Summary Of The Omnivore's Dilemma By Michael Pollan

Caroline Bamberger

AP Environmental Science

Mr. Engelmann

8 August 2015

APES Summer Assignment: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Introduction- “Our National Eating Disorder”

The Omnivore’s Dilemma opens with Michael Pollan posing the question: “What should we have for dinner?”(1) He uses this question to demonstrate his belief that Americans are no longer able to make that decision for themselves. Instead, they must turn to experts to tell them what the best option is and journalists to uncover where it came from.

Pollan points out how in 2002, almost overnight, Americans developed a “carbophobia.” While previously, red meat had been the food to avoid, bread and pasta took over that roll with the sudden resurgence of the Atkins diet.

Research showed that it might not be fat that was making Americans fat, but rather the massive amounts of carbohydrates they consumed. That was enough to turn practically the entire country against them. In Pollan’s eyes, this rapid ability to change the diet of a nation as well as the need for government created food pyramids is due to the lack of culture surrounding food in America. This same phenomena is why America has a much larger obesity problem than European countries, which seemingly pay less attention to the healthiness of their meals. This lack of culture is also why the question of what to eat has become more complicated for Americans. Other than the basic guideline of avoiding toxic substances, Americans have nothing to help them choose from the vast amount of options available unlike those in countries with strong culinary traditions.
In order to try and set the story straight, Pollan decides to trace three different food chains existing in America. These branches, the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer, are represented by four different meals; a fast food meal, an organic meal from Whole Foods, an organic meal from a family farm, and a meal prepared from ingredients grown, gathered, or hunted by Pollan himself. In tracing these meals back to their origins, he aims to reveal what drives the flawed American food web and fix the disconnect between man and nature caused by processed food.

Part 1: “Industrial- Corn”
Chapter 1- “The Plant: Corn’s Conquest”
Chapter 1 of The Omnivore’s Dilemma focuses on the ubiquitous nature of corn in modern-day America. The chapter begins with a depiction of a common grocery store. Pollan marvels at the impressive, ever-increasing biodiversity evident in this setting. Moving away from the produce section, however, the contents and origins of the plethora of available foods becomes less and less clear. When you reach the processed foods like Twinkies and PopTarts, it becomes almost impossible to trace your meal back to a farm somewhere or to pinpoint exactly what it is you are eating to begin with.
Pollan also notes that despite the vast array of fruits and vegetables that always seem to greet you when you walk into the store, one species inconspicuously dominates the shelves. Corn. Corn is everywhere in supermarkets. Not just in physical form or in obvious places like corn chips and corn flakes, but in the chicken, beef, pork, and various other meat options that are raised on it and even in places you would never expect like the vegetable wax giving a healthy glow to other produce. Even the materials that make up the supermarket itself are partially made of corn.
It turns out that it is pretty simple to trace the source of the carbon in our bodies to the type of plants it originally came from, particularly for corn. Corn in a C-4 plant, meaning that it takes in carbon atoms in groups of four rather than groups of three like most plants. In addition, C-4 plants are less selective about the type of carbon they take in, so they contain significantly more carbon 13, a slightly heavier carbon isotope, than C-3 plants. This difference makes it easy to trace the diet of a person with a more carbon 13 in their body to corn, corn products, or corn-fed animals.
Americans turn out to have an extremely corn-based diet, even more so than Mexicans who sometimes consider themselves “corn people” and once worshipped corn as it was such a large factor in their lives. As early as the first settlers arrived in America, corn has been supporting Americans. It is the ideal crop because it can be used in many ways, as food, animal feed, and fuel to name a few, and took well to the various climates of the U.S. Just as we have become reliant on corn, however, corn has become reliant on us for survival. On its own, it cannot efficiently procreate due to the thick husk surrounding its seeds. Human intervention alone has allowed what began as a freak mutation to thrive and take over the American food chain.

Chapter 2- “The Farm”
In chapter 2, Pollan visits the farm of George Naylor, a struggling Iowan farmer.

