YO U N G R E A D E R S E D I T I O N

The

Omnivore’s
Dilemma
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MICHAEL POLLAN
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 DIAL BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Published by The Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2009 by Michael Pollan
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Book design by Jasmin Rubero
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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chevat, Richie.
The omnivore’s dilemma : the secrets behind what you eat/by MichaelPollan;
adapted by Richie Chevat.—Young readers ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8037-3415-9
1. Food supply—Juvenile literature. 2. Food chains
(Ecology)—Juvenile literature. I. Pollan, Michael. Omnivore’s dilemma.
II. Title. III. Title: Secrets behind what you eat.
HD9000.5.C506 2009
338.10973—dc22
2009009283

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 For Judith and Isaac

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 TA BL E OF CON T EN T S

IN T RODUCT ION ............................................. 1

PA RT I
T HE INDUST R I A L ME A L:
FOOD F ROM COR N

1 How Corn Took Over America .................................................. 9
2 The Farm .................................................................................. 20
3 From Farm to Factory ............................................................... 29
4 The Grain Elevator .................................................................... 40
5 The Feedlot—Turning Corn into Meat ....................................... 47
6 Processed Food.......................................................................... 64
7 Fat from Corn ........................................................................... 76
8 The Omnivore’s Dilemma .......................................................... 85
9 My Fast-Food Meal ................................................................... 97

PA RT II
T HE INDUST R I A L ORGA NIC ME A L

10 Big Organic ............................................................................. 111
11 More Big Organic .................................................................... 127

PA RT III
T HE LOCA L SUSTA INA BL E ME A L:
FOOD F ROM GR A SS

12 Polyface Farm ......................................................................... 143
13 Grass....................................................................................... 151

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 14 The Animals............................................................................ 161
15 The Slaughterhouse ................................................................. 171
16 The Market ............................................................................. 182
17 My Grass-Fed Meal ................................................................. 193

PA R T I V
T HE DO-I T-YOUR SEL F ME A L:
HUN T ED, GAT HER ED, A ND GA R DEN ED FOOD

18 The Forest ............................................................................... 205
19 Eating Animals........................................................................ 215
20 Hunting .................................................................................. 231
21 Gathering ................................................................................ 247
22 The Perfect Meal ..................................................................... 263

A F T ERWOR D: VOT E W I T H YOUR FOR K ........... 277

T HE OMNI VOR E’S SOLU T ION:
SOME T IP S FOR E AT ING ................................ 285
Q&A W I T H MICH A EL POL L A N ....................... 291
F UR T HER R ESOURCES ................................... 299
ACK NOW L EDGMEN T S ................................... 303
SOURCES ...................................................... 307
INDE X .......................................................... 327

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 The
Omnivore’s
Dilemma

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 IN T RODUCT ION

Before I began working on this book, I never gave much thought

to where my food came from. I didn’t spend much time worry-
ing about what I should and shouldn’t eat. Food came from the
supermarket and as long as it tasted good, I ate it.
Until, that is, I had the chance to peer behind the curtain of
the modern American food chain. This came in 1998. I was
working on an article about genetically modified food—food
created by changing plant DNA in the laboratory. My report-
ing took me to the Magic Valley in Idaho, where most of the
french fries you’ve ever eaten begin their life as Russet Burbank
potatoes. There I visited a farm like no farm I’d ever seen or
imagined.
It was fifteen thousand acres, divided into 135-acre crop
circles. Each circle resembled the green face of a tremendous
clock with a slowly rotating second hand. That sweeping
second hand was the irrigation machine, a pipe more than a
thousand feet long that delivered a steady rain of water, fertil-
izer, and pesticide to the potato plants. The whole farm was
managed from a bank of computer monitors in a control room.

