Deciding what to eat offers a uniquely modern predicament. When we step into a supermarket, or its large-chain health food store equivalent, the experience is marked by what initially seems to be a dizzying array of choices. We traverse rows upon rows of colorfully stacked breakfast cereal boxes, entire aisles devoted to soup cans, crackers of every ilk and a rainbow-hued splash of fresh fruits and vegetables shipped from around the world.
Journalist Michael Pollan’s investigation of the modern food chains represented in farmers’ bounty and supermarket aisles adopts this quandary for its title, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan borrowed the term from scientist Paul Rozin, who investigated the existential question of how a generalist chooses what to eat.
As we peruse the aisles, closer scrutiny reveals that variety masks the reality: what we actually eat is a very small portion of the planet’s diverse edible bounty. This fact has wide-ranging implications for our food supply, individual health and the health of the planet.
As Pollan says, “if there is one word that covers nearly all the changes industrialization has made to the food chain, it would be simplification.” Simplification in our modern food supply takes many forms.
A striking example of this lies in what we actually grow. Out of all cultivated farmland worldwide, 61% of this land is dedicated to cereal crops. Cereals are the grains and the bulk of these are represented by corn, wheat, rice, barley and millet. Three cereal crops figure in the top five commodity foods in the U.S.: soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton and rice. Commodity foods represent the majority of farmland acreage.
As the business of agriculture shifted from the family farm to agri-business, a parallel shift from diversity to monoculture followed. With this transition, came an increasing use of pesticides, herbicides, commercial fertilizers, high-yield hybrids and now genetically modified seeds. We’ve transformed from foragers sampling a variety of nutrient-dense foods to supermarket shoppers whose carts are filled with different processed permutations of a few commodified, altered products.
Take corn, for instance. The natural history and food chain of corn is one Pollan follows, in detail, in Dilemma. We eat corn under a multitude of guises. Some may be difficult to recognize, since we associate corn with the recognizable corn on the cob featuring prominently in summer barbecues or corn meal pounded flat into tortillas and chips. When reading ingredient labels, corn features heavily, with such names as: maltodextrin, cornstarch, lecithin, corn oil, vegetable oil, mono-, tri- and diglycerides and high fructose corn syrup.
The conventional farm may be rapidly becoming the sterile farm.
While corn as a whole or mildly-processed food has been a crucial part of some peoples’ diets for thousands of years, the highly processed versions are newer introductions for our bodies’ biochemistry. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a super-sweet sugar refined from corn, entered our diets in 1980. Cheaper and sweeter than cane sugar, or sucrose, it became a key ingredient in soda pop in 1984. Now, perusing labels will reveal HFCS in everything from candy bars and juices to salad dressing, crackers, and cookies to spaghetti sauce, ketchup and even “natural” soda pops. Americans eat, on average, 66 pounds of HFCS annually. This is in addition to our already saturated sweet tooth; we consume 158 pounds of refined sugar, from all sources every year.
And what is the relationship we as humans possess with highly processed foods in general and high fructose corn syrup in particular? It’s been a love affair of less than 30 years. Our bodies have adapted over time to the whole foods found in nature. Processed, factory-made foods are new additions to our diet, with sometimes problematic results. High fructose corn syrup is processed slightly differently in the body than most carbohydrates, such as sucrose and the other simple sugars. If we overload our bodies with the super-sweet syrup, the liver will convert it to fats, including triglycerides. For this reason, HFCS doesn’t provide the same quick and easy energy source as do other sugars. Nutritionists and scientists are beginning to implicate it as one of the contributing factors in the dangerously soaring obesity rates.
Wheat is another dietary staple grown for thousands of years and is currently a commodity crop. This grain features as an ingredient in nearly every meal in the form of bread, crackers, rolls, noodles and filler in processed foods. Wheat’s ubiquity is yet another example of limited variety in our food supply. This begs the question of the nature of our relationship to our food. Is it one that is good for our health? If the bulk of our diet is corn and wheat and soy, beneath the shiny supermarket labels, this is a severely restricted situation.
The overall consensus is that variety is good for our health. We need a multitude of nutrients, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals, identified and unknown, for optimal health and well-being. Books such as What Color is Your Diet?, penned by UCLA Center for Human Nutrition Director David Heber, espouse the need to arrange a vibrant palette on your plate. The corn, wheat and other processed foods that bulk up our meals are not providing nutrient-dense choices, but rather calorie-rich fillers. We understand the importance of fruits and vegetables. Still, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics reveal that only 32% of American adults eat fruit at least twice a day, and only 27% of Americans eat vegetables at least three times a day. Choosing highly processed foods is the culprit for the dearth of fruits and vegetables on an American plate.
We may not know exactly what this portends for children growing up with a limited diet. But can conjecture; currently we are seeing the results of less than optimal diets for children in headlines that scream of rising obesity rates and increasing incidences of chronic diseases.
If there is one word that covers nearly all the changes industrialization has made to the food chain, it would be simplification.
–Michael Pollan
Food allergies, intolerances and sensitivities are also more commonly diagnosed; the reason behind the shift is unclear. Reactions range from severe immune system involvement, anaphylactic shock and the inability to breathe to skin disorders such as psoriasis and eczema and digestive problems. Some symptoms of food intolerance can be difficult to discern, as digestive complaints can be ignored or can originate from multiple causes. Interestingly, the list of commodities overlaps the list of the most common food allergies, which is wheat, soy, peas, nuts, peanuts, shellfish, fish and eggs.
As we are choosing a simpler palate, the nutrient density of these foods is also declining. Studies show that the nutrient content of conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables has declined significantly since 1950. For example, protein levels in farmed foods have decreased by 6%, iron levels by 15%, Vitamin C by 20% and measurable levels of riboflavin, one of the B vitamins, have decreased by 38%. Some identified factors include soil nutrient and organic matter depletion. The conventional farm may be rapidly becoming the sterile farm.
At the same time that we are limiting our food selection, we are tampering with its genetic blueprint. The United States is the world’s largest grower of genetically modified (GM) or transgenic crops, producing 63% of the global supply. The most commonly GM grown crops are soybeans, corn, cotton and canola that are resistant to herbicides and insecticides, allowing these chemicals to be used on the fields for pest and weed control. Aside from resistance, one of the first GM crops developed was Bt corn: corn that contained an insecticidal protein from the bacterium Bacillis thuringienisis. In the United States, labeling of genetically modified foods is not mandatory, and GM crops are often mixed with non-modified crops. This confounds actually knowing whether the soybean or canola oil purchased at the supermarket is genetically modified, or not.
Throughout time, our relationships with foods and the ecological milieu in which they grow have created our very bodies, contributing to our state of health and well-being. Pollan, in examining food chains and our food supply, brings it all back to relationship, citing the importance of “relationships among species in what we call food chains, or webs, that reach all the way down to the soil.” With the current nature of our food supply and the quality of our soil, we have to ask ourselves if the standard American diet is a good relationship between ourselves, our food and the ecology of the planet or if it represents one of the dysfunctional variety.
