Chapter 16

We as omnivores have the dillema that we eat such a wide variety of food that when it comes to choosing what is best and safest it is up to us. The advantages of being an omnivore is the wide selection of food we have to choose from, some bad and some good. People who can not stand the taste of something or cant eat it because of allergies need not to fear, because the body can gather nutrients if the same value from other food. There are not many creatures out there that are as well adapted as we are to eat anything we please almost. We are adapted with teeth for both meat and plants. We have complex taste buds that act as our first defense against food that could be potentially bad, as well as allowing the body to know what to ingest the most of to provide the greatest amount of energy. Another adaptation that opens our diet up is the adaptation of cooking. WE are able to cook many plants and remove their bitter toxins, so that they appeal to us and we are able to gain valuable vitamins from them. When Pollan talks about the rat and how it treats it's stomach like a laboratory, it made me think of how people get sick when they rapidly change their diet. People who have been accustomed to eating high fat, high sodium, and high sugar diets can become sick if they switch to healthy food minus the fat, salt and sugar. This is because the body becomes used to running on the things that it is provided with and when it changes suddenly the body does not have the things that it has been used to getting for who knows how long.

Chapter 8

Chapter eight of The Omnivores Dilemma Pollan visits Joel Salatin’s farm. On Joel’s farm everything revolves around 100 acres of grass that is constantly replenished by everything that lives on it. Joel has his farm running perfectly with the cattle grazing the pasture, then the chickens grazing and fertilizing it with nitrogen, then the cattle grazing again. This process is different than most other farms because everything is done naturally. Joel’s farm I believe is the way all farms should operate. He is able to produce an abundance of meat and vegetables without using any artificial help. All farms should be ran the way Joel’s is because it not only produces food for people to survive but it gives back to the environment allowing for more food to be produced the next time around. In our world today natural resources are running out, meaning areas to farm are being depleted. However, farming the way Joel does is resourceful and is the best way to preserve the land for future generations of farming. Naylor is also another farmer using natural ways to produce food products, but I think that the way Joel does it is better and more efficient and should be the way that all farms are run.

Chapter 12 Omnivore's Dilemma

Chapter 12 of Omnivore's Dilemma interested me quite a bit. Its a rare to hear of how your food was slaughter before it got to the supermarket or how the chickens were raised. On the Polyface farm they seem to have a great system going, as long as the USDA doesnt't continue to poke their nose around in agricultural farmers business. I believe that their should be more farms like the Polyface farm, because it allows people to see, if they want, exactly how their food is being slaughtered. This differs from supermarket chicken or meat, because the meat comes from slaughter houses where thousands of chickens were processed in a day. The long distances the meat has to ship also increases the time that it is exposed to germs and bacteria. Personally, I believe that the polyface farm is the way that all meat should be processed. Local farms sell locally to avoid the long distances that most food has to travel today. I also think a lot of people would be interested to see the conditions that their food was killed in and how they were treated before they were killed. Another thing I liked about the Polyface farm was how everything including decay was taken into account. Nothing was wasted, everything that was taken from the earth is put back the next spring to produce the next batch of chickens. Another thing that i agree with is that the USDA should have no right to regulate what local farmers can sell straight from their farm. The consumer has to step into the farm and determine if they want to buy something from them, which the USDA should have no part in.

Paper Two Source Citation

Schaub, Laird. "The Convulted Politics of Natural Grocery." Editorial. Communities Fall 2008: 6-76. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Feb. 2010. http://www.systems.wsu.edu/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true

Omnivore's Dilemma Chapter 9

It amazes me, after reading Chapter 9, the number of people that insist on buying organic because of the things that are advertised on the label. Organic food labels tell the truth, but leave out many details that may stop people from spending the extra money compared to regular industrialized food. By all means I agree with buying organic, but if you haven't read the Omnivore's Dilemma, then you might be buying things that paint a false picture in your head.
The example that Pollan used which surprised me the most was the "free range" chicken he bought at Whole foods. The advertisement was something along the lines of organic fed, free range chicken. This advertisement I agree would paint the picture that the chickens roam free in a pasture eating grass and seeds that havent been treated with pesticides. I believe this is what most people would picture if they read an advertisement like that, but the truth is quite different. When pollan went to the farm he discovered something that I believe would change a lot of peoples views on organic food. The supposedly "free range" chickens were couped up in a cage until they were five weeks old, then on a pasture for two weeks, and then packaged for grocery stores. This example of organic food seems to the one with most drastic change from the place you think your food is coming from to the reality of it.