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 M ICH A E L P OL L A N

Sitting in that room, the farmer could, at the flick of a switch,

douse his crops with water or whatever chemical he thought
they needed.
One of these chemicals was a pesticide called Monitor, used
to control bugs. The chemical is so toxic to the nervous system
that no one is allowed in the field for five days after it is sprayed.
Even if the irrigation machine breaks during that time, farm-
ers won’t send a worker out to fix it because the chemical is
so dangerous. They’d rather let that whole 135-acres crop of
potatoes dry up and die.
That wasn’t all. During the growing season, some pesticides
get inside the potato plant so that they will kill any bug that
takes a bite. But these pesticides mean people can’t eat the pota-
toes while they’re growing, either. After the harvest, the potatoes
are stored for six months in a gigantic shed. Here the chemicals
gradually fade until the potatoes are safe to eat. Only then can
they be turned into french fries.
That’s how we grow potatoes?
I had no idea.

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A few years later, while working on another story, I found

myself driving down Interstate 5, the big highway that runs
between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I was on my way to
visit a farmer in California’s Central Valley. It was one of those
gorgeous autumn days when the hills of California are gold.
Out of nowhere, a really nasty smell assaulted my nostrils—the
stench of a gas station restroom sorely in need of attention. But
I could see nothing that might explain the smell—all around
me were the same blue skies and golden hills.

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 IN T RODUCT ION

And then, very suddenly, the golden hills turned jet-black

on both sides of the highway: black with tens of thousands
of cattle crowded onto a carpet of manure that stretched as
far as the eye could see. I was driving through a feedlot, with
tens of thousands of animals bellying up to a concrete trough
that ran along the side of the highway for what seemed like
miles. Behind them rose two vast pyramids, one yellow, the
other black: a pile of corn and a pile of manure. The cattle,
I realized, were spending their days transforming the stuff of
one pile into the stuff of the other.
This is where our meat comes from?
I had no idea.
Suddenly that “happy meal” of hamburger and fries looked
a lot less happy. Between the feedlot and the potato farm, I real-
ized just how little I knew about the way our food is produced.
The picture in my head, of small family farms with white picket
fences and red barns and happy animals on green pastures, was
seriously out of date.

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Now I had a big problem. I went from never thinking about

where my food came from to thinking about it all the time. I
started worrying about what I should and shouldn’t eat. Just
because food was in the supermarket, did that mean it was
good to eat?
The more I studied and read about food the more I real-
ized I was suffering from a form of the omnivore’s dilemma.
This is a big name for a very old problem. Human beings are
omnivores. That means we eat plants, meat, mushrooms—just
about anything. But because we are omnivores we have very

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 M ICH A E L P OL L A N

little built-in instinct that tells us which foods are good for us
and which aren’t. That’s the dilemma—we can eat anything,
but how do we know what to eat?
The omnivore’s dilemma has been around a long time. But
today we have a very modern form of this dilemma. We have
a thousand choices of food in our supermarkets, but we don’t
really know where our food comes from. As I discovered,
just finding out how our potatoes are grown might scare you
off french fries for the rest of your life.
In the past, people knew about food because they grew it
or hunted it themselves. They learned about food from their
parents and grandparents. They cooked and ate the same foods
people in their part of the world had always eaten. Modern
Americans don’t have strong food traditions. Instead we have
dozens of different “experts” who give us lots of different
advice about what to eat and what not to eat.
It’s one thing to be crazy about food because you like to
eat. But I found I was going crazy from worrying about food.
So I set out to try to solve the modern omnivore’s dilemma. I
decided to become a food detective, to find out where our food
comes from and what exactly it is we are eating. My detective
work became the book you now hold in your hands.

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As a food detective, I had to go back to the beginning, to the

farms and fields where our food is grown. Then I followed it
each step of the way, and watched what happened to our food
on its way to our stomachs. Each step was another link in a
chain—a food chain.
A food chain is a system for growing, making, and deliver-

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 IN T RODUCT ION

ing food. In this book, I follow four different food chains. Each
one has its own section. They are:

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This is where most of our food comes from today.
This chain starts in a giant field, usually in the
Midwest, where a single crop is grown—corn, or
perhaps soybeans—and ends up in a supermarket
or fast-food restaurant.

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This food is grown on large industrial farms,
but with only natural fertilizers, and natural bug
and weed control. It is sold in the same way as
industrial food.

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This is food grown on small farms that raise
lots of different kinds of crops and animals.
The food from the farm doesn’t need to be
processed, and it travels a short distance—to a
farmer’s market, for example—before it reaches
your table.

