The Omnivore’s Dilemma
• Our National Eating Disorder
• “What should we eat”: a Q the country is
neurotic about
– Atkins: Carbophobia vs. previous lipophobia
• Why do we pay politician’s to argue over
an official government food pyramid?
• Why are diet books an million 4 industry?
• AND WE ARE STILL FAT.
100-Mile Diet
control
Abs Diet
Alkaline diet
Atkins diet
Best Bet Diet
Blood Type diet
Body for Life
Breatharian diet
Buddhist diet
Cabbage soup diet
The Cambridge diet
Candida control
diet
Christian
Vegetarianism
Cretan diet
Detox diet
Diabetic diet
Diet for a New
America
The Diet Smart
Plan
DASH Diet
Dr. Hay diet
Fat Resistance
Diet
Feingold diet
Fit for Life diet
Flexitarian diet
Food combining
diet
Fruitarian diet
Gerson diet
Gluten-free,
casein-free diet
Glycemic Index
diet
The Graham Diet
Grapefruit diet
Hacker's diet
Halal diet
Hallelujah diet
High protein diet
Jenny Craig
Joel Fuhrman diet
Kosher diet
Lacto vegetarianism
Living foods diet
Low-carbohydrate
diet
Low-protein diet
Macrobiotic diet
Master Cleanse
Mediterranean diet
Montignac diet
Natural Foods Diet
Negative calorie
diet
No-Grain Diet
Okinawa diet
The Optimal Diet
Organic food diet
Ornish Diet
Ovo-lacto
vegetarian diet
Paleolithic-style
diet
Perricone diet
Pescetarian diet
Plant-based diet
Pollotarian diet
Pritikin diet
Rastafarian diet
Raw foodism
Rice Diet/Duke
University diet
Scarsdale Diet
Shangri-La Diet
Slimming World diet
Sonoma diet
South Beach diet
Stillman diet
Subway diet
Vegan diet
Vegetarian diet
Very low calorie
diet
Weigh Down diet
Weight Watchers
Western pattern
diet
Zone diet
Does A=B=C?
• Some cultures don’t
have diet books
decide what to eat
based on pleasure
eat heavy creams,
fats, and meats, and
are still healthier than
us.
• The French: They eat
foie gras!
• We’re omnivore’s so
we’ve got choices
• What should we eat?
• Koala’s don’t have this
problem: It’s all
eucalyptus all the time.
• We’ve got complicated
equipment
– Remember what’s poison?
– What’s a bitter alkaloid?
– Why bother to feel disgust?
• Does America’s
melting pot /
abundance leave us
with no discernable
culture of food?
• Does it leave us
susceptible to food
scientists/marketers/a
dvertisements
•
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Organic/conventional?
Local organic/imported organic?
Wild fish/farmed fish?
Trans fats/butter/ “not-butter”?
Carnivore/vegetarian?
Lactovegetarian/vegan/pescatarian?
“heart healthy, no trans fats, cage-free,
range-fed, natural grill flavor, artificial
flavor, TBHQ, xanthan gum, flavinoids,
aspartate, riboflavin
• Are there moral/psychological implications
to killing/preparing/eating a wild animal?
• Where we fit in the food
chain determines what
kind of creature we are.
• You are what you eat and
how you eat.
– For us that’s mostly
processed corn derivatives
• Body & soul
• Is our omnivory at the
root of our savagery/
civility?
• Mr. Creosote 
• As tool users we
reinvent the food
chain & so
“y.are.w.y.e.” includes
society as a whole.
• There’s 3 principle
ways humans get
food
– Industrial
– Organic (postindustrial)
– Hunter-gatherer
(fishing/mushrooming)
• In all 3 the health of
one end affects the
health at the other
• We’re all competing
for Sun’s energy as
captured in complex
C molecules.
• Those cal. get passed
around.
• Industrialization has
moved source of E
from the sun  fossil
fuels
– Way more food
available
• Eating is our most profound engagement
with the natural world.
– Coevolution
– A choice of desires
– Ecological choice
– Political choice
In Grizzly man, the guy engages nature but in a way that strikes us as some how wrong
• So in the supermarket
we can identify some
species
• And there are some
things that are clearly
processed
• everything relies on some
plant growing somewhere
even the animals
• Sometimes it’s easy to
know where food came
from, sometimes not.
