“An Omnivore’s Wake-Up Call”

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

by Diana Farr Louis

ATHENS, Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—3/1/10—When I chose “Eating Well Is The Best Revenge” as the title for my column in the Weekly Hubris, I had no idea that the famous saying (“Living Well, etc.”) dated back to John Donne’s contemporary, fellow clergyman and poet, George Herbert. I’d thought of it as a 60’s mantra equivalent to “Up the Establishment.” Be that as it may, I’m not the only one to have substituted “eating” for “living,” but the idea seems timely in this age of junk food, industrialized agriculture and diminishing resources.

What does it really mean to “eat well,” and where does the revenge come in?

Although I consider myself a foodie, a person who loves to eat, prefers farmers’ markets to clothes boutiques, and cooks for the sheer fun of it, one book got me thinking more deeply about these questions. Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Bloomsbury, London, 2007) is not an obvious “good read.” Many of the facts and figures the author unearths about the food industry in America are terrifying, but he presents and dissects them and our human predicament in an engaging, amusing and elegant style that rivals that of a gripping thriller.

Pollan begins by asking, “What shall we have for dinner?” This seemingly innocent query launches him into an investigation of his home country’s humongous corn mountain and the way those golden kernels trickle into virtually every kind of processed food. He adopts a steer, Number 534, and follows it from its birthplace on the prairie to a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation), where it and thousands of its fellow critters are raised on something they are ill equipped to digest. With stomachs designed to eat grass, cattle sicken when fed corn. But corn is cheap and fattens them more quickly than grass. Never mind that it must be administered along with heavy doses of antibiotics to keep the beasts alive until they’re heavy enough to be slaughtered. And to keep at bay the illnesses induced by the lagoon of manure in which they wallow.

The corn mountain, or rather the US government’s promotion and manipulation of it since the time of the Nixon administration, is responsible for the over-industrialization of agriculture, the heavy duty pollution of the US water supply and soil with petrochemical fertilizers and insecticides, and for Americans’ being the biggest consumers of corn in the world. No, they don’t eat more tamales and tortillas than the Mexicans; they just stuff themselves with the mysterious corn syrups and additives listed in small print on the labels of virtually every package of processed food in their supermarkets, not to mention burgers ground from corn-fed beef. The American agricultural system is a crime against nature of enormous magnitude. It benefits a few giant companies while poisoning the rest of us, as well as the earth itself.

So, what’s a hungry person to do? Easy. Boycott it. I don’t mean become a vegan or even a vegetarian. Pollan doesn’t suggest we give up meat. Just that we be more careful about its origins. Look out for independent producers, or even treat yourself to an Argentinian/Uruguayan steak once in a while. Those steers still graze the pampas, and flying their meat to the northern hemisphere causes far less environmental damage than an American CAFO.

It’s harder to avoid ingesting disguised corn, though. Refusing to stock up on all those temptingly packaged convenience foods requires a shift in your habits when you lead a busy life and don’t have time to shop for and prepare meals from scratch. But think about it. Do you really want all those chemicals, preservatives and artificial ingredients gurgling round your intestines, contributing to your blood, muscles and grey matter?

Alas, as Pollan points out, organic products don’t always represent a viable alternative. The Organic Revolution of the 60’s has itself transmogrified into a sizeable industry. A free-range chicken, for example, merely has to have “access” to the out-of-doors. But because the chicken isn’t actually set down in it, it doesn’t know enough to pass through the flap. The good news is that these birds don’t peck at antibiotics, either.

After investigating and exposing the food industry, Pollan treats himself and us to a visit to an “old-fashioned” but highly scientific diversified farm in Virginia. There, everything—grasses, cattle, chickens, pigs and even corn—is meticulously balanced and extraordinarily harmonious. The animals are content and disease-free; their symbiosis even replenishes the soil and keeps the pastures healthy. It is good to know that such an ideal exists, and if there were such a place near me, I would patronize it exclusively.

But Pollan hasn’t finished his quest. His last step is into the moccasins of a hunter-gatherer. This takes some training but, eventually, he manages to shoot a feral pig and track down colonies of wild mushrooms in the hills around Berkeley.

To conclude, after his foray into industrialized agriculture, Pollan contrasts the cheap ($14.) Big Mac and fries he once “served” his wife and son with the labor-intensive feast that took him several days to prepare with his wild ingredients. Both are equally untenable on a daily basis. But, while the cost of the latter meal is steep, he says, “yet it is acknowledged and paid for; by comparison the price of the [first] meal seems a bargain but fails to cover its true cost, charging it instead to nature, to the public health and purse, and to the future.”

For the time being, at least, we in Greece are luckier than Americans in our eating choices. Foraging is common. Half the population collects wild greens, whether from the countryside or vacant city lots. Our sheep and goats graze freely, usually under a shepherd’s watchful eye. Assembly lines do turn their milk into feta and yogurt but artisanal products are widely available, too. The free-range chickens we eat on the island of Andros are so tough you know they’ve been running around a farmyard. Every neighborhood in Athens has a weekly farmers’ market and, best of all, each one of us uses a staggering 20 liters of olive oil each year, extra virgin and organic if we desire, to make whatever we cook superbly palatable as well as good for us.

Eating well can indeed comprise sweet revenge when you consider the alternatives.