In recent history, farming in America has changed dramatically, and Naylor’s farm is representative of many in the American Corn Belt. Though it began growing a variety of crops and keeping livestock too, Naylor now only plants corn and soybeans. In Naylor’s grandfather’s days, the farm fed the whole family with just enough left over for twelve others. Now, Naylor indirectly feeds an estimated 129 people, but this does not mean his farm is any more successful. In fact, Naylor’s farm cannot financially support his family.

Corn took over American farmlands at the end of World War II, when a new synthetic fertilizer was introduced and manufactured by former munitions factories. It allowed for the elimination of crop rotation, leading to the switch from family farms to the corn monoculture. Economically, this system seems to make more sense, but it destroyed the once sustainable, sun-driven fertility cycle. Now, farmers are trapped into making more and more corn by government policy. As the abundance of the crop causes prices to fall, farmers must plant even more in order to make ends meet, surviving off constantly decreasing government subsidies. What’s worse is that the New Deal system that allowed corn farmers to stay afloat has since been dismantled in an effort to lower food prices and increase production without considering the farmers

themselves.
Naylor manages to get by by holding on to his outdated tractor and farming equipment and holding out on switching over to genetically modified seeds. Unlike many of his neighbors, Naylor realized that the higher cost of the seeds is not covered by the added output. In his world, however, output is all that remains to boast about, considering that entire sweeping fields of corn are now genetically identical infertile hybrids.

Chapter 3- “The Elevator”
Pollan moves on from Naylor’s farm to the grain elevator in Farnhamville where he drops off his harvest each year. Seeing the massive amounts of corn piled outside the elevator as well as the kernels pushed into the ground all around him seems strange to Pollan, but he realizes that the endless rivers and mountains of corn before him are not like what you would see on a dinner table. This corn is inedible “number 2 field corn” destined for processing or use as animal feed. Pollan had planned to follow Naylor’s corn to its ultimate destination, but thanks to the invention of “commodity corn” in the 1850s this is no longer feasible.
Pollan also further discusses the economics of corn in America. Government subsidies keep corn farmers from going out of business, but they also ensure that farmers will keep producing more and more corn. Now, the question is what to do with all the surplus. This is how corn has become involved in nearly every part of life in America, from the dinner table to the gas station.
Two companies, Cargill and ADM, buy about a third of the corn grown in America, and are involved in nearly every step of its production and ultimate destination, whether it be as high fructose corn syrup or ethanol. Additionally, they have a hand in creating the policies that control them, allowing them to dictate America’s food supply. The secrecy of these companies is also why Pollan cannot follow Naylor’s corn directly; they will not grant him access to do that.

Chapter 4- “The Feedlot”
The next stop on Pollan’s journey is Poky Feeders, the feedlot in Kansas where the steer he purchased about a year prior is living out the rest of its short life before it is ultimately slaughtered and sold. These feedlots can no longer be considered farms or ranches. Instead, they are dubbed Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs. Cattle like Pollan’s steer 534 are a major consumer of commodity corn in America. Economically, this works out great. The cows consume a large amount of the ever abundant corn, allowing them to grow faster and cheaper than when eating grass and making beef affordable to the public. Unfortunately, this system has a number of ecological flaws. First of all, it creates a fertility problem on farms that once depended on manure for fertilizer. With no use, the leftover manure now pollutes the environment and poses health risks to livestock. Furthermore, cows are ruminants, meaning that their digestive systems are specially designed to break down grass. Feeding them corn presents a number of health risks like bloat and acidosis, so they must also consume daily doses of antibiotics. Additionally, the fat in cattle feed comes from beef tallow and the protein from other animals who get their protein from cows. Feeding any sort of cow to cows runs the risk of causing mad cow disease. These unhappy cows now run on an impressive amount of corn and ultimately fossil fuel, imposing a great environmental cost not factored into the cheapness of maintaining the feedlot cattle. Ultimately, Pollan leaves the feedlot having lost his appetite entirely.

