By Jenifer Vogt
“Imagine if we had a food system that actually produced wholesome food. Imagine if it produced that food in a way that restored the land. Imagine if we could eat every meal knowing these few simple things: What it is we’re eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what it really cost. If that was the reality, then every meal would have the potential to be a perfect meal.”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
It can be intimidating to pick up a book about food that has the title, “Our National Eating Disorder” above the Introduction. