section is about buying seed. Solomon is something of an expert on the subject, having founded the successful Territorial Seed Company. His discussions of supermarket seed packets and “heirloom” seed are very enlightening.

Another section contains a detailed technical discussion of irrigation and sprinkling equipment. This could be especially useful for small organic farms and for homeowners with large gardens.

One limitation is that Solomon tends to think in terms of large spaces. The reality is that most people live in urban areas with small backyards and front yards. But many of his suggestions are useful even if you are tending a small vegetable patch next to your house. For example, did you know you should frequently sharpen your spade and hoe? Solomon occasionally indulges in speculation on topics such as evolution and on the effects of out-of-balance soil on health.

His list of easy-to-grow common vegetables is helpful for newcomers. Unique is his list of vegetables that grow in low to medium fertility soil, which is what many people discover they have. Some of his suggested vegetables can be a challenge in Whatcom county because it is typically not hot long enough in the summer for them to mature properly: tomatoes, okra and black-eyed peas.

Solomon suggests “fertigation” which is the procedure of soaking fresh manure in a bucket of water and irrigating the plants with the water. It probably should be used with caution and not applied around produce that is eaten uncooked such as lettuce and “salad greens.” Some strains of E. coli bacteria from cattle manure could propagate in the bucket of water and contaminate the produce.

Overall this book provides a wealth of valuable information for both experienced and novice gardeners. §