Food Blog 1- Omnivore's Dilemma

Introduction

Before reading the book, I thought about the title of the book, Omnivore’s Dilemma. I know what an omnivore is and I know what a dilemma is but I knew that it was more than the dilemma of choosing what to eat for every meal. The first quote that I related to was “When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the potential foods on offer are liable to sicken or kill you” (pg. 3). Although I am not exactly sure of the author’s definition of omnivore’s dilemma quite yet, I feel like the quote is quite relevant to me and to many others on a daily basis but on a surface level. My friends and I always have the problem of choosing where to eat whether it be for lunch or dinner. And even though the decision seems very important at the moment, at the end of the day, it is very minuscule because it is only one meal in one day out of hundreds and hundreds of meals in a year.

Two other quotes that struck me as interesting were “But for omnivores like us a vast amount of brain space and time must be devoted to figuring out which of all the many potential dishes nature lays on are safe to eat” (pg. 4) and “Many anthropologists believe that the reason we evolved such big and intricate brains was precisely to help us deal with the omnivore’s dilemma” (pg. 4). I would have never thought of anything preposterous like this. Firstly, I would never eat anything purposefully that would do arm to my body. I have some friends who would be allergic to certain foods and eat them anyways and decide to just suffer through it because it’s so good. So I guess there are people like that. Secondly, I think I will need to read more of the book and understand the anthropologists’ idea that our brains are so developed because of how we eat because I definitely do not feel a strong connection with brain power and food nor can I quite believe this.

Chapter 1-The Plant: Corn’s Conquest

“Beef people sounds more like it, though nowadays chicken people, which sounds not nearly so good, is probably closer to the truth of the matter” (pg. 23). I think nowadays it should be labeled as no-carbs people or consume everything people because there are so many new trends to eating that it is more than just a certain animal or food product. I myself would be under the consume everything people just because I like to eat and there aren’t many foods that I do not like.

Finally, I wonder what our world would be like if “…corn would have disappeared from the earth in a few years” (pg. 26) (in a few years from when it was introduced). I never knew that corn was such an important food in so many of a day today products, not only other foods. I think Professor Hansen was right that the chapter would teach me more about corn that I would ever know or wanted to know, although I didn’t quite know that corns had sex. But corn has proven itself to be such a staple in a lives for hundreds of years that I can only imagine what life would be like without it.