Chapter 5- “The Processing Plant”
Despite the fact that America seems to be overflowing with corn, we only eat a small fraction of it. Counting whole corn, corn chips, corn tortillas, and cornbread, Americans eat less than a bushel per person each year. Thanks to the marvel of processing, however, each American is responsible for consuming a ton of corn annually. In large processing plants, corn is processed so that all of its parts can be taken advantage of. It is converted into an unrecognizable series of products including corn starch, high fructose corn syrup, and plastics; leaving behind nothing but dirty water. Consuming all of this corn requires an “industrial eater” and Americans are on their way to becoming just that. Companies like General Mills are constantly coming up with new and different ways to get Americans to eat more corn, crafting creative “food systems” that often seem more like medicine than actual foods and switching to corn sweeteners to save cost. They pack foods with as many nutrients and benefits as possible for the lowest possible cost to them and make a lot of money doing it. Unfortunately for the farmers that produce this corn, that money doesn’t ever make it back to them. In fact, farmers make only four cents per dollar charged on corn sweeteners whereas they make forty cents per dollar charged on whole products like eggs.

Chapter 6- “The Consumer”
Now that farmers are producing an extra 500 calories per person than they were during the Nixon Administration, thanks in large part to the overproduction of corn, companies must find creative ways to get Americans to eat more. The challenge is overcoming the fact that people can only consume a limited amount of food. Human consumption is simply inelastic. This principle doesn’t stop major corporations such as Coca Cola and McDonalds from trying. One clever solution is supersized servings. People will not buy a second order of fries because they do not want to look like gluttons, but they will happily purchase a larger single serving. Now, Americans are consuming far more processed foods than natural foods and are loading themselves with high fructose corn syrup at an unbelievable rate. Despite the health risks that this entails like the increased likelihood of getting Type 2 Diabetes, Americans keep on guzzling processed foods and high fructose corn syrup. This is because they are the most energy rich and affordable options. Ultimately, Pollan claims this issue will continue because “we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots.”(108) Otherwise, cheap corn will continue to dominate.

Chapter 7- “The Meal”
In chapter 7, Pollan culminates his journey through the American industrial food chain in a meal at McDonald’s. He and his family visit the fast food chain and each order a meal to eat in the car. Pollan is impressed by a number of things in this meal. First, he notes how himself along with his wife and son were each able to order a completely different meal. His wife’s salad, he notes, represents the token healthy meal that allows children to draw their parents in and prevents people from claiming the chain is completely unhealthy. More so, Pollan is impressed by the amount of corn represented in this meal. Everything in each item, save for the 100% beef patty, included at least some element of corn. In fact, forty-five out of the sixty menu options include corn, according to the nutrition facts pamphlet he picked up on his way out. On top of that, choosing to eat in the car meant that they were going through even more corn as the state mandates that 10% of gasoline is ethanol. In his head, Pollan figured that the amount of corn his family was consuming would more than fill the trunk of their car. Pollan also notes that much of this corn is used inefficiently. Because we feed it to livestock, we lose 90% of its energy, ultimately limiting the number of people that will benefit from it.
Pollan also notes the disconnect in this McDonald’s meal. When asked if his new all white meat McNuggets tasted more like chicken than before, Pollan’s son replied that it did not because it was a nugget, not chicken. Duh. There is no longer any sort of connection between the nugget and the actual chicken it came from because it is so processed. Additionally, he points out that McDonald’s is a machine designed to convert commodity corn to fast food and to draw people in with comfort food that is really nothing but a “signifier of comfort food.”(119)

Note: I am now completely repulsed by corn.

Part 2: “Pastoral- Grass”
Chapter 8- “All Flesh is Grass”
Part 2 of The Omnivore’s Dilemma begins with Pollan’s visit to Polyface, a farm run by Joel Salatin. This farm is vastly different from that of George Naylor in that it is maintained by animals and sustained by grass. The cows eat the grass and the chickens act as a sanitation crew, feeding off of the cows’ manure as well as some leftover grass. Although Salatin does not make any money off of the grass directly, it is the hero of the farm because it allows the system he carefully designed to work. Without it, the self-sustaining cycle would collapse. On his farm, nature and man coexist. It proves that man can benefit from nature without harming or disrupting it.
Salatin also raises an interesting point, saying that his farm is “beyond organic.” In his eyes, the word organic has been taken to mean something different in America. He finds fault in the industrial organic world which is dependent on farms more like Naylor’s than his own, and even sees the term as oxymoronic. While Pollan remains skeptical of this idea, he decides to see whether or not Salatin is right.