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This is the oldest type of food chain there is. It’s
hardly a chain at all, really. It is made up simply
of you, hunting, growing, or finding your food.

All these food chains end the same way—with a meal. And so
I thought it important to end each section of the book with a

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 M ICH A E L P OL L A N

meal, whether it was a fast-food hamburger eaten in a speeding

car, or a meal I made myself from start to finish.

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When I was ten years old, I started my own “farm” in a patch

of our backyard. From that age until now, I have always had a
vegetable garden, even if only a small one. The feeling of being
connected to food is very important to me. It’s an experience
that I think most of us are missing today. We’re so confused
about food that we’ve forgotten what food really is—the bounty
of the earth and the power of the sun captured by plants and
animals.
There were parts of this book that were difficult to write,
because the facts were so unpleasant. Some of those facts
might make you lose your appetite. But the point of this book
is not to scare you or make you afraid of food. I think we enjoy
food much more if we take a little time to know what it is we’re
putting in our mouths. Then we can really appreciate the truly
wonderful gifts that plants and animals have given us. To me,
that’s the point of this book, to help you rediscover the plea-
sures of food and learn to enjoy your meals in a new way.

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9780803734159_OmnivoresDil_TX_1-314.indd 8 3/5/10 2:55:34 PM
 1
How Corn Took Over America

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The average supermarket doesn’t seem much like a field of

corn.
Take a look around one. What do you see? There’s a large,
air-conditioned room. There are long aisles and shelves piled
high with boxes and cans. There are paper goods and diapers
and magazines. But that’s not all. Look again. Somewhere,
behind the brightly colored packaging, underneath the labels
covered with information, there is a mountain of corn.
You may not be able to see it, but it’s there.
I’m not talking about the corn in the produce section. That’s
easy to recognize. In the spring and summer, the green ears of
corn sit out in plain view with all the other fruits and vegeta-
bles.You can see a stack of ears next to the eggplants, onions,
apples, bananas, and potatoes. But that’s not a mountain of
corn, is it?
Keep looking. Go through produce to the back of the super-
market and you’ll find the meats. There’s corn here too, but

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 M ICH A E L P OL L A N

it’s a little harder to see. Where is it? Here’s a hint: What did
the cows and pigs and chickens eat before they became cuts of
meat? Mainly corn.
Go a little further now. There’s still a lot of corn hiding in
this supermarket. How about those long aisles of soft drinks?
Made from corn. That freezer case stuffed with TV dinners?
Mostly corn. Those donuts and cookies and chips? They’re
made with a whole lot of corn.
Supermarkets look like they contain a huge variety of food.
The shelves are stuffed with thousands of different items. There
are dozens of different soups and salad dressings, cases stuffed
with frozen dinners and ice cream and meat. The range of food
choices is amazing.
Yet if you look a little closer, you begin to discover:
It’s All Corn.
Well, maybe not all corn, but there’s still an awful lot of it
hiding here—a lot more than you suspect. We think of our
supermarkets as offering a huge variety of food. Yet most of that
huge variety comes from one single plant. How can this be?
Corn is what feeds the steer that becomes your steak.
Corn feeds the chicken and the pig.
Corn feeds the catfish raised in a fish farm.
Corn-fed chickens laid the eggs.
Corn feeds the dairy cows that produce the milk, cheese,
and ice cream.
See those chicken nuggets in the freezer case? They are really
corn wrapped up in more corn. The chicken was fed corn. The
batter is made from corn flour. The starch that holds it together
is corn starch. The oil it was fried in was corn oil.
But that’s not all. Read the label on any bag of chips, candy
bar, or frozen snack. How many ingredients do you recognize?

