You are what you eat -- and what you eat is corn

I recently finished reading Michael Pollan's excellent and sobering book, THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA. The central thesis of the book -- that (North) Americans have a deeply dysfunctional relationship with food -- is certainly not new. Pollan's contribution is his meticulous tracing of this problem to the famous American over-reliance on capitalism, and specifcally its pernicious impact on what we eat.

Pollan's book is the story of a true butterfly effect, of knock-on impact after knock-on impact that deeply affects our world. He traces much of the difficulty back to a single hardy grass: Zea mays, better known as corn.

That corn is the Root of All Evil is not new to me. Those who know me well have doubtless grown tired of me banging on about agricultural subsidies, and particularly corn subsidies. But until recently, I've approached this issue almost entirely from a Fair Trade angle, fuming about the role of corn subsidies in creating or exacerbating poverty in the developing world. THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA, however, demonstrates convincingly that the problem is much deeper and much closer to home, creating not only socio-economic ripple effects, but also health, animal welfare, and environmental effects that are so massive that they are difficult to over-state.

So fascinatingly layered is the discussion that my main complaint about the book is that Pollan is something of a tease, touching upon countless interesting -- but ultimately parenthetical -- issues without exploring them in any depth. He resists (somewhat heroically) the temptation to digress, merely hinting at a score of related problems that probably warrant a separate book apiece. (For example, the role of the explosives manufacturing industry in post-WWII America is a tantalizing sidebar. Pollan hints that the need to find a home for excess nitrates is behind the fertilizer boom [no pun intended] that undergirds the over-production of corn. But he devotes no more than a few sentences to this issue, leaving the reader curious and frustrated.) He also doesn't dig very deeply into the enabling/causal factors of the agricultural policy environment that allows this problem to continue.

I became so overwhelmed with it all that I sketched out this chart in an attempt to keep track. I quickly ran out of space, so a lot is missing. Even so, it gives you an idea of the scope of the narrative. (Click on the image to enlarge. Green squares are environmental impact, red are health impact, blue is animal welfare, and yellow is socio-economic.)

In short, I highly, highly recommend this book.