kalikshama
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Here's a good preview of "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Many of Michael Pollan's books, including this one, are available in my library system.
We're Living on Corn!
...Cows have not evolved to feed on corn. Nor are they suited to living in crowded conditions while standing up to their ankles in feces. In the feedlot, however, they have little choice. The corn diet induces indigestion, which must be treated with repeated courses of antibiotics, and the cows seem to be miserable or vacant a lot of the time. They are subjected to this regime because it makes them grow fast, and in times past they were even fed the offal from other slaughtered cows, which is how mad cow disease came into the food supply.
Pollan describes a Karmic cycle in which the poor health of the feedlotted cows is visited on their consumers. Because they are not allowed to eat grass, their meat is higher in dangerous fats and lower in good ones than that of cows leading a more natural life. And the abattoirs where they are slaughtered need to be absolutely fastidious about hygiene, because bacteria on their skins thrive in the crowded, fecal conditions, and could easily contaminate their meat. Despite all of this, grain-fed beef has a cachet in America, where it is preferred by many for its alleged tenderness. I’m often offered it with pride, even by up-market restaurants that don’t seem interested in serving meat from cows that have lived their life on the range. Having read Pollan’s book, I’m now ordering buffalo.
Corn of course is used for many purposes apart from feeding factory-farmed chickens, cattle, and pigs. High-fructose corn syrup, for example, has replaced sugar in many processed food and beverages, and is now, according to Pollan, “the most valuable food product refined from corn, accounting for 530 million bushels every year.” But in trying to track down how such products are made, Pollan hits a dead end. The big corn millers–Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland–won’t let him into their factories, so he wasn’t allowed to see how the corn products Americans consume are the result of complicated chemical processing.
Reading Pollan’s book, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the food industry has confined many Americans to their own urban feedlots, in which they have grown obese, ill, and uncurious about the source or nutritional quality of their food. In this system, human appetites are simply another bottleneck to be overcome in the search for greater sales. Hence the “supersizing” now so prevalent at fast-food outlets. A segment of the American population, however, is making a break for food freedom. They can often be found haunting the organic section of the supermarket, and in his quest to understand how their food is produced, Pollan travels to the great California farms where most organic produce is grown.
Read more: http://michaelpollan.com/reviews/were-living-on-corn/
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