The American Paradox By Michael Pollan - amazonia.fiocruz.br

Doubtful: The American Paradox By Michael Pollan

In the book, Pollan asks the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. As omnivoresthe Amefican unselective eaters, humans are faced with a wide variety of food choices, resulting in a dilemma. Pollan suggests that, prior to modern food preservation and transportation technologies, this particular dilemma was resolved primarily through cultural influences.

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Technologies have recreated the dilemma by making available foods that were previously seasonal or regional. The relationship between food and society, once moderated by culture, now finds itself confused. To learn more about those choices, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us; industrial food, organic foodand food we forage ourselves; from the source to a final meal, and in the process writes a critique of the American way of eating. Noting that corn is the most heavily subsidized U.

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In the first section, he monitors the development of a calf from a pasture in South Dakota, through its stay on a Kansas feedlot, to its end. The author highlights that of everything feedlot cows eat, the most destructive is corn, which tends to damage their livers. Corn-fed cows become sick as a matter of course, a fact accepted by the industry as a cost of doing business. In the second section, Pollan describes the large-scale farms and food-processing outfits that largely satisfy surging demand for organic food, using Whole Foods as a proxy. The author aims to demonstrate that, despite the group's rhetoric, the virtues on sale often prove questionable. The "free-range" chicken on offer, it turns out, hails from a confinement operation with a tiny yard, largely unused by the short-lived birds.

Pollan also accuses large-scale organic agriculture of "floating on a sinking The American Paradox By Michael Pollan of petroleum" by analysing that a one-pound box of California-produced organic lettuce — that contains 80 food calories — requires 4, calories of fossil fuel to process and ship to the East Coast. He adds that the figure would be only "about 4 percent higher if the salad were grown conventionally". One of Pollan's major arguments about the organic farming industry is that it creates an unrealistic pastoral narrative, giving people the false idea that, by definition, organic products come from picturesque open pastures. In contrast to his discussion of the large-scale organic food industry, Pollan presents in the third section Joel Salatina farmer who runs a successful mid-sized, multi-species meat farm in Virginia, and insists on selling his goods close by and on relying on his family and a few interns to supplement his labor.

Pollan discusses how each part of the farm directly helps the others—the sun feeds the grass, the grass feed the cows, the larvae in the cow manure feed the chicken, and the chicken feed the grass with nitrogen. As a result of the various cyclical processes, the farm requires no injection of fossil fuels. The final section The American Paradox By Michael Pollan Pollan attempting to prepare a meal using only ingredients he has Job Satisfaction And Motivation For Employeesgathered, or grown himself.

He recruits assistance from local foodieswho teach him to hunt feral pigsgather wild mushroomsand search for abalone. He also makes a salad of greens from his own garden, bakes sourdough bread using wild yeastand prepares a dessert from cherries picked in his neighborhood. Pollan concludes that the fast food meal and the hunter-gatherer meal are "equally unreal and equally unsustainable". Pollan argues that to "give up" human consumption of animals would lead to a "food chain…even more dependent than it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers since food would need to travel even farther and fertility—in the form of manures—would be in short supply".

Given that, according to Pollan, other than raising ruminants for human consumption, no viable alternatives exist in such grassy areas, for growing any grains or other plant foods for human consumption. Economist Tyler Cowen argued, "The problems with Pollan's 'self-financed' meal reflect the major shortcoming of the book: He focuses on what is before his eyes but neglects the macro perspective of the economist. He wants to make the costs of various foods transparent, but this is an unattainable ideal, given the interconnectedness of markets.

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Washington State Universitysituated in an agricultural area of Washington statechose this book to be part of its freshman reading program in but soon canceled the program. Many in the university's community, including those who run the kinds of Michaep farms The Omnivore's Dilemma discusses, were unhappy with the selection, and speculation [3] was that the cancellation was a result of political pressure. Elson Floydpresident of WSU, stated instead that it was a budgetary issue, and when food safety go here Bill Marler stepped up to cover the claimed shortfall, the program was reinstated, and Pollan was invited to speak on campus.

Studies have shown that the locavorism Pollan advocates is not necessarily beneficial to the The American Paradox By Michael Pollan. As an example, a study by Lincoln University showed that raising sheep, apples, and dairy in the United Kingdom resulted Americxn higher carbon dioxide emissions than importing those products from New Zealand to the UK. Some critics have also argued that simply cutting out meat itself would be much less energy intensive than locavorism. The book has also been published in a young reader's edition, [9] and it is being used in cross curricular lessons by teachers interested in promoting its message. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article reads like a review rather than an encyclopedic description of the subject.

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