The Complicated life of Corn (and Grass)

Because of the cancelled class from Tuesday, I’ve decided to treat this reading response as a combined response to the first two parts, and the book in general.  First, for the few broad comments I have about the book.  Simply put, I love it.  It is educational, but doesn’t read like a textbook in any way.  Pollan’s writing is clear, his explanations are simple and easy to follow, and he adds in just the right amount of humor to make the book feel light when it needs to, without taking away from the urgency of it.  He’s writing about complicated, important things, and he pulls it off amazingly.

The first section of this book, about corn, had me both angry and terrified as I was reading it.  It definitely made me think about junk food in an entirely new way.  All of the reasons I’ve always considered for not eating processed foods were health reasons-- too much fat, too many calories, too much sodium, etc.  I’ve never thought about it from any other perspective before, and after reading this section, I have to wonder why that is.

Pollan addresses many different aspects of the processing of food that I’d never considered before.  Supporting and consuming processed foods has a great negative impact on many different things besides your own personal health.  Corn processing is damaging the farming industry, the environment, and the economy.  Pretty much every step that corn takes from a field in Iowa to a Chicken McNugget, as is the path shown in the book, harms someone new along the way. 

In addition, reading about how we’ve taken the food out of our food, so to speak, was really alarming to me.  Pollan helped make it clear to me how far away we are from the days when eating real, wholesome, natural foods was an everyday occurrence.  The talk about how processed food was all about being one step ahead of nature and demands was alarming;  I’m honestly a little bit scared for where our culture is heading after reading this book.  What’s next?  Willy Wonka’s meal-in-a-pill?  I feel like all of America is just one short step away from turning into a giant blueberry.

The second section of this book had a slightly different effect on me.  When I started reading, I felt like I was taking a breath of fresh air.  The story of Joel Salatin’s farm was very reassuring.  Here, finally, was someone who knew what they were doing!  This is how it is supposed to be--cows eating grass, grass being fertilized by nature, and the whole system working in harmony!

I soon began to realize that this was hardly the norm, and that this second part of the book wasn’t going to be as filled with wonder as I had been hoping.  The discussions about industrial organic foods and the flaws in these systems was shocking to me.  It namedropped some brands that I’ve always trusted (my precious Horizon milk uses factory farms?!) and I began to realize how loose of a term “organic” really is.  Apparently you don’t have to actually let your chickens roam in order to call them “free range” or shy away from all processing in order to call it “natural.”  Once again, I came away from this reading feeling uneasy, lied to, and all-together appetite-less.