What I've learned from reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

                Did you know that there's one food that's in almost everything we eat?  I didn't know until I read The Omnivore's Dilemma.  Corn is in almost every food we eat, especially processed food.  Think about it, the cereal you eat for breakfast probably has corn syrup; the soda you drink at lunch is mostly corn; even the meat you eat for dinner (if you eat meat) is made of corn.  The cows, chickens, pigs, sheep, and even the fish that people eat all ate corn.  So, of course, the meat is made of corn, too. 

                But corn isn't just in food, it's in cosmetics.  It makes the cover of your magazine shiny.  Corn is in fireworks and printer ink.  Corn covers more acres of land than any other living thing.  Even humans. 

                Forty-seven percent of all the corn grown in America is used to feed animals.  But cows should eat grasses, not corn.  When cows are in feedlots, they have to eat antibiotics to stay healthy because it is so dirty and their diets are so bad.  If the cows aren't healthy, how is the meat healthy?  Well, it's not.  Meat from a grass-fed cows is healthier than the meat from a cow who ate corn.  In feedlots, cows even eat bits of other cows.  That's wrong. 

                I didn't know how terribly the animals in feedlots were treated.  If I wasn't a vegetarian before I read this book I would be now.  I won't go into details about what happens to the animals in feedlots, but it's not good.  There isn't even a rule for how much bacteria can be in the meat.

                The part that I found the worst (well, one of the worst parts, all the things about the meat industry were pretty awful) was that humans keep making more efficient ways to kill things.  No other species does that!  Sure, cats eat meat.  So do dogs and a bunch of other animals.  But only humans have entire buildings devoted to murder. 

                In farms, if chickens peck other chickens, they get their beaks cut off.  If pigs bite the tails of other pigs, they get most of their tails cut off.  They only take most of the tail so that the next bite will hurt more.  They do that to "teach the pigs not to get bitten."  Cruel. 

                Twenty cows an hour suffer a painful death.  If those numbers alone are not enough of a reason to think the modern meat industry is cruel, let me put it a different way.  Five percent of cows killed every hour die a terrible, painful death.  To the people who run slaughterhouses, that's okay. 

                Do you know what protein meal is?  It's the bits of animals that people don't eat, all mashed together and fed to other animals.  This isn't so bad if the animal is a carnivore.  But can you imagine eating your own kind if you were a vegetarian - say a hen or a cow?

                Don't even get me started on fast food.  In 1960 a serving of McDonalds French fries only had two-hundred calories in it.  Now, fifty-three years later, it has five-hundred.  It has over double the number of calories it had fifty years ago. 

                One of the chemicals in chicken nuggets is a suspected cause of cancer.  Why is that in there?  Chicken nuggets also have lighter fluid either in them or on the box to preserve freshness, but if humans eat too much of it, they'll die.  Six chicken McNuggets contain twice as much fat as a regular hamburger.  Since McDonald's is selling chicken nuggets in twenty packs, it's like they're trying to make people sick. 

                Koalas used to eat more than just eucalyptus leaves.  Now that they only eat one thing, their brains are smaller because they don't have to think about what they eat.  What about humans?  If we eat mostly corn does that mean that our brains will get smaller too?  If it does, will there be a small group of people who didn't just eat processed food and corn who still have a full-sized brain?  What does this mean for the future of humanity?  I don't know. 

                Some "free-range" chickens are kept in a barn for most of their lives, then they have the option to go outside.  But they're already so used to living in the barn that they don't want to go outside.  Often, by seven weeks old-when they're killed-the chickens can't even walk anymore.  Why do people feel okay eating this? 

                Another thing I learned is that only one percent of mushrooms are safe to eat.  Some mushrooms have false mushrooms that look exactly like them but they'll make you sick. 

                I really learned a lot about food when I read this book.  I would recommend it to anyone who's curious about where their food comes from.