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 T HE INDUST R I A L ME A L

Maltodextrin? Monosodium glutamate? Ascorbic acid? What are

those things? What about lecithin and mono-, di-, and triglycerides?
They are all made from corn. The golden food coloring? Made
from corn. Even the citric acid that keeps the nugget “fresh” is
made from corn.
If you wash down your chicken nuggets with almost any
soft drink, you are drinking corn with your corn. Since the
1980s almost all sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in
the supermarket are sweet-
ened with something called
high-fructose corn syrup.
Read the label on any
processed food, and corn is >?::;D9EHD
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 M ICH A E L P OL L A N

toothpaste and cosmetics to disposable diapers, trash bags, and

even batteries.
Corn is in places you would never think to look. It’s in the
wax that coats the other vegetables in the produce section.
It goes into the coating that makes the cover of a magazine
shine. It’s even part of the supermarket building, because the
wallboard, the flooring, and many other building materials are
made with corn.

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You are what you eat, it’s often said. If this is true, then what
we are today is mostly corn. This isn’t just me being dramatic—
it’s something that scientists have been able to prove. How do
they do this? By tracing the element carbon as it goes from the
atmosphere into plants, then into our food, and finally, into
us.
You may have heard the expression that humans are a
carbon-based life form. (This always seems to come up in sci-
ence fiction movies, but it’s true.) Like hydrogen and oxygen,
carbon is an element, one of the basic building blocks of mat-
ter. All the molecules that make up our cells—carbohydrates,
proteins, and fats—contain the element carbon.
All of the carbon in our bodies was originally floating in the
air, as part of a carbon dioxide molecule. Plants take the carbon
out of carbon dioxide and use it to make food—carbohydrates.
They do this through a process called photosynthesis. In
photosynthesis, plants use the energy of the sun (photo means
light) to synthesize (make) food.
All of our food, in fact almost all life on earth, can be traced

12

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 T HE INDUST R I A L ME A L

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All food begins with the process of photosynthesis.

back to photosynthesis in plants. It’s more than a figure of

speech to say that plants create life out of thin air.
So the plants take carbon and make it into food. Then we
eat the plants, or we eat animals that have eaten the plants.
That’s how the carbon winds up in our cells. But not all carbon
is the same. Corn uses slightly different types of carbon than
other plants. So by looking at the type of carbon in our cells,
scientists can tell how much corn we have been eating.
Todd Dawson, a biologist at the University of California,
Berkeley, has done exactly that kind of research. He says that
when you look at the carbon in the average American’s cells,
“we look like corn chips with legs.”
Americans don’t think of themselves as corn eaters. Our
bread is made from wheat flour. We don’t eat a lot of corn on

13

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 M ICH A E L P OL L A N

the cob. When we think of serious corn eaters, we often think

of people in Mexico. About 40 percent of their calories come
directly from corn, mostly in the form of corn tortillas. Yet
Americans have more corn in our diet than Mexicans. It’s just
that the corn we eat wears many different disguises.
How did corn take over America? It’s really a tremendous
success story—for corn, anyway. Corn has managed to become
the most widely planted crop in America—more than 80 mil-
lion acres of farmland are planted with corn every year. Today
it covers more acres of the country than any other living spe-
cies, including human beings. It has pushed other plants and
animals off the American farm. It has even managed to push a
lot of farmers off the farm. (I’ll explain that one later.) Corn is
now one of the most successful plants on earth.
It’s important to remember that while humans use plants
and other animals, it’s not a one-way street. Plants and animals
don’t just sit around waiting for human beings to use them—
they use us, too. The ones that can adapt use our farms and
cities to spread and multiply. Corn became king of the farm
and the supermarket because it adapted itself easily to the needs
of farmers and food makers. It had qualities that human beings
prized. Those qualities allowed it to spread and grow until it
worked its way into every corner of our lives—and every cell
in our bodies.

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When Columbus returned to Spain after his first voyage he

described many wonderful things he had seen to Queen Isabella.
One of his discoveries was a towering grass with an ear as thick
as a man’s arm, to which grains were “affixed in a wondrous