• What species of organism
is in a poptart, twinkie,
cheezewhiz,or gogurt?
• But you can trace where
all the ingredients in a
twinkie come from.
• If you can’t tell where it
came from it’s industrial
food.
• Corn is at the basis of many industrialized foods
Zea Mays: A giant tropical grass
• Feeds all the meat, even
fish.
• All the dairy is from cows
eating corn
• Chicken nugget: Chicken
ate corn, corn starch
holds it together, corn
flour in batter, fried in
corn oil, more on next
slide
• Soda? Have some corn
with your corn.
– High Fructose What
• Starch, glucose syrup, maltodextrin, crystalline
fructose, ascorbic acid, lecithin, glycerides,
coloring, citric acid, lactic acid, lysine, MSG,
polyols, xanthan gum
• Corn is in coffee creamer, Cheez Whiz, frozen
yogurt, TV dinner, Canned food, ketchup, candy,
soups, snacks, cake mixes, frosting, gravy,
waffles, hot sauce, mayo, mustard, hot dogs,
margarine, shortening, toothpaste, cosmetics,
diapers, trashbags, cleaners, charcoal,
vegetable wax that covers other plants, coating
for cardboard, linoleum, glues, and the twinkie.
• About ¼ the items in the store
• In S. America corn
can be ~40% of
calories.
– Mayans have used it
for 9K years
– It’s adapted to every
microclimate in the
West
• Why don’t we think of
ourselves as corn
people?
• Considering there are
more that 10K new
food products every
year that are just
rearranging the
molecules.
• Corn’s a C-4 plant.
• Malate, one of the intermediates
has 4 C
• As part of the Calvin cycle it
converts CO2 and RuBP into
useable sugars
– Takes in more CO2 every time it
opens it’s stomata
• This is more come complicated
than C3 plants, takes more E,
but is more efficient in tough
conditions
• represent 5% of Earth's plant
biomass and 1% of its known
plant species.
• However, accounts for 30% of
terrestrial carbon fixation
• Sugar’s another species of C4
• 1493 Columbus is all “hey check
out maize.”
– Corn used to mean any kind of grain
or salt (hence corned beef)
• 1621 Squanto: Stop starving to
death colonists, here’s how you
plant it.
– Colonists: Get off our land, here’s
how you ferment it. Now we’re going
to sell corn to Africa for slaves.
Capitalism rawks.
– 1800’s General Philip Sheridan is all
“hey the Indians need corn let’s wipe
it out.”
Corn by itself is messed up
• There’s no wild corn, it’s descended from a
pretty dif. Plant.
• Plant a whole cob and any seedlings that
wriggle out of the husk will crowd
themselves to death.
• Girl organs ½ down the stalk wrapped up
• Boy organs at the top in the tassle
• The two don’t really meet.
Corn sex
• Self-fertilized, wind
pollinated.
• Tassles at the top
release millions of
pollen grains that
have to get to female
flowers down near the
corn’s crotch.
• Each flower sends a
silk strand out of the
tassle.
• If pollen hits silk strand it divides into two
parts. 1 part bores a hole down to the
flower and the other slides down the hole.
• Then the hole borer forms the big starchy
part of the kernel
• Every kernel is the product of an intricate
menage a trois.
• Nubbins at the tip of a cob are flowers that
didn’t get pollen.
• None of this happens without human
intervention.
The perfect industrial crop
• Corn can be bred to gorw
upright, stiff stalked and
uniform in height.
• It grows fine in
petrochemical fertilizer
and can survive lots of
chemicals we throw at it.
• Corn seeds will breed true
for a generation, then the
grandkids are pathetic. So
it’s good for patenting.
Iowa
• 2 feet of aluvial loam.
• Decaying prairie grass
will leave another inch or
2 every decade
• It was probably once 4
feet deep, but dust
storms and erosion take
their toll
• Imports 80% of its food.
• So much land is given to
corn grown by so few that
it takes 4 high schools to
field a football team.
• Ashton Kutcher’s from
there.
– Sometimes people confuse
me with him.