Chapter 9- “Big Organic”
Following up on his decision to search for truth in Salatin’s stance on Big Organic, Pollan pays a visit to his local Whole Foods. He compares it to a bookstore in that it is packed with what he calls grocery lit. Every word on a given label is designed to entice you into buying the product by giving you the sense of connection to earth that people seem to long for.
Whole Foods and similar chains struggle with finding a balance between the nature of “organic” foods and the logistics of mass-producing them. The supermarket must be able to provide food that people feel good about eating at an affordable price and be able to provide a wide variety year-round. Ultimately, this requires some sort of sacrifice. While this idea of Big Organic is not necessarily bad, the compromises made in order to ensure customer satisfaction compromise the integrity of the store’s message. Looking into some of his purchases, Pollan found that the lives of “free-range” chickens and “organic” cows are not much different than that of their non-organic counterparts.
According to Pollan, the organic-movement in America began with people calling for more unprocessed organic ingredients and whole grain based foods. Their ideas about agriculture were based on the book An Agricultural Testament by English agronomist Sir Albert Howard. An important figure to arise from this movement was Gene Kahn, founder of Cascadian farms. He was forced to sell a part of his farm to Welch’s, beginning his “corporate adventure.” Surprisingly, Kahn had a change of heart and despite selling out and becoming a part of the food industry, he does not regret his choice.
There are two distinct sides to the organic food industry, separated in the 1990s when the USDA defined guidelines for each. First there is Big Organic which is not too far off from conventional farms. Marketing industrial organic products as organic seems almost deceptive as they employ much of the same practices as conventional farms. On the other side is Small Organic. This category has much stricter guidelines and represents people like Joel Salatin who consider themselves beyond organic out of frustration with the term. In the end, even Pollan has a hard time the concept and wonders to himself if it is really all that much better.

Chapter 10- “Grass”
Chapter 10 returns to Joel Salatin’s farm to further discuss grass. When Salatin calls himself a grass farmer, he means that grass is the keystone species of the food chain of his farm. It links his animals to the solar energy that powers the food chain. Being a grass farmer is not as idyllic as it may seem, however. In order to sustain his farm, Salatin uses a multi-variable system to determine whether or not the pasture is ready for grazing. Salatin calls this complex system “postindustrial enterprise” while Pollan views it as the antithesis of the industrial agriculture he previously saw.
Salatin tells Pollan that they have to move the cows to another pasture. This worries him as he knows how much work it will take, but Salatin has designed a system to combat this. He uses temporary electric fences and the allure of a fresh area to graze to get his cattle to move on to the new pasture. Upon watching the grazing cattle, Pollan cannot seem to figure out why we abandoned this system. It is simply because raising cattle on cheap corn is easier, cheaper, and more reliable, making it more compatible with the industrial food system.

Chapter 11- “The Animals”
Pollan remains at Polyface to continue to immerse himself in farm life. He wakes up late (6 a.m.) and rushes to join the Salatins in the field to learn how the farm is operated. First up are the chickens. The chickens raised for meat production are kept in special movable pens. They are relocated every 24 hours in order to allow them to eat what is left over by the cows and help fertilize the soil. If the birds spend too long in any one area, the high nitrogen content of their poop will harm the soil. The hens Salatin keeps for eggs are a different story. They are kept in a structure like a covered wagon with hinged nesting boxes on the sides that Salatin calls the Eggmobile. Just like the broilers, the hens are rotated so as to mimic the natural pattern of birds of following and cleaning up after herbivores.
In addition to chickens, Salatin keeps rabbits, cows, and pigs. Salatin further utilizes the natural instincts of animals to maintain his farm. The rabbits live in the cleverly named Raken, a combination of chickens and rabbits. The rabbits live over a deep woodchip bedding in which the chickens hunt for earthworms. The cows live inside an open-faced barn in which their manure is allowed to compost. This saves money on the heating costs because the compost produces heat. Another benefit is that by spreading corn kernels over the compost, Salatin creates treats for the pigs that take over the barn in the spring. When the pigs search for the kernels, they aerate the compost; truly a win-win situation.
Pollan is perplexed by the complexity of the system in combination with the simple instinctive processes it relies on. He also questions the contrast between efficiency on industrial farms and beyond organic farms like Polyface. On industrial farms, the more variables that can be eliminated the better; the most efficient method of doing things is the simplest one. On the other hand, Salatin relies on complexity, but is also able to rule out things like antibiotics that industrial farms rely on. The reason there are not more farms like Salatin’s is simply because it is much more labor-intensive to maintain.