14

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 T HE INDUST R I A L ME A L

manner and in form and

size like garden peas, white
when young.” That grass 9EHDEHC7?P;5
was called maize, but today CW_p[ _i j^[ ej^[h dWc[ \eh m^Wj
we know it as corn. 7c[h_YWdi YWbb Yehd$ ?j _i j^[ dWc[
Corn began as a wild grass j^[IfWd_i^b[Whd[Z\hecj^[DWj_l[
called teosinte. (Teosinte 7c[h_YWdi m^e ]h[m _j$ ?d ;d]bWdZ
means “mother of corn” in
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the Native American lan-
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still grows wild in some
J^WjÊim^[h[j^[j[hcÇYehd[ZX[[\È
places in Central America, Yec[i\hec$J^[;d]b_i^m^ei[jjb[Z
but if you saw it, you might _d Dehj^ 7c[h_YW YWbb[Z j^[ fbWdj
not recognize it as the ?dZ_Wd Yehd" c[Wd_d] ?dZ_Wd ]hW_d$
mother of corn. Teosinte JeZWo"_dj^[Kd_j[ZIjWj[iWdZ9Wd#
ears are no bigger than your WZW"Yehd^WiX[Yec[ie_cfehjWdj"_j
thumb. They are not covered ^WijWa[del[hj^[mehZ$9ehd_i`kij
Yehd"WdZWbbj^ei[ej^[h]hW_di^Wl[
in thick husks. The kernels
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are tiny seeds. Yet long
before Columbus arrived,
that wild grass had man-
aged to evolve into maize and spread across North America.
Corn spread because it could adapt to the needs of human
beings. Of course, it needed human help. Humans selected big-
ger ears with fatter kernels and planted those seeds. By the year
700, Indians as far away as New England and Canada farmed
maize. Corn had begun its march to world domination, but it
still had a long way to go.
After Columbus, the Native Americans were conquered
by the Europeans. But maize, or corn, had no loyalties to the
Maya and other people who had helped it spread. It was only

15

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 M ICH A E L P OL L A N

concerned with its own survival. The Europeans presented a

way for corn to spread even farther. The plant quickly adapted
to the new humans and their needs.
The first thing corn did was push aside the European crops
the new settlers brought with them. The European plants just
couldn’t compete. For example, wheat brought from Europe did
not do as well as the native maize. A seed of wheat might, with
luck, yield 50 new grains of wheat. A single planted corn seed
could yield 150 to 300 fat kernels. Corn won that contest easily.
Corn continued quickly to win over the new settlers by being
very useful. It could supply them with a ready-to-eat vegetable,
a storable grain, a source of fiber, an animal feed, and heating
fuel. Corn could be eaten fresh off the cob or dried on the stalk,
stored over the winter and ground into flour. Corn could also
be mashed and fermented to make beer or whiskey.

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'+&&89 ,& &7:

'&&&7: /(7:
7\j[h'*
'+&&i7
:
7\j[h'+&&7:

EH?=?D c_Z#',&&i7:
+&&&89
',/&7:

'+&&89 '-+&7:

Sources: The Natural History Museum, London, and Smith, C. Wayne (Ed.) Corn: Origin, History,
Technology and Production. John Wiley & Sons.

