This paper offers a critical reading of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, focusing specifically on how Pollan portrays vegetarianism and young people who choose plant-based diets. The author argues that Pollan's narrative, while skillfully crafted and morally engaged, treats adolescent vegetarianism with dismissiveness and elitism. Drawing on survey data from Time magazine and the Vegetarian Resource Group, the paper presents evidence that millions of American youth maintain vegetarian diets for substantive reasons beyond passing phases. The paper concludes that a more thorough engagement with vegetarianism would have strengthened Pollan's analysis of America's obesity crisis.
The paper demonstrates evaluative reading: it acknowledges Pollan's strengths as a writer and the merits of his argument before isolating a specific blind spot — his condescension toward young vegetarians. This balanced approach, crediting the source before critiquing it, is a hallmark of credible academic analysis and prevents the review from reading as a polemic.
The paper opens with a brief overview of Pollan's book and a clear thesis. It then moves into the moral dimensions of Pollan's treatment of animal slaughter, using the chicken-dinner scene as a focal point. A middle section marshals survey data to challenge Pollan's implied view that youth vegetarianism is merely a phase. The paper closes by examining Pollan's own stated ambivalence about vegetarianism before offering a brief conclusion about elitism. The structure mirrors a standard evaluative essay: context, textual analysis, counter-evidence, and judgment.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan touches on many issues relative to what humans eat. In the process, he spends considerable time covering the poor eating habits of Americans and the likely reasons for the obesity crisis in the United States — including the overconsumption of carbohydrates. His narrative includes animal flesh produced on so-called "factory farms" — including pig meat he proudly kills himself — and in doing so he raises moral and psychological issues in a very well-presented book. His moral perspective comes through between the lines, but his approach to the subject of vegetarianism arrives with a sprinkle of cynicism and a splash of cryptic tokenism for good measure.
A broader view of vegetarianism — and the reasons why millions of people eschew animal flesh — would have given Pollan's book more contemporary vitality and could have addressed the obesity crisis in America more realistically.
Strangely yet interestingly, Pollan discusses the gourmet chicken dinner he prepared with food from an idyllic organic farm in Virginia shortly after describing how factory farms sever the artery of the chicken rather than the head. Was the real point of this chronology the dramatic juxtaposition of the two approaches to killing chickens? Perhaps he used that contrast in killing styles to justify his passion for animal flesh. Pollan suggests that killing one chicken raised in a place "of almost classic pastoral beauty" is healthier and more moral than the slaughter of countless chickens on a factory farm — and he may well be correct.
His description of the organic Virginia farm — pristine because the farmer introduces zero pesticides, antibiotics, or synthetic fertilizers to the soil — seems to make the food taste better. But notwithstanding his reasons for contrasting slaughter techniques, and for the glowing positives he presents regarding the self-sustaining farm, Pollan gives short shrift at the dinner table to a fifteen-year-old who declines his chicken dinner — a meal he calls "out of this world." An alert reader wonders why Pollan did not take time to explain why this teenager became a vegetarian. Instead, the young person is described as "currently a vegetarian," the word currently implying that the phase may not last — that it is simply a teenager's passing fancy.
The implication is that this young vegetarian may not hold the position in a week or a month. But who is to say the commitment will not last a lifetime? In making this point, Pollan is essentially critiquing adolescence in a negative way. He may be a brilliant professor, and his book is undeniably well crafted and has received strong critical praise, but his narrative smacks of elitism when he addresses the youthful vegetarians of this world.
If conventional wisdom holds that young people who embrace vegetarianism are merely going through a phase — or that they have eating disorders and are obsessed with their weight — that is both disappointing and a generalization that does not hold up to scholarly scrutiny.
A study published in Time (Cloud, 2009) surveyed the eating habits of 2,516 young people in Minnesota between the ages of 15 and 23. Of those participants, only 108 identified as vegetarians — just 4.3%. While the study showed that young vegetarians are just as likely to be concerned about weight gain as they are troubled by the slaughter of animals, the key finding was clear: "vegetarians were healthier" (Cloud, p. 1). Vegetarian young people tended to consume less than 30% of their calories from fat, while the opposite was true of their non-vegetarian peers, who derived more than 30% of their calories from fat (Cloud, pp. 1–2).
Another survey, conducted by the Harris Interactive polling organization and contracted by the Vegetarian Resource Group, found that approximately 7% of youth between the ages of 8 and 18 "never eat meat" (Stahler, 2010). Moreover, the survey shows that 12% of males between the ages of 10 and 12 "don't eat meat" (Stahler, p. 1). A further 3% of all U.S. youth report that they "never eat meat, poultry, and fish/seafood," while only 1% of American youth — roughly one-third of all vegetarians — never consume "dairy, eggs, and honey" in addition to meat (Stahler, p. 1).
The authors estimate that approximately 1.4 million young people in the U.S. are vegetarian in the strict sense — that is, they abstain not only from meat but also from dairy, eggs, and honey — and that "about three million never eat meat" (Stahler, p. 1). Among youth who never eat meat, the Harris Poll found that 12% of males aged 10–12 and 3% of females aged 10–12 avoid meat entirely. Among those aged 13–15, 9% of females and 5% of males never eat meat (Stahler, p. 2).
Pollan's talent as a writer cannot mask his elitism when it comes to those young people who prefer not to eat meat. His best-seller makes many valuable points and is brutally honest when the author discusses his joy at shooting a pig. But a broader, more generous engagement with vegetarianism — and with the millions of young Americans who practice it for well-documented health and ethical reasons — would have made the book stronger and its treatment of America's obesity crisis more complete.
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