Corn, Corn Everywhere...Better Hope It Stays That Way
One of the most prevalent words in the book is "corn." Because corn is a crop that can be grown in artificial fertilizer and because the agricultural industry changed the eating habits of cattle and other animals to corn and because corn can be industrialized into myriad different uses in more grocery store products than most would ever imagine, it can be effectively stated that corn is to the American in the 21st century what cotton was in the 19th century. If some unforeseen catastrophe suddenly made all the corn grown in America too dangerous to grow, the likely effect be worst than the Great Depression. That is the extent to which the food industry is utterly dependent on corn.
Playing God
Agriculture has long been one of nature’s domains in which man has tampered with great success. Over the centuries, farmers have figured out ways to manipulate nature to their own benefit, but in the age of commercial farming and industrialized food, man is manipulating nature in ways like never before and to lengths never imagined. Just the simple diet change from grass on the open fields to corn in the closed pens has altered the meat we eat. The effect of going against nature to pen up animals requires the use of antibiotics and the consequences for human health due to consumption of this food could potentially be devastating due to the bacterial strains developing greater and greater resistance. America’s food industry is making Dr. Frankenstein look like a lab assistant when it comes to tampering with nature and it is just a matter of time before nature strikes back.
Omnivores, Limited
The title of the book refers to the effect on humans of having so much choice when it comes to food. The author places humans in juxtaposition with the koala bear who wakes up every day knowing his diet is going to be eucalyptus. The impact of so much choice has made our daily decisions on what to eat whenever we get hungry the human being’s “most essential and fundamental engagement with the world.” The choice each person makes each item of food to consume will serve to have both short and long-term consequences on physical, emotional and mental well-being. At the same time that we are presented with such a vast number of choices, the variety in terms of major ingredients is remarkably small and for the most part not just chosen for us, but specifically made for us to choose. Most of what we drink is sweetened with corn syrup, most of what we eat for breakfast is loaded with sugar and most of what we dine on come evening time (and any other time, for that matter) has been voraciously seasoned with salt. As omnivores, most humans—especially those living in America—paradoxically have too many choices as well as too limited a choice in what they eat.
