Michael Pollen poses a question that humans ask themselves everyday. What should we have for dinner? I know in my house that is a very hard question to answer. The Seattle Times say that, “Michael Pollen is a Magician.” They like how he turned corn, cows, pigs, and chickens into a brilliant, eye-opening account of how we produce, market and agonize over what we eat. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is about the three principal food chains that sustain us today: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer.
Different as they all are, all three food chains are systems for doing the same thing: linking us, through what we eat, to the fertility of the earth and the energy of the sun. Pollen argues that even a Twinkie does this-constitutes an engagement with the natural world. Pollen brings to light the eating habits of today’s society. Pollen looks into the different food chains that are accessible to our society and how they affect our diets.
The most popular form of acquiring food today is industrial. The industrial food chain begins with corn. Corn is essentially in everything we eat and drink. Corn can be used in many different ways, such as in livestock feed, or as a wide reaching product like high-fructose corn syrup. Corn in now considered to be the basic, fundamental ingredient to nearly all widely produced food products today.