Chapter 12- “Slaughter”
Chapter 12 focuses on how broiler chickens are slaughtered, or “processed,” on Polyface. Pollan makes the bold choice to actually participate in the slaughter, but becomes anxious when shown how the chickens are herded into boxes and then placed in killing cones in order for their throats to be slit. With no time to hesitate, however, he gets to work and by the end of the day kills dozens of the birds. He is disturbed by how quickly he was able to get used to processing the broilers, but is comforted when customers begin to purchase the birds the next morning and he realizes that there was good reason for doing it.
Pollan finds it funny that Salatin’s way of doing things gives the USDA heart palpitations. In reality, the slaughtering in most factories is much less clean and humane. This is because Polyface’s customers are exposed to his methods while consumers do not see what goes on behind the closed doors of industrial slaughterhouses.

Chapter 13- “The Market”
Unsurprisingly, Pollan finds it much less difficult to follow the food from Polyface than the corn from George Naylor’s farm. He joins Salatin’s brother Art in delivering food to local restaurants. In addition, he meets Salatin’s marketer who is having trouble getting USDA approval on the small, humane slaughterhouse she built. To Pollan this just goes to show how strenuous it is for artisanal foodmakers to make it in this industrial world. Pollan also realizes that the stereotype of organic food being exclusive to the rich is untrue as Salatin distributes his food to a plethora of different people, all of whom are pretty average people. Both Salatin and Pollan disagree with the fact that organic food is thought of as expensive. In reality, industrialized food is actually just “irresponsibly priced,” and Americans are spending ten percent less of their incomes on food than in the fifties anyway. Furthermore, Americans essentially pay twice for industrial food due to government subsidies from taxpayer dollars.
Another core belief of Salatin’s is that the consumer should be directly connected to the producer. This is the healthiest option to him. Eating organic lowers the cost of healthcare because it diminishes certain health risks. Although this system is impractical for the majority of Americans who live in urban areas, he really just wants to see more options for people to free themselves from the industrial food chain.

Chapter 14- “The Meal”
Once again, it is time for Pollan to complete his navigation of an American food chain with a meal. Rather than bringing meat from Polyface across the country to his family, Pollan prepares a meal for some friends in the nearby. It consists of local wine, fresh corn, roasted chicken, and a chocolate soufflé made with eggs from Salatin’s hens. In his words, “everything about it tasted completely in character.”(271) This stark comparison to the fast food meal he and his family sampled earlier is due to the fact that he knows exactly where all the ingredients came from. While there definitely are downsides of eating organically such as the inability of certain products to be provided year-round, it is worth it to him. He sees knowing where your meat comes from and reaping the numerous health benefits that come with pasture-raised meat as a far better alternative to the comfort of not knowing.

Part 3: “Personal- The Forest”
Chapter 15- “The Forager”
Although Pollan is not at all an outdoorsman, he decides that he must follow one final food chain, that of the hunter-gatherer. His goal is to prepare a meal entirely from ingredients hunted, gathered, or grown by him. He also hopes to include plants, animals, fungi, and minerals. Pollan is well-aware of how strange this goal is considering the fact that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is not a viable way to live in the modern age due to the increasing amount of people and subsequent decreasing amount of available land and resources. Despite this fact, he feels that following through with the idea will reveal “something about who we are beneath the crust of our civilized, practical, grown-up lives”(280) which he could not find elsewhere. Ultimately, he hopes to learn more about the biological aspects of the food chain hidden by its industrialization. Because he is so admittedly inexperienced, Pollan brings in the outside help of Sicilian food-lover Angelo Garro. Garro instructs him to obtain a hunting license because of how shockingly easy it is to get a gun. Lastly, Pollan practices his foraging by picking a mushroom he believes to be a chanterelle, however, failing to trust himself, he throws it away.

