Week 1 The Omnivore's Dilemma

The easiest way to finish today's reading assignment is to answer the questions I myself raised. 

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Guiding Questions

This is the very first day we officiallystart reading this book together. Reading of The Omnivore’s Dilemma can be aquite different experience with reading a novel like The Help, since the formeris a typical book of social studies. One reason I like reading social studiesis that it feels so close to my life, so why not think about the questionsduring the reading: how does what the writer says relate to my own livingexperience? Why does the subject matter? Does the writer’s thoughts conflict with mine? Can I challenge some of the writer’s arguments? etc.

Actually, when I read the book for the first time several years ago, I was shocked. First by the facts behind food industry. Second by the way a book can be written like this, both informational and intriguing. I like this topic because I really care about eating in my life. 

11/4/2018

Today’s reading task is from the beginningto Page 31. For a book like this, I strongly recommend you read theINTRODUCTION so as to have a thorough idea about where this book will lead you.During the reading, feel free to omit the terminologies, the statistics,whatever you don’t like, but do focus on looking for the writer’s opinions aswell as evidences, cause my questions are gonna pertain to those arguments andlogics.

Q1: Tracing back to the very beginning ofthe food chain (such as the producing area/the food processing company), where do you think YOUR last supper come from?

I had my lunch in a traditional Yunan Food restaurant. This nood I had several disgusting fried insects, wild vegetables, fish, dry beef, etc. The insects came from Xishuangbanna, where people farm the insects on a large scale. The wild vegetables are also industrially cultivated. They tastes good. 

Q2: How does the author connect chickennugget with corn?

The chicken is fed by corn; the pastry is made from corn starch; the oil is from corn. The soda is sweetened by corn syrup.

12/4/2018

Today's reading task is Chapter Two The Farm(page32-56)

Question 1: Since 1920s, the yields of corn have raised from about 20 bushels per acre to almost 200 bushels per acre. Why or how are the yields able to increase so much?

Due to the advanced bio-technology and modern fertilizer, every stalk of corn can utilize less place and less resource to yield.

Question 2: Where does the excessive fertilizer end up?

The excessive fertilizer runs off the land into streams, underground water, and finally into the ocean. So the toxin in the fertilizer will affect the whole ecosystem in general.

13/4/2018

Today we’ll have a rather easy reading:Chapter Three The Elevator (pp 57-64). In this Chapter, Pollan depicts what thegrain elevators are like, and the possible manipulating forces behinds those“giant barns”.

Question 1: How does the government manage to keep corn production high and corn prices low?

Basically, the government changed its policy, from loaning money to farmers to directly subsidizing farmers. Thus in order to make more money, farmers would produce more corn rather than control the production-demand relationship. 

14/4/2018

Today’s reading task is Chapter Four The Feedlot (pp. 65-84). 

In this chapter, Pollan traces the life of a steer (牛) from its birth place to its feedlot. It used to take a cattle 4-5years to get slaughtered, but now the growing time has been compressed to 16months. In this highly unnatural process, something wrong must ensue.

Question 1: What problems do cattle have when their staple food is corn?

They will get fat unnaturally and ge sick. And they will feel sad.

Question 2: What risks can human have if people do not properly dispose the feedlot wastes?

The wastes, which contains antibiotics and hormone, will finally go into human body with the water circulation system. Maybe one day people will be easily exterminated by some strain of superbacteria.  

Question 3: After reading this chapter, do you want to eat industrial meat anymore?

I have to, because there is no market for safe meat and because I'm poor.

When you read this chapter, did you findPollan’s language humorous, with a sense of pathetic irony? That’s what I likeabout reading Pollan’s works. Here are some of the phrases/lines I findinteresting:

1.     The urbanization of modernanimals

2.     An arsenal of new drugs

3.     Eating industrial meat takes analmost heroic act of not knowing or, now, forgetting.

4.     “You are what you eat” is atruism hard to argue with, and yet it is, as a visit to a feedlot suggests, incomplete,for you are what what your eat eats, too. And what we are, or have become, isnot just meat but number 2 corn and oil.