Food and Me, take two!

This personal essay has really helped me look deeper into the questions this course has brought up.  I have been reading the book The Omnivore's Dilemma and this book alone has had me thinking so much and asking myself so many questions, however in class discussion I find myself thinking of new questions every time we meet.  Due to all of these questions and different topics I have found this essay to be sort of difficult to write.  I have so many different ideas and ways I want to go with it that I feel as if it is becoming a complete ramble.  Although I am not used to writing ramble type of papers, because I usually write research papers and normally on pretty boring material, I think that for this assignment I will allow myself to ramble.  I'm becoming okay with rambling to an extent because when I consider the heading "food and me" my mind simply races now.  At the beginning of this course, especially our first blog post, I could only think of about two things to relate food to myself and my relationship with food, however now my eyes have been opened and I have read, heard, and seen so many different aspects of life that are affected by food.  
I think the main focus of my essay is addressing the concern I have with the food industry and what can be done to change some of the awful things that are happening, such as to the farmers, at slaughterhouses, and even at grocery stores.  I have really pondered Michael Pollan's question "What should we have for dinner?" and I have found not even a single answer but many theories leading to answers and more that lead to more questions similar to his.   

There is so much more I want to learn about the food industry and what we are putting in our bodies, I really believe that this is one of the most important topics I have ever had covered in a course before.  Not only is food something we need to survive, but on top of that it amazes me how it affects many other aspects of our lives such as the economy, the need for new vaccines because new bacteria is being introduced through foods, the environment which is being destroyed by these corporations, and even my future career as a dentist because what we eat affects our teeth and what can affect our teeth can certainly affect other parts of our bodies!

As you can see, I will probably ramble, it's too difficult to choose only one aspect only to discuss.  But since this is a personal essay and my personal mind is racing with

thoughts about this topic I think my ramble will be okay and hopefully it will really express everything that is on my mind now that I have learned so much.

 

Food Inc.

I chose to watch the movie Food Inc. this week and I cannot believe some of the information that I learned during this film.  We spoke in class on Wednesday about how some companies can "own" the crops that they are selling to the farmers and I think this was one of the most interesting things I took from the film.  When I say that they own the crops, what I mean is that even once the farmers have purchased the seeds and grown them they are still under ownership of the companies that have genetically modified them to be the type of seeds that they are.  But what I found the most interesting from this film is that even if the farmer chooses not to purchase a crop from a company, such as Monsanto, they are basically doomed because once their neighbors plant the crops and the pollen is spread, the non-purchasing farmers own crops are contaminated with the genetically modified Monsanto pollen and then those crops are considered property of Monsanto.  This can really affect the farmers because this is now considered stealing in a way and Monsanto can have them lose their farms, the farms they barely really own anyway.  

On another note, the film really brings into perspective how the food industry is all about money.  As most industries are anyway, however it is kind of scary that an industry that we cannot hide from or shun away has so much power and all they care about is getting more and more food out for higher prices.  This movie illustrates however, that we can try to change this.  We certainly cannot hide but we can try our best to be the change we want to see.  After seeing this film, it makes me realize that if something is so bothersome to me, which the food industry has certainly become, I need to do what I personally can to change it.  It may not seem like what one person does will make a difference however that is how change starts, one person standing up for what they believe and the rest will soon follow if it is something worthwhile enough, which I would say our health and safety is.  

The Dilemma Persists

Before coming even close to being able to write this blog post, I faced my own dilemma, ironically.  I have been so intrigued by this book that I could not decide whether to read on another 100 pages or to skip to the third and final section of the book which sounded very interesting.  Since I desired to read the whole book I chose to move on to the next one-hundred pages, however this was just taking so long and the final section just kept grabbing my eye so last minute I started reading the end.  Anyway, I’m glad I did for it has been a much quicker read and very, very interesting.  

First of all, the final section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma is called Personal: The Forest and as the title suggests it is personal to the author.  In this section Michael Pollan decides to take his meal into his own hands, literally hunting and gathering all items of his meal himself.  However, he quickly realizes that although he desires to take on this task, it is somewhat unrealistic because he does not have any background in hunting, never even having shot a firearm!  Also, ever since he was young he steered away from gathering plants for food because his mom had always made him aware of how dangerous wild plants could potentially be to someone.  With this said, Pollan decided to find someone who would be able to help him on this journey of preparing his own meal, which was a good idea, for Pollan’s initial knowledge of the natural foods was much like my own, not very extensive.  However, the experiences he was soon to face and research about brought him great knowledge of what the natural environment had to offer and why.  

Pollan describes in the beginning of this third section some of what lies behind the phrase ‘the omnivore’s dilemma’, he writes about the differences between animals who eat different things and the correlation between the size of the brain and stomach.  One part I found very interesting in this chapter was about the sensory and mental tools omnivores have developed and how these tools, specifically cooking, are thought to be the reason for the increase of the hominid brain 1.9 million years ago.  He describes also, how taste is an important tool to the omnivore because we are predisposed to have certain feelings about certain tastes.  Sweets, for example, tend to be a taste that most of us enjoy, the reasoning is far more extensive than what I would have ever thought.  I always thought I liked chocolate because it tasted good, I never considered why it tasted good, however now I know that sweet flavors signify sugar which signifies glucose, which is a very important factor to our brains.  Glucose is the form of energy that the brain uses and to have such a craving for sweets, as humans, it shows how important brain energy is for us.  