9780803734159_OmnivoresDil_TX_1-314.indd 16 3/5/10 2:55:38 PM

 No part of the big
grass went to waste. The
husks could be woven
into rugs and twine. The M>O9EHDD;;:IF;EFB;
leaves and stalks made M_bZj[ei_dj[Ze[idejbeeab_a[ceZ#
good feed for livestock. [hd Yehd$ ?j Ze[i dej ^Wl[ \Wj [Whi
m_j^^kdZh[Zie\a[hd[bimhWff[Z_d
The shelled cobs could
Wj^_Ya^kia$?dij[WZ"_j^WiWi_d]b[
even be stacked by the
heme\jh_Wd]kbWhi[[Zi]hem_d]edW
outhouse and used as a i_d]b[ ijWba$ ?ji a[hd[bi Wh[ Yel[h[Z
rough substitute for toi- _dW^WhZi^[bb$J^[i[[ZiWh[ifh[WZ
let paper! XoWd_cWbi$
In the competition for Iec[j_c[i[l[hWbj^ekiWdZo[Whi
king of the crops, corn W]e"j[ei_dj[ckjWj[ZehY^Wd][Z$J^[
left the European plants ckjWj_ed cWZ[ _ji i[[Zi ]hem ed W
in the dust. Settlers who YeX"Yel[h[ZXoW^kia$Dem_jii[[Zi
stuck to the Old World YekbZdejYec[beei[Xoj^[ci[bl[i$
BkYa_bo" W Yh[Wjkh[ YWc[ Wbed] j^Wj
crops often perished.
ad[m ^em je f_Ya j^ei[ ^kiai" jWa[
The colonists who recog- ekj j^[ i[[Zi" WdZ fbWdj j^[c$ J^Wj
nized corn’s usefulness Yh[Wjkh[ mWi ki$ >kcWdi jeea j^[
did well. And of course, [Whie\\j^[fbWdj"i[fWhWj[Zj^[a[h#
one thing the successful d[bi"Wj[iec[WdZfbWdj[Zej^[hi$
farmers did was plant J[ei_dj[]Wl[kf_ji_dZ[f[dZ[dY["
more corn, helping Xkj _j ]W_d[Z Wd Wbbo m^e ^[bf[Z _j
maize to build its king- ifh[WZWYheiij^[]beX[$;l[hi_dY["
dom. Corn helped the Yehd WdZ ^kcWd X[_d]i ^Wl[ X[[d
colonists and the colo- `e_d[Zje][j^[h$J^[fbWdjYWddejb_l[
m_j^ekj ki$ 9Wd m[ b_l[ m_j^ekj j^[
nists helped corn.
fbWdj5
Corn made itself
useful in one other
important way. It turned

CE:;HD9EHD
J;EI?DJ;

9780803734159_OmnivoresDil_TX_1-314.indd 17 3/5/10 2:55:41 PM

 M ICH A E L P OL L A N

out that corn was an excellent way to store and trade wealth.
Dried corn is easy to transport and almost indestructible. The
farmer can take any surplus to market and sell or trade it. In the
new colonies corn often took the place of money.
Corn allowed farming settlements to become trading settle-
ments. Corn made the slave trade possible. Traders in Africa
paid for slaves with corn and then fed slaves corn when they
were brought here. Corn was the perfect plant for the growing
economy of the colonies. And just as important, the new colo-
nists gave corn a way to get to the rest of the world.

.
10--"/
'00%
%&5&$5*7&

Once I realized how much of our food is made from corn, I

began to look at supermarkets differently. Instead of a giant
variety of food, I saw corn hiding in every aisle. Now, I have
nothing against corn. There’s nothing more delicious than a
roasted ear of fresh sweet corn. But I didn’t understand why
there had to be corn in everything we eat. Who decided that
corn would be our main food? How did that happen? Where
did all this corn come from and how did it take over our super-
market?
So I decided to find out. And like any good detective, I real-
ized I had to start at the very beginning, which in this case
meant a field of corn in Iowa. I began with that field and tried
to trace the corn as it traveled across the country, first to my
supermarket and then to my stomach. I watched it being turned
into meat, milk, and eggs by cows and chickens. I watched as
it was torn apart and rebuilt into all the different foods and
products listed on all those labels.
What I discovered was a vast industry—a giant agricul-

18

9780803734159_OmnivoresDil_TX_1-314.indd 18 3/5/10 2:55:41 PM

 T HE INDUST R I A L ME A L

ture business or agribusiness. This industry doesn’t look much

like farming the way most people imagine it. It’s more like a
series of factories that turn raw materials into food products.
It’s a giant food chain, the one that supplies most of the food
Americans eat today.
A food chain in nature helps us understand who eats what
(or whom). But the food chain that feeds most Americans is
anything but natural. The industrial food chain that supplies
our supermarkets stretches thousands of miles and has dozens
of different links. It’s a chain that’s powered by oil and gasoline
and controlled by giant corporations. It’s a chain that separates
us from our food and keeps us from knowing what it really is
we’re eating.
Most of all, it’s a food chain built around one plant. Somehow,
that small wild grass that started in the hills of Central America
has become the star of the biggest, most expensive food chain
in the history of the world. But if corn is the star of this story, is
it the hero or is it the bad guy? Before I could decide, I needed
to get to know it better. And so I went to see it where it lives, in
the vast cornfields of the Midwest.

19

9780803734159_OmnivoresDil_TX_1-314.indd 19 3/5/10 2:55:41 PM