Food Blog #3- Omnivore's Dilemma

Chapter 7- The Meal—Fast Food

If I were to guess what the title of this chapter meant without reading any previous chapters, I would assume that Michael Pollan would rip the fast food industry for being unhealthy and for consumer’s not knowing where their food comes from, if it is even real food. Instead, I believe that Michael Pollan is going to do the exact opposite, although not praise fast foods, but help tell consumers where exactly the foods have been and how they may have ended up in our Happy Meals.

After the reading the chapter, I should have guessed and knew that Pollan would relate everything back to corn but I was not far off from my predicament just from the title of the chapter. “That perhaps is what the industrial food chain does best: obscure the histories of the foods it produces by processing them to such an extent that they appear as pure products of culture rather than nature—things made from plants and animals” (pg. 115). I feel as if Michael Pollan may have captured the whole point of his book in this one quote. In today’s food markets, not very often are consumers buying produce that are fresh or in their “natural form” anymore. Instead, especially for households with lower incomes, processed foods are usually cheaper, more convenient, and have more total calories than buying produce that is organic or fresh. Many Americans do not have the time to cook which may also lead to a higher consumption of processed foods. I remember watching a documentary when it referred to obese students due to eating too much processed foods. The parents admitted that buying chips help feed their kids much better than buying any fruits. By the time we see the processed foods in front of us, it is pretty much unrecognizable.

Although Michael Pollan was talking about a McDonald’s meal with his family when he stated this quote, “What in the eyes of the omnivore looks like a meal of impressive variety turns out, when viewed through the eyes of the mass spectrometer, to be the meal of a far more specialized kind of eater. But then, this is what the industrial eater has become: corn’s koala” (pg. 117), I feel as if not many Americans would agree that we are corn’s koala. Even for myself, reading Pollan’s first few chapters, I am still not able to wrap my head around the fact that so many products are made of corn. The calories count and nutritional information on menus sure do not portray our food as if they were all made from some sort of corn. So what I am trying to say is that the general public would have no idea that corn is so prevalent. When I eat a regular meal (not a meal from McDonald’s), I would guess that my beef is beef and that my potatoes are potatoes and my iced tea are made from tea leaves. But if I were to run my meal through an extensive test as Pollan described, I am sure that much of my meal either came from or is composed of corn. I am not sure if the general public needs to know exactly all of the specific details but maybe turn it into a quick fact or a fun fact for American consumers.