In the following chapters Pollan discusses the ethics of eating animals and how this led him to become a temporary vegetarian and the dilemma’s that comes along with that life style as well.  Further through the pages, he writes about the day 534’s, the steer he had been paying for to be raised and slaughtered, life would end and what that might hold for him.  Finally, I reached the part where Pollan entered the forest and began to hunt.  This was a very intriguing section of the book, for I come from an area where hunting is all that is spoken about around November 15th and to read about someones first experience is very interesting.  

Overall, where I left off in this book has me on the edge of my seat and ready to finish it up, including the middle section I unfortunately skipped for the time being, and also has me thinking a lot about what I eat and if I would like to change of that.  Even, perhaps, attempt to experience as Pollan did gathering a meal of my own...  We shall see.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan is a pretty well known book, so I have come to learn.  I personally had not heard of this book until ENGL 1100 however I am starting to realize why so many other folks have heard about it.  This book brings together a lot of the components of our everyday diet, starting with where most of our food products come from.  
Corn.  This is the starting material if not the main component of what we eat on a regular basis.  Pollan goes into great detail about corn and where it comes from and how it has become such a huge part of our diets.  He explains how corn is in more than a quarter of the forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket.  From the coating on our produce to part of what makes up a Twinkie, we are virtually always eating corn.  The Europeans who colonized America considered themselves wheat people and most American's probably would still if they had to choose, Pollan explains, however we are now truly corn people seeing as how it primarily makes up most of our diet.  It is actually very impressive how corn, a tropical grass, has taken over not just our diets, but our land too.  
Pollan starts this book discussing how people who eat both meat and plants, also known as omnivore's, face a difficult decision on a regular basis.  This decision that we all have to make is really as simple as the question, what should I have for dinner tonight?  The answer really is not as simple as deciding that it's pizza night so let's just go with that, but it boils down to what type of food, not just what kind...  Should we go with the organic route or not, but what does organic really entail anyway?  Does it mean there are no added hormones or does it just mean that there is nothing immediately added?  These are only a few of the questions that could arise when attempting to determine what route to take for the type of food you might like to enjoy.  Personally, I have no idea what route to take anymore...  I like to try to eat healthy with the occasional treat but then I find myself wondering, is the power food asparagus really as healthy as I think it is or are there so many chemicals added during growth that it just cancels out the healthy.  The way I look at it is that eating healthy doesn't just mean eating foods that will keep you thin, but being able to have food that won't end up giving us long term problems in the future.  Will we ever really know what we are eating?

I always look forward to dinner time.

Growing up I always looked forward to dinner time because my mom always made something good for the family.  Dinner time always came around 6:00 and was usually something everyone enjoyed.  Every so often we would go out to dinner, that came in waves though.  I remember at one point in my life my parents and I would go out to eat dinner as often as every other week.  Also, for a long period, Friday nights were pizza nights.  The only problem with this dinner was that we all liked different pizza places, however we would always come to a middle ground or take turns every other week.  Regardless of what was for dinner, it was always something to look forward to as I was growing up.

Then I went away to college, this was when that all changed.  No longer was I coming home or downstairs to my moms home cooked meals, but I was going to the caf to have, well I never really knew, whatever it was that they put on the menu that night.  I dreaded the caf and the strange food they offered at dinner time.  Breakfast wasn’t so bad, I was able to have a bagel or cereal and lunch I would make a sandwich, but dinner, dinner was not a time I enjoyed there.  The hot meals they offered always made me cringe because I really didn’t know what meat was being served or how long some of the food had been out for, and then there was the day that I found a bone in my chicken strip and decided to call it quits after that and made sandwiches for lunch and dinner the rest of the year. 

When I finally left the dorms and moved into my own apartment I was excited to finally buy and cook for myself!  However I didn’t realize all that went into cooking a real meal and I ended up making a lot of pizza rolls my sophomore year, which wasn’t much better than the caf...  It took until the end of my junior year to finally start really cooking.  Sure I would make nice meals before when people were visiting and special occasions but never just for myself.

When I did start really cooking I realized how great it felt, not only to b able to eat and enjoy something I made, but to learn new ways to work with different foods, to find out new foods I never knew I liked and even things I never knew existed!  The best of all was the day I decided to attempt to cook my favorite meal from my favorite restaurant.  It was Cajun chicken tortellini.  I googled the recipe, mostly under assumption I would be buying some Cajun chicken and adding some Alfredo sauce with some seasoning.  I was wrong.  The whole recipe was from scratch and I didn’t even understand half of the directions.  I read through and found myself wondering, what the heck does ‘deglaze the pan with white wine’ even mean?!  I was determined to make this dinner though, so I went to the store with my recipe, along with many other questions and unknown ingredients, and searched for what I needed.  

It ended up taking me quite some time to cook this desired meal and I was afraid to try it when it was served up, but to my surprise it turned out perfect, better actually.  The meal I made was more delicious than when I order it at the restaurant.  I don’t know if this is because I made something I didn’t think I could and it turned out or if it’s because the of the extra kick of Cajun I used while blackening the chicken... Either way this disastrous preparation of an amazing meal gave me a whole new outlook on cooking and now I make dinners for myself and my roommate almost every night and get to look forward to them like I used to when I was younger!