Now is the end of the cereal aisle metaphor. I am a couple years late in following up on the work of Michael Pollan. I read 'The Botany of Desire' several years back and was stunned. Pollan talks about the thing we in the information business almost never talk about which is the supply chain of food. He has demystified that which we have been taking for granted and he has stirred up the self-evident controversy which is there. It goes a little something like this.
It turns out that so many farmers grow corn that corn has become so cheap that the cereal aisle is not a good way to judge the efficacy of the market. The processed in processed food is the corn and they are making corn into everything because there is too much. So the marketing of food has taken over what determines what we eat and it's not all good. The cheapest food is not necessarily the best. Even our poor people are fat is because they're on their way to diabetes, not because this is necessarily a land of plenty. Our poor people don't grow cabbages in their own backyards any longer. They are just eating at McDonalds and it's killing them. The Cheez Whiz, the Twinkies, the fortified breakfast cereals are all culprits. Why? Because they are not real food. The selection is there because it's false - it's like the selection of videos on MTV. It doesn't mean we have an excess of talent. In agribusiness there are various inversions of commonsense economics associated with the markets of foodstuffs. Essentially demand is almost infinitely elastic. Everybody eats up to a point, no matter how expensive. Beyond that point we have to be force fed. So what if you have a crop that's so successful that there's more food than anyone could possibly eat? Thats what we have with corn in the US, and so our friends at Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland force feed us and cows both. It's not expensive oil that's killing us, it's cheap corn.
Cows are not supposed to eat corn, they are supposed to eat grass. But since we in the US have a whole lot of corn and corn is the cheapest way to stuff a steer full of calories, we feed them corn. Corn-fed beef is, simply stated, unnatural. The cows' have rumens, not ordinary stomachs like us. They are supposed to be eating a different kind of stuff because their metabolisms can process such stuffs. Like some people are lactose intolerant, cows are essentially corn intolerant. One result is all that methane you've been hearing about. Cow farts and belches are on the rise and contribute to greenhouse gasses. Fortunately, methane dissipates relatively quickly. Not so, cattle's heartburn. So 'ranchers' stuff them full of antacids. But while the cows rumens turn acidic, they become host to new strains of e Coli which thrive in acidic environments. So 'ranchers' stuff them full of antibiotics. But we're talking millions of head of cattle, and godzillions of bacteria, some of which will eventually become drug resistant. And guess what? Since we humans have naturally acidic stomachs these are the e Coli that can live in us too, and some of them are just deadly. Wonderful. There are technical workarounds to be sure but we're doing a lot of work here just to slaughter beef earlier in their lives. Nature pushes back.
That's the first quarter of the book and once again I am feeling rather stunned and informed. Pollan is on the T50 list and every one of his writings has the clarity and probity of the works of John McPhee. Pollan is the intellectual patron saint of smart eaters, and so I have to get through this disturbing work onto the next. I'll also be feeding it to the Spousal Unit for the good of all of us. What is most surprising in reading Pollan is how we normally smart folks can fall for some hokum because the level of retardation in general is so startlingly high. It's relatively easy to be provident, but damned hard to be intelligently informed when it comes to our food supply chain. That's my aim. I think it could even swear me off Carl's Jr. That's saying a lot.
Pollan does me the favor of being biased and provocative, because it's very easy to say 'so what'. One's liberal knee (I have those occasionally) jerks to ask whether it is good or bad to eat American beef or corn. Well, there's not much influence you can have except over your own health and meal plan is there? If you monitor your own caloric intake or carbon footprint or sexist thoughts for the day, that's all well and good, but what effect will that have on society? Not bloody much - primarily because any change in popular taste only constitutes a half-ass populist movement. Anyone can change, any million can change. Change does not insure reform, it just funds alternative markets. You'd think 'organic' food is organic. The answer is Clintonesque. That depends upon what the definition of 'organic' is. You can be sure that if you have no idea what lecithin is, then you probably don't have a workable definition of organic. We've got scientific animism at work here, not to mention dueling narratives evoking semiotic myths. Sure, I'll endeavor to become a smart eater. It's not going to change Cargill.
Ever since Pollan piqued me with his story about opium, I've been thinking about red- and blackneck fantasies of off-grid hideouts and organic retirement. I'm coming back around to thinking about such matters again, especially this year since I've begun my gardening again. The Spousal Unit got a rose bush from me for Valentines Day 2008 and the first yellow roses bloomed this past week. They're almost thorny enough to resist the squirrels, but I guard them still. Moreover, in cross-pollination with the ideas of Venter, I am coming to believe that within my lifetime, some form of Dyson's Utopia may become available. That's the home run. I will certainly revisit these ideas in the Critical Theory category as time rolls forward.
In the meantime, as a mark of American prosperity, the diversity of brands in the Cereal Aisle no longer counts. It is a false indicator of diversity and is hereby retired.
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