The Omnivore's Dilemma: Starved for Knowledge

With the possible exception of lawyers and politicians, man cannot create something from nothing. The human body is certainly no exception. It is a in a constant state of self-creation and rebirth, though that process can be better conceived of as the fiery tumult of a blast furnace than a the pastoral serenity of a fertile field: Composed of tens of trillions of cells, fabricating DNA, synthesizing ATP, and dying and replicating at the rate of tens of millions per minute, we are each a virtual firestorm of productivity. In fact, the total biomass of the human body is entirely replaced, toe to tip, within at least 16 years - you are not the same person you were 16 years ago. You are your own maker - "I think, therefore I am," runs Descartes' existential proof. But, in the words of King Lear, "nothing can come of nothing," and the biochemical machine that does that all-important thinking requires a veritable caloric inferno to remain operational. Perhaps, if the philosopher had thought a bit more, the proof would run, "I eat, therefore I am."

But where does all this energy come from? As any sixth grader knows, food, or more specifically the Calories within it are the building blocks of human life. But what is a Calorie, exactly? As Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary, Supersize Me, aptly demonstrates, many, if not most Americans have no real conception of the actual nature of these ineffable units of energy, or their implications for the human body ("I want to say it's the amount of Calories in a Calorie," admits one hapless interviewee). A glance at Wikipedia reveals, perhaps unhelpfully, that a Calorie from food (4,186.8 Joules) is the energy required to raise one kilogram of water one degree Celsius, and offers relevant examples. Did you know that one Joule is expended by lifting a small apple one meter off the ground? So, one nutritional Calorie is enough energy for the average person to, say, lift 4,186.8 apples one meter each, if one were so inclined and equipped. The recommended daily intake of 2,000 Calories per day, then, is enough energy to lift 8,373,600 apples, or raise the temperature of a kilogram of water by 2,000 degrees Celsius, utterly vaporizing it.

This kind of numerical horseplay, while intriguing and scientifically accurate, is still light years remote from describing the sources and application of those Calories - the food we eat and its role in both sustaining human life and in determining the shape that life will take. Michael Pollan, in his Omnivore's Dilemma, describes human beings as participants in a complex food chain, and posits that "our place in that food chain, or web, determines to a considerable extent what kind of creature we are" (Pollan 6). He cites writers like Paul Rozin who explain "the omnivore's dilemma," or the simple challenge of deciding what to eat, as a prime motivator in the evolutionary forces that produced the species we are today. Evolution is generally understood as a force guided by the quantitative advantage afforded to members of a species that are most reproductively fit. Prior to the act of reproduction (and most processes), however, is the act of eating, and species are defined in no small way by the means through which they satisfy their hunger.

Pollan recognizes that the complexity of the relationship between the human species and food subsumes even the role it played in shaping our evolutionary pedigree. He explains at length, however, that the nature of that relationship is not readily transparent to the uninformed eater, and relatively few of us have any meaningful understanding of our place in the food web. Today, much of the food we eat is 'Frankenfood,' super-processed amalgams of scientifically-engineered ingredients never combined in nature, and emerging from long, convoluted chains of production, practically opaque to the consumer.

Thus, Pollan embarks upon a studied retaliation against the forces of obfuscation, seeking to "follow the food chains that sustain us, all the way from the earth to the plate", and to examine the "getting and eating of food at its most fundamental, which is to say, as a transaction between species in nature, eaters and eaten" (Pollan 6). By following different foods from production to consumption, he aims to foster an awareness in the average consumer of where food comes from, and why that should matter.

As the book amply demonstrates, however, that endeavor is not always an easy task. After all, it is in the best interests of the makers and distributors of processed foods, such as massive, multinational corporations like Monsanto and Cargill, to disguise just how over-engineered their products are, and their sheer size and entrenchment into the economy give them the means to protect that interest.

And, in addition to the concerted efforts of massive food corporations, the often willful ignorance of the consumer stands as another barrier to a fuller understanding of our relationship with food. What does it mean to "eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake" (Pollan 11)? My classmates' reactions to the heightened level of consciousness gleaned from reading The Omnivore's Dilemma were varied, ranging from a sense of empowerment at acquiring a newfound knowledge of the nature of our food, to outright dismay. Many half-jokingly admitted they'd rather not know that the beef they eat is harvested from cows grown on squalid factory farms, and only kept alive via antibiotic life support. Perhaps even worse, the realization that corn is, to some extent, a major component in the majority of the food and drink we consume, and even the products we use to wash our bodies, is an unsavory one to a culture that prizes itself on such a supposed variety of cuisines. It seems that a fuller consciousness of where food came from, at least in today's food environment, is a direct detriment to our ability to stomach it.

