Omnivore\'s Dilemma in 2006, Author and Activist

¶ … Omnivore's Dilemma

In 2006, author and activist Michael Pollan published his classic treatise on America's agricultural abandonment, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural history of Four Meals, which critiques the growing disconnect between the food we consume and the processes used to bring it to our plates in evocative and eloquent terms. By posing the seemingly simple question of what mankind should eat, Pollan disassembles the modern meal in methodical fashion, guiding the reader through the convoluted industry of industrialized agriculture, from the massive corn farming conglomerates that have largely replaced traditional family farms to the processing plants used to modify and preserve food products through artificial means. Much of Pollan's career has been dedicated to exposing what he has termed "the perverse economics of agriculture, which would seem to defy the classical laws of supply and demand" (2006), and throughout The Omnivore's Dilemma he returns to the idea that unrestrained capitalism has led to the unintended consequence of agricultural consolidation. From the factory farm to the industrial feedlot, the processing plant and the supermarket, Pollan explores the confounding combination of apathy and ignorance displayed by the average American while shopping for groceries and eating meals, sprinkling his thorough reporting with rhetorical daggers reminding the reader that "you won't find a fruit with anywhere near the amount of fructose in a soda, or a piece of animal flesh with quite as much fat as a chicken nugget" (2006).

During any comprehensive textual analysis of a work of nonfiction like The Omnivore's Dilemma, it is important for an informed reader to develop a contextual understanding of the author's perspective and platform. The presence of preconceived biases or ulterior motives within a text is more easily detected when a reader has familiarized themselves with the author's previous work, public statements, and private activity. Pollan is the author of several previously published books focused on the insidious spread of industrialized agriculture, including Second Nature, A Place of My Own, and The Botany of Desire, which like The Omnivore's Dilemma became a New York Times bestseller. A contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, Pollan has also served as the Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and he regularly publishes a widely read food production reform blog for the New York Times' website. Considering this widely regarded and well respected background in investigative journalism, it is reasonable to expect that Pollan will combine a wealth of empirically researched statistical evidence with passionately written anecdotal accounts to deliver his intended message with maximum emotional effectiveness. Indeed, an example of Pollan's ability to use logos, pathos, and ethos concurrently while describing relatively dense subject matter like the history of corn farming equipment can be found in Section Two of the book, "The Farm," in which Pollan presents the tragically compelling case of George Naylor, an Iowa corn farmer who has experienced the industrialization of food production firsthand. As Pollan succinctly explains, "the story of the Naylor farm since 1919, when George's grandfather bought it, closely tracks the twentieth-century story of American agriculture, its achievements as well as its disasters" (2006), and through his well-honed style of investigative reporting, the recognized authority on modern food production reform manages to connect the story of a single farmer to the demise of an historic concept: localized food production via the family farm model.