The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Quoth Pollan’s website:
In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating.
The book weighs in at an overly long 411 pages, almost a third of which is a discussion of corn production. From there it meanders through feedlots, “industrial organic” farms, small organic farms, mushroom hunting, and wild pig hunting; including a huge section devoted to Pollan’s omphaloskeptical discussion of whether or not he should be a vegetarian.
Unfortunately I found it to be rather disappointing….
From the very start, I didn’t agree with his premise that it’s hard and stressful to decide what to eat and that the “cornucopia of the American supermarket has thrown us back on a bewildering food landscape where we once again have to worry that some of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us.” I just don’t think the majority of people (outside of Pollan’s California) really stress out about it. I know I don’t.
But the thing that bothered me about The Omnivore’s Dilemma is that, to me, it felt sloppy for being a nonfiction book. I barely made it into the first chapter before I came across this claim:
“Carbon is the most common element in our bodies — indeed, in all living things on earth.” p. 20
That didn’t sound quite right, so I looked it up. Indeed, humans are approximately 65% oxygen and 18% carbon by mass. Even if he meant “greatest number of atoms” or something similar, it still doesn’t work out. Converting to moles, a 100 lb. person would have roughly 3685 moles of oxygen atoms and 1361 moles of carbon atoms.
Nitpicking? Perhaps. But I came across more and more examples as I continued and actually started to keep a list of items to check. Another example:
“…which is probably why we don’t think of ourselves as big corn eaters. And yet each of us is personally responsible for consuming a ton of the stuff every year.” p. 85
A ton sure is a lot of corn, but is it true? Estimates for how much food the average American eats in a year vary from about 1400 [?] to 2200 [?] pounds per year, or about 4-6 pounds/day. If we eat 1 ton of corn per year, that means that almost 5.5 pounds per day of that is corn. Our diets are about 92% corn by weight? Somehow I doubt that.
The claim that bothered me the most, however, was the discussion of McDonald’s Chicken McNugget ingredients where Pollan claims:
“But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to “help preserve freshness.” According to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e., lighter fluid) … Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.” p. 113
TBHQ (tert-Butylhydroquinone, C10H14O2) is indeed used as an antioxidant for unsaturated vegetable oils, but to call it a form of butane (C4H10) is just silly. It’s a phenol with a butyl group, which is a far cry from “lighter fluid.” You might as well claim that table salt (sodium chloride) is a “form of deadly gas used in chemical warfare (i.e., chlorine).” I would imagine that even a high school chemistry student could tell you that a given molecule rarely exhibits the properties of it’s elemental constituents, and the same thing applies to organic chemistry as well.
As for the claim that as little as 5 grams of TBHQ can kill, that doesn’t seem to be true either. According to the food grade TBHQ MSDS from Eastman, the oral LD50 (rat) ranges from 931 to 1131 mg/kg. If you take the average American male of about 190 pounds, it would take almost 100 grams to be lethal in 50% of the cases. At best, Pollan’s claim is off by a factor of 20.
Again, nitpicking? Perhaps. But while one could claim these few examples are just small inaccuracies, it makes me question all of the information in the book. If the author is so careless in simple, easily fact-checked areas, how do I know he’s correct in the more difficult areas? Combine that with what I would call the whole “ban dihydrogen monoxide” style of the book, and I just wasn’t impressed.
I tried to like this book. I really did. But in the end, it just didn’t do much for me.
June 21st, 2007 at 8:37 pm
The ton of corn claim might hold water were it to mean me + all the animals I ate this year.
Both Pollan and Gladwell top my list of careless writers that people read anyways. I mean, when Edutainment gets facts blatantly wrong. its value to society zeroes out pretty quickly.
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Yeah, Pollan does that in various places throughout the book. For example, he might count corn-fed chicken or beef as being “corn consumed” by me. Quite lame IMHO.
If this is what Gladwell’s books are like, then his titles are getting crossed off my summer reading list. :)
July 10th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
If you consider the soldier who invades the country that has the oil that supplies the energy company that supplies the chemical company that supplies the seed company that supplies the seed corn that the farmer plants to sell to the synthetic food company that sells it to the soft drink company that sponsors the recruiting company that supplies the soldier…
we eat a ton of crap.
Where is the wet-mill in Iowa City that Pollan writes of in Chapter Five? I’ve lived here 5 years and I woulda smelt it by now! I think he means Cedar Rapids; this is of course irrelevant. We all breathe the same air, drink the same water.
Pollan raises good issues. I just wish he was more thorough.
(Hey maybe he is too much Thoreau).
August 14th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Interesting nitpicking. I think the point of the corn numbers was more along the lines of amount carbon we consume that was once corn, which I don’t think is lame. Whether or not there are health effects of eating a lot of corn carbon, the environmental effects of corn agriculture in the US are pretty bad.
Even if Pollan’s numbers aren’t calculated with much rigor, I think he explores interesting topics with eloquent and accessible prose, and raises legitimate issues (like how the reality of organic agriculture doesn’t always match the public perception). Even if suspect numbers cast doubt on the legitimacy of his larger claims, I felt the book was less an Ivory Tower edict on how to live and more a spotlight on some issues some us may not have been paying attention to.
Then again, I’m a Californian who eschews supermarkets, so I’m probably biased. Also, “omphaloskeptical” is both new and awesome to me. Thanks!
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:36 am
I am Italian, I didn’t finish yet to read the book, but at the same time I think that picking “technical imprecisions” even if softens the issue, does not change it. In Italy and especially where I lived, the issue of organic food is not a great deal. For us appears, at this moment, like what it is a “fake”. The sense is that if you do not have always corporation working to make money, and at any cost, you would not need to have issues about organic produce. In USA we eat too much, the food is even less expensive than in Italy, but you have to consider that usually here we have the bottom of the bottom, and the excellence of the excellence. I was use to a more leveled on the center food quality. The grass farm are not a discovery of the book, are what it was in reality a farm some decads ago. People were self sufficent, in summer the ate mostly vegetable from their garden, in winter meat and higher proteic animal meat or beans. I am trying to see the big picture of the book, and not the errors in valutation of quantities. Many times, when you write something non fictional it finish to appear too documentary and people do not focus on the problem, is like running water, and so the exceeding extravagant dangerous quantity described raise the bar of the popular attention.
The very low prices of meat, the high percentuage of fat people, are all issues that are present in the country that I live now. If somebody rise the bar and try to understand what is it happening, I think that it is jus right and due. The fact that all big companies, controll a lot of different business, and that from one day to the other tranform a philosophy, like the organic, in a big business, I do not think sounds good. Because at the end who gains money on this is not the people in general but a few at the highest point of the pyramid. And also, why shoul be philosophical rules be changed to be adapted to the world that not all people (democracy???) but a few, undoubtfully smart people, want to bend to their schopes??
One of the most eyes opening issue, is that in a country like the USA, where competition and meritocracy are the base, this rules are not respected and somebody gains money and power, with the indirect help of our taxes!!!??? As I see the food world, I work in restaurants, is like looking at the window and have a multicolor view, the problem is that a few of that colors are right and healty for you, but instead you are pushed to try and retry them all. It is not a good factor, especially if you look beyond the colors, there is always grey and black as their pillars. just this, wake up people let’s get back in control of ourselves…..and of how we fuel ourselves. Try to enjoy an extra night at home and cook something by yourself using basic ingredients… it is really the best way to control what you are eating…and it is as relaxating as a work out at the gym….!!!
thanks