HW 7

Omnivore’s Dilemma By Michael Pollan

Chapter 1: The industrial food chain that feeds most of Americans comes back almost to the same place every time, the American Corn Belt. We are processed corn walking because most of what we have and eat has corn in or on it. Corn is used so often because it can reproduce itself endlessly.

Gems:

“Air-conditioned, odorless, illuminated by buzzing fluorescent tubes, the American supermarket doesn’t present itself as having very much to do with Nature. And yet what is this place if not a landscape (man-made, it’s true) teeming with plants and animals?” (p.15)

There are 45,000 items in the average American supermarket and a quarter plus of them have some type of corn in it.

“So that’s us: processed corn, walking.” (p.23)

Thoughts: 
The first chapter caught me off guard because I didn’t realize what value corn has in our America society. It plays a big role in how Americans live. This mad me look around my home to see what was made with corn product. I had found that at least ten things in my house not food related in twenty minutes that had corn based products in them like a bellhops bell I have has corn oil on to keep it moving smooth.

I also didn’t think about how grocery stores portray their products. That they are supposed to have food from the wild but Michael’s description makes me think of a cold hearted felling. I feel and unease or a feeling that a trick has been played in me.

Chapter 2: George Naylor’s has a farm that relies on corn and soybeans to keep it alive. Corn has changed over the years with the new hybrid corns that allow farmers to plant more stalks. The biggest change in corn is the production of chemical fertilizer, were corn did not depend sun energy.

Gems:

“Several human societies have seen fit to worship corn, but perhaps it should be the other way around: For corn, we humans are the contingent beings, “ (p. 27).

"The true socialist utopia turns out to be a field of F-1 hybrid plants." (p.37)

Thoughts: 
People should look at what they eat because while famers want to make money for less work, they are only doing this by using chemicals they don’t know the affects of on all people. Farmers are like any other people in America, they want to get rich quick. They take the easy way out even if it comes with an unknown risk.

Chapter 3: Corn has to be grown to certain standard before it is can be shown. Farmers who can produce the biggest bulk of corn receive profit from their Farmers Cooperative and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Gems:

"My plan when I came to Iowa was to somehow follow George Naylor's corn on it's circuitous path to our plates and into our bodies. I should have known that tracing any single bushel of commodity corn is as impossible as tracing a bucket of water after it's been poured into a river. " (p. 63)

"Such corn is not something to feel reverent or even sentimental about, and nobody in Iowa, save the slightly embarrassed agronomist, does." (p.59)

Thoughts: 
I thought that it was very interesting that corn is held at such high religious vales even to day in Mexico.

I also thought it was interesting that corn is and under ground business and that its not simple. 

Chapter 4: Cows have moved off farms and ranches to concentrated animal feeding operations to be feed corn. This corn also called corn–fed is filled with drugs and other proteins to up the time it takes for a cow to become right to slaughter. This change from feeding cows grass to feeding them corn-fed comes from the logic protein is protein. Researchers suggest that eating cows fed on corn-fed is bad for us because the cow now has more fats, which put us at a higher risk for heart disease. The problem is not with the cow but rather the corn its being feed.

Gems:

“Corn the plant has colonized some 125,000 square miles of the American continent, an area twice the size of New York State…” (p.65)

“(about 60 percent of it, or some fifty-four thousand kernels) goes to feeding livestock,…” (p.66)

Thoughts:

Why did Americas obtain a strong love for greed during the industrial era?

What need was there that they needed more meat faster? Where there people with money in America not being feed.

The questions above to me are what have made America what it is today. But greed is what drives everything in our country. Farmers wanted to get rich quick so they found a faster ways to make cows fat. So they could sell then quicker. But really no body needed all these cows but some one will buy them, so that they can sell them for more money and get rich. This is a cycle till some one eats it but we cant eat all of it. 

Chapter 5: Corn that is not eaten by animals is broken down into many different oils, vitamins and for complex carbohydrates. These carbohydrates are used in almost everything we eat. We are cutting the nature out of food by making chemicals out of bonded carbohydrates and using it in foods.

Gems:

We eat a ton of corn a year. (p.85)

High-fructose corn syrup is the most “valuable food product refined from corn.”(p.89)

Thoughts:

Corn that is used for everything is a thought I do not like to have but it still does not stop me from eating no corn-based products. Because for real, they’re good. The health hazard is not high enough that I feel I should stop eating corn-based goods.