• Turn of century ¼ of
Americans farmed
• Now 2 mill out of 300
mil (0.6%) of us farm
• Each farmer feeds ~
130 people, in a
sense (output per
worker) the most
productive humans
ever.
• You can fit 30K
hybrids onto an acre.
It used to be 8K.
(clones/monculture)
Does wood’s American Gothic,
painted in 1930 satirize or honor
Farmers?
Do you see any patterns in it?
The Government’s role in pimping corn.
• Some farmer’s call corn the
welfare queen.
• Post WWII the gov had extra
ammonium nitrate from
munitions plants, this is also
good fertilizer.
• Nitrogen in the soil no longer
limited the number of years in
a row you had to plant corn
– (Had to rotate legumes (soy)
in to get N back)
– Farmer’s also put down lots
extra which gets washed into
Des Moines river
– In water Nitrates convert to
Nitrites which can tie up a
baby’s hemoglobin causing
“blue baby” alerts
50 lbs of NH4NO3 fuel was used to
blow up this car
’95, OK city
bombing was the
deadliest attack
before 9/11
5,000 pounds
(2,300 kg) of
ammonium nitrate
fertilizer,
nitromethane, and
diesel fuel mixture
Fritz Haber
• Haber-Bosch process was able to “fix”
atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer
– 2/5 of the people alive today have food because of
this extra fertilizer.
• Haber (Jewish guy (later converted)) also helped
Germany keep making munitions in WWI after
UK cut off nitrate mines in Chile
– Realize in WWI many Ger. troops were jewish.
• Made Zyklon B
• Wife killed herself
• Synthetic fertilizers,
tractors, harvesters,
require fossil fuels
• An acre of industrial
corn needs ~ 50 gal
of oil.
– It takes more than a
calorie of fuel to make
a cal. of corn.
– Thank god oil is so
cheap and the middle
east and Sudan loves
us so much to sell it to
us.
• Today the price of a
bushel is ~ 1$ lower
than the cost of
growing it. Great for
everyone but farmer.
• So why plant it?
• Since Nixon gov
programs drive down
corn prices and drive
up production
amounts.
– It is subsidized = corn
welfare
Trouble of being a group of farmers
• Great year = too
much food, no
demand
• Bad year = No supply
• In the bible they made
programs to store
grains.
– There’s some around
in bad years, farmers
can sell excess to the
reserve in good years.
30’s New Deal
• Give corn a target price based on cost to
produce
• If market cost drops below this farmers
have a choice.
– In a good year, take out a loan with crop as
collateral, use loan to store crop until prices
supply shrinks
– If corn stays cheap he gives the gov his corn
and keeps the loan.
• This is hardly laissezfaire economics
• It has critics
• Why are farmers dif?
Why are they
supported by the
gov?
• When productivity
became so good
adversaries made
their move against
farmers
Earl “Rusty” Butz
• Nixon’s secretary of Agriculture
– Big time old school racist
• ’72 Rus buys 30 mil tons of US grain.
– Also a bad year for grain
• ’73: supply is down and food prices go up to all time
high. Protests at markets, Cows cost too much to feed.
• Butz is all, “plant way more!”
• Forget the target price. No loans, flood the market and
the gov will make up some of the difference
• Pushed for big farms.
• Instead of keeping corn
from flooding the market,
he set up rules to
encourage selling corn at
any price & the gov would
pay the dif from the target
price.
• But they’ve since lowered
the target price so the
Farmer’s don’t get as
much for selling corn
below the target price
– Big purchasers of grain had
a hand in shaping these
rules
Corn farmers got burnt
• Why do farmers
choose to grow corn
when people pay less
for it now?
• A farmers success is
measured in bushels
per acre.
– In terms of rep among
farmers
– The only buyers in
town are buying corn.
– Corn is the most
efficient way to make
calories on the land
• That’s what buyers are
looking for, cheapest
calories.
Results
• America has a HUGE surplus
of corn.
• We find easy ways to get rid of
it
• Feed it to our meat, even if the
meat doesn’t normally eat corn
– Cows & salmon
• Put High Fructose Corn Syrup
in everything
– Cheap unhealthy food makes
people fat
• Export it
• Put it into cars
– If it takes oil based fertilizers
to grow corn how does ethanol
offer an alternative to gas?
Why call it corn fed beef?