Pollan recognizes something intrinsically wrong with a society that prefers, and to some extent needs to be kept in the dark regarding the source of its sustenance, but he offers no comprehensive solution to the disconnect - largely because, in our current mode of subsistence, there is none. Should we each hunt for our own food, as Pollan does for boar in the final part of The Omnivore's Dilemma? From my own experience, to admit to an audience of educated, urbane people that you are a hunter is to incur a kind of stigma, whether in the form of thinly-veiled disdain, or open revulsion - "How could you kill an innocent animal?" gasps the sensitive English major, agog at my barbarism. As Pollan himself recognizes, hunting as a means of subsistence is in no way practical to anyone wishing to live in mainstream contemporary society - the average American simply lacks the time to stalk and kill, butcher, prepare, and store food while holding down a full-time job. We are, as a society, inextricably entrenched in industrial agriculture as the sole practical means of feeding us all.

That is not to say, however, that it is impossible for an individual to circumvent the military industrial complex in feeding oneself, or to experience "the kind of pleasures deepened by knowing" one's food on a meaningful level (Pollan 11). Starting as soon as I was old enough to carry a gun, my father would take me hunting at least once each fall. I remember dreading the season when I was younger - I was thoroughly gun-shy, and it was torture to be woken up at dawn and dragged from bed, bleary-eyed, into the cold. Over time, however, hunting became a different kind of experience entirely, more about the ritual of the event than anything else: As I matured, I came to appreciate the chance to be in the woods, and the father-son comradery of the early-morning colloquiums over Dunkin Donuts coffee as we drove through the crisp stillness in the heated cab of his truck. For the last three years we've been hunting on a farm in Livonia, New York, owned by one of my father's coworkers. Upon arrival at the farm, we'd split up, either walking a wooded path in search of partridge, or mount separate treestands, perched in oak trees overlooking opposite corners of the cornfield to scan for deer. I always gave my father the impression that I would take the opportunity to kill an animal if presented with it, but in truth, I have watched a deer pass not ten feet from the base of my tree, completely oblivious to my presence. I could probably have jumped on its back and knifed it if such was my disposition, but I have never killed an animal, and I'm not sure I ever will.

My father, on the other hand, has successfully killed four deer in his life, though never when I was accompanying him, to my private relief. He had them butchered into venison that we ate as steaks, sausage, and in stews. It seems ironic now, that I always took pride in the knowledge that my father had personally killed the food we were eating, and that it didn't come from a store, but I was always remote from the process. Two years ago, however, that changed: Seated in my tree stand reading Amadeus for one of my courses, I was startled by the crackle of my walkie-talkie. My dad had gotten his deer. I knew it was inevitable - he couldn't fail to get one every time we hunted together - though I had always privately (and guiltily) hoped he might.

But this was it, the moment when the food I ate became more to me than just plastic-wrapped meat in a Styrofoam tray. I jogged across the field to witness the kill. The deer lay at the bottom of a streambed, a deep, narrow gorge with steep sides carved out over centuries by erosion. Apparently the deer, a four-point buck - had been standing on the other side when my father shot it in the head, killing it instantly. Thereupon, in concordance with Murphy's Law, it slid to the bottom of the gorge.

I joined him at the bottom, where I became surgical assistant in the field-dressing of the deer (a process far more unsavory than its euphemistic name implies - if anything, it's more of a thorough undressing). As the entrails piled up next to me, I realized that I had never been acquainted with an animal I was to eat so intimately. Then, to compound matters, the sides of the gorge were too high and steep to drag the 200-pound deer up them, so we were forced to tie it into a blue plastic sled and drag it up the streambed - full of one to two feet of rushing, icy water. As my father pulled the sled by the ropes, and I heaved on it from behind, the frigid, sanguine water rushing over the deer and thoroughly soaking me, I was fully and epiphanically conscious of all that was at stake in this particular transaction between eaters and eaten.

At last, after a near vertical climb out of the end of the gorge, clawing our way up scrubby grasses and roots, we collapsed panting at the top, our food source secured. That day, my knowledge of my food went far beyond a Caloric figure on a label of nutritional facts. The process by which I gleaned that knowledge was grimy, cold, unpleasant, and, at the time, hard for me to justify morally. And still my father and I were not responsible for the entire process from killing the animal to eating it - we paid a butcher to prepare the deer into venison steaks. Still, that particular food chain was infinitely more personal and transparent than that of virtually any food we buy in stores. And, perhaps most importantly, I can say that, in the words of Michael Pollan, "for once, I was able to pay the full Karmic price of a meal" (Pollan 9).

Unfortunately, not many Americans can say the same. I don't suffer from any illusion that everyone can or should hunt for food, but I do believe that at some point, we should expend the time and energy required to have a true relationship with the food we eat and an intimate knowledge of its costs.

Works Cited:

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.