Local Food - Omnivores dilemma - Outside reading

I am about to finish this book by Michael Pollan. He is one of my favorite authors and he often writes on the topic of food. He has released four documentaries on Netflix about four different ways we as humans have cooked food:  earth, water, fire and air. These films really expanded my mind on how I saw how we as humans cook our food.

But this book took it to the next level. Pollan wanted to get to the core of our industrial food system in order to understand where our food starts and ends. He narrowed that search down by going to a farm in Iowa that grows #2 corn. He dives head first into how the food growing system works in a typical Iowa corn farm and the results are horrifying. We have created a food that is no longer corn but this highly used and specified plant that can barely be considered natural anymore. He continued to share where most of that corn went: feeding chicken, cows and other meat animals in order to fatten them as fast as possible.

Pollan contrasts that experience with a trip to Polyface farms in VA. The owner of this farm has a crazy system of recycling all of their waste, growing sustainable food, slaughtering their own chickens. The owner try to mimic nature as much as possible and the result is this amazing farm that provides some small hope into the future of food.

As I reflect on this book, it was difficult for me to take in all that is going on in our food system. It makes going to the store for food a much more thoughtful experience. I now have multiable thoughts  going through my head as I reach for a vegetable or ground turkey among the vast shelves in Costco. Where did this turkey come from? Did it live a happy life or does that even matter? Did the turkey know about a better life and was it ok with how it lived? Did the vegetable grow someone near me? Why were there no imperfections in it? Why were the colors the same in every package? How far did each of these foods travel to get to this place?

The questions continue and continue and if I let myself go on and on then I think I would have trouble buying anything from the grocery store. The problem continues into how do we fix it? There are so many theories out there that address the ethical, practical and social problems, but very often the solutions are less than desirable. As of right now, I can begin to try growing my own food. Maybe my small journey will begin to help the difficultly of the problem. 

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