• Cows don’t naturally eat
corn.
• But corn fattens them up
quicker so we have more
cheap available meat.
– 1950’s cow was 2-3 y.old
before slaughter
– We get it to that weight now
in less than 1 ½ years.
• That’s 80  1,000 pounds
– Speedy, efficient & gov
approved.
• Now cows live on this
diet in crowded
conditions for ~ 5
months
• That’s about all they
can stand
• So they’re on
antibiotics the whole
time
• Resistant super bugs
could evolve.
• In the past: you’d feed
animals on your farm
waste plants, and use the
animal waste to fertilize
plants
• Now plants are fertilized
with oil, and animal
waste pollutes water.
– Broken cycle
Globally
• There’s money to be
made in tearing down
the rain forest
• Swallow this: Tearing
down the rain forests
will stop global
warming
• Biofuels are popular
to stop our use of oil
so…
– Gov will subsidize you
Trade offs
• As Americans grow more
corn for ethanol,
Brazillians will grow soy
on forests since
Americans aren’t and
there is still soy demand.
– And who are we to tell poor
Brazillians they can’t cash
in?
– They want what we have,
and they’ll do what we did
to get theirs.
– Consider that if we use
food for fuel, then other
people will go hungry.
• tippingpointtippingpointtip
pingpointtippingpoint
tippingpointtippingpointtip
What’s a policy maker to do?
• Politicians are giving us
what we asked for right?
– They’re all pretty much in
agreement that we’re going
to use more corn based
ethanols.
– They’re giving your taxes
for this
• Iowa’s agridustrial
infrastructure is changing
in prep for this ($ to be
made)
Democratic monarchy
A problem with the idea of biofuels
• Good thing: biofuels
take carbon dioxide
out of the atmosphere
and put it in plants
we’ll grow for fuels.
• Bad thing to grow
plants for fuels we’ll
cut down lots of
forests that stored
way more carbon
than crops did.
So… too much corn
• Humans evolved elastic
appetites, and we
accommodate the corn in
our diets
– If there’s more food we’ll
eat past the point of satiety
– Why does that make
evolutionary sense?
• Wallerstein figured out
that people feel piggish
about going back for
seconds
– But if they can supersize
they’ll get seconds when
they get firsts and not feel
bad
A bit on vegetarians
• ~10 mil Americans (~3%
of the country)
• Choose between a
severely handicapped
human and a normal
chimp
• Choose between lots of
pigs and the development
of the artificial heart
– Morally justifiable choices
• Choose between an
animals life of suffering
and you feel like eating
meat
– Tougher to justify morally
without being selfish
Do they suffer or just feel pain?
• distinguish pain which
animals feel and real
suffering which we have
as sentient beings
– Does this justify eating
meat?
• Does our ability to have
language make pain
worse for us? Does it
give us a stronger
weapon to deal with
pain?
– Castration for animals vs
us
Just look
• I’m not saying its right or
wrong, that’s for you to decide.
• But how does it sound when
you just read how it works…
– Put 12 laying hens in a cage
too small to move
– some cannibalize each other,
others rub their skin off on the
cage
– ~10% die
– When a hen starts to lay fewer
eggs she is denied food, light
and water for several days,
this stimulates a last set of
eggs before death.
• Is this cruel? Do we have to
be blind to it to eat food?
Using pictures of animal cruelty is a
paradox.
• Do humans generally want to look at explicit pictures of
animal suffering?
– Not dead animals, but living animals that have been starved,
fought, tortured.
• What emotions does it cause?
– Revolt, disappointment, disgust, anger,
• People show these kinds of pictures because it moves
them, and they want it to stop, and they think the
pictures will convince others. But does it convince or
make you look offensive & radical?
– Not just animal cruelty, abortion, death penalty, war
• It might be that only those who voluntarily look because
they want to know are most affected by these pictures.
• So how do you live your life, ignorant of what goes on?
• Bottom line: as Earth
approaches carrying
capacity for humans
every acre we use to
grow crops for fuel is an
acre we don’t use to grow
food
• And the idea of an
untouched wilderness is
paved
• Justify a parking lot or
golf course when there
are 15 billion people.
– I’m rich
– Okay good justification,
you’re the best Christian
ever.