paragiraffe

I’m reading (Shaun‘s copy of) The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. Perhaps you’ve heard of this book: New York times named it one of the best of 2006. Or perhaps you’ve heard of Michael Pollan: he’s written some other bestselling books and several articles for the New York Times Magazine and others. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a look at our food chain, from the processed food of McDonald’s to the designer organic at Whole Foods (Whole Paycheck!).

I’d read one or two of his pieces before this book, including one about the farm bill, which goes along really well with the first part of his book all about corn. Although I think many of us know this on a superficial level, it’s really amazing and frightening how much of our food is corn, especially our processed foods. And, it’s quite incredible how bad our processed foods are for us.

There’s one thing in this section, though, that I thought was particularly enlightening. Ethanol is being billed as a fuel alternative, which on first blush makes a lot of sense since we have a gross excess of corn in this country. However, the fertilizer farmers use to grow the corn is artificially manufactured in a process that uses fossil fuel, not to mention gas for the tractors. Again, not groundbreaking news as ethanol is known to only yield 34% more energy than it takes to produce and actually (slightly) reduces fuel efficiency in cars, but I thought the fertilizer angle was interesting, particularly because traditionally the fertilization would be done by manure. But the animals have been moved off the farms and into feedlots to make more room for corn.

So, next time you eat something containing dextrose, glucose, dextrin, maltodextrin, lecithin, fructose, high fructose, vegetable starch, “thickeners”, sweeteners, syrup, vegetable oil, maize, or sorbitol, say “Mmm! CORN!”

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