Chapter 16- “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”
Chapter 16 draws on Pollan’s previous experience with the mushroom to explain the omnivore’s dilemma.

With such a variety of options from every climate and location, it is hard to determine what to eat and even what you can eat, a problem not faced by species like the koala which eat one thing almost exclusively. Humans have benefitted from this in many ways as well. For one thing, we evolved larger brains and better cognitive ability in order to determine and remember what is safe to eat. Humans also have a complex sense of taste that allows us to determine what foods have a high energy content (sweet things) and what may be poisonous (disgusting or bitter things). Since humans began to cook, we have expanded our options by broadening the spectrum of edible things. Cooking opens the door to otherwise inedible substances because it breaks things down and often neutralizes toxins. This has only worsened the omnivore’s dilemma as it adds more options to what you can eat, thereby making the question of what you should eat harder to answer. Food culture and traditions such as those heavily present in countries like Italy and France solve this problem by creating guidelines to help navigate this issue. In Pollan’s eyes, America’s issue is that it lacks any sort of food culture because it is so young and is made up of a wide variety of people. This lack of cultural guidance makes us susceptible to “national eating disorders” like fad diets. People are willing and able to rapidly

alienate any given food because of one magazine article. The food industry takes advantage of this weakness. Companies have the power dictate what we should eat and how we should eat it and continuously sell us new processed foods. Ultimately, this undermines what little we have to steady our eating like family dinners and taboos on snacking until Americans are back at mankind’s beginnings: utterly lost in the omnivore’s dilemma.

Chapter 17- “The Ethics of Eating Animals”
In chapter 17, Pollan delves into the ethics and morality of eating meat. He begins reading Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation and notes his surprisingly simple main argument: If humans cannot use higher intelligence to justify eating other humans, why should we be able to use it to justify eating animals? In Singer’s eyes, using this explanation marks you as a “speciesist.” Continuing to read the book, Pollan is increasingly impressed by how well Singer can refute his arguments. Singer points out that meat eaters are unable to truthfully determine whether or not the animals they eat are suffering because they are so consumed with trying to justify eating them. For this reason, Pollan decides to attempt to become a vegetarian, at least briefly.
Pollan quickly realizes that there is much more attached to being a vegetarian than he previously thought. Not eating meat causes big changes to certain traditions and social interactions. It becomes more difficult for him to eat dinner with friends and he can no longer enjoy his mother’s brisket at Passover (truly unthinkable). Additionally, he notes that eating meat is not just a preference, but an evolutionary predilection that he is robbing himself of.
By becoming a vegetarian, Pollan has opened the doors to analyzing the food industry’s treatment of animals without bias. While we typically don’t think of animals as capable of suffering, only pain, he agrees that conditions on industrial feedlots may cross that line. These operations prevent animals from acting on any of their natural instincts, arguably causing them to suffer. Domesticated animals do depend on humans for survival, so it is illogical to say that they would all be better off without us. Pollan points out that the poor treatment of these animals is unnecessary. On farms like Polyface, a happy medium exists where animals are allowed to exhibit natural tendencies and live a happy life until they are humanely slaughtered. Furthermore, the animal rights movement has a hard time translating to rural life because it imagines a world in which animals do not pose any threat to humans. His final argument is that even vegans harm animals in obtaining their foods thanks to the use of pesticides and grain combines. Ultimately, a grass-fed steak is probably the meal that harms the least animals.
The way Pollan sees it, the most ethical option may be to eat animals from Polyface and other humane and sustainable farms like it. He begins to favor this path to remaining a vegetarian. Before he can make the choice, he tracks down and consults Singer. He agrees that the principle of eating animals is not the problem, instead it is the unethical way we do it. With this in mind, Pollan goes through with the switch but wonders if Singer’s statement rings true with regards to the industrial food industry. He wants to expand his opinion on the matter by watch the slaughter of the steer he bought previously, but the meat company will not allow it. Instead, Temple Grandin, the designer of the ramp and killing machinery used by the National Beef Plant, explains to him how it is done. While the system was designed to be humane, it does have an unsettlingly high margin for error. For this reason, Pollan revisits his idea that kill floors have glass walls, granting Americans the necessary “right to look.”

Chapter 18- “Hunting”
Pollan has finally reached the most difficult portion of preparing his hunter-gatherer meal: hunting and killing and animal. He sets out on a mission with Angelo Garro and a few others to find a wild pig. Pollan immediately notices how surreal hunting is and how different it feels to walking in the forest without a gun. He is excited by the sensation of heightened senses, comparing it to the sensation caused by marijuana. He also feels as though it appears much different from the inside perspective than the outside.
On his first expedition, Pollan is unable to kill anything himself. He considers using the pig killed by another member of the group for his meal but realizes that this would be a cop-out and he must do it himself. On their next outing, Pollan has less trouble and is able to successfully hunt a wild pig. He is instantly shocked by his emotional reaction. Rather than feeling any guilt, Pollan feels grateful and happy. This changes as soon as he and Angelo begin dressing the pig. First, he is overcome by disgust due mostly to seeing and smelling the dead pig’s guts but also to facing the “reality of our own animal nature.”(357) Later, he feels shame and a strange sense of detachment upon seeing a picture of himself gloating over the kill. He is left wondering which perspective of the situation is better: the guiltiness he feels at the photo or the joy he felt in it. He realizes that it was better for him to have faced the reality of killing an animal despite how uncomfortable it made him. Hunting his own dinner was vital as it gave him a new appreciation of the meal and of eating meat in general.

Chapter 19- “The Fungi”
The next phase in the preparation of Pollan’s hunter-gatherer meal is finding mushrooms for the fungi part of the meal. Despite his experience gardening, he does not know how or where to find the right mushrooms as evidenced by his earlier experience with the chanterelle. Joined first by Garro and later by another group of people, Pollan heads into the forest in search of chanterelles and morels. He is shocked by how difficult it is for him to find the right mushrooms. While chanterelles do have bright yellow caps, they are often hidden by leaves making them difficult for him to spot. Garro, on the other hand, has little difficulty as Pollan continues to struggle. At the end of the excursion, Pollan races home to cook them, feeling much more comfortable about it than when he previously found what he now determined was a chanterelle. Pollan notes this willingness to follow the lead of an individual that has eaten something and survived as a common feature of omnivores. Pollan also describes the mushrooms as “hinges in nature” turning towards death and then life as they convert decomposing plant matter into food for themselves.

Chapter 20- “The Perfect Meal”
The final chapter of The Omnivore’s Dilemma details the meal Pollan prepared from the ingredients he hunted, grew, and gathered and serves to sum up the book. Pollan invites some of the friends who acted as guides for him over and begins to draft his menu. He decides on serving salad, wild pig, bread made using wild yeast, fava bean toasts, pasta with morels, salami from Garro, and a cherry galette. He also reveals that he had to break his original rules of hunting, growing, or foraging all ingredients himself, spending no money, and preparing the meal alone. Two examples of this are that the salt he collected himself tasted too awful to serve, and Garro was responsible for some ingredients. Then, he spends a day hectically cooking for what he realizes will be a tough crowd of food connoisseurs. The meal goes better than expected, but Pollan regrets not going beyond expressing gratitude for the people and food in saying grace. He does realize, however, that this was an unspoken form of saying grace acknowledged just by the fact that he gathered the people and put a great deal of effort into cooking the meal. Pollan admits that this hunted, gathered, and foraged meal is not sustainable nor is it feasible for most families. Instead, he suggests meals like this be prepared occasionally as a way of reminding people what goes into the food they take for granted. He draws a connection to the totally opposite meal he and his family enjoyed earlier from McDonald’s, saying that it too can teach us a lesson about the different ways we can use the world. Pollan closes the book with the hope that Americans will change the way they eat by answering “What it is we’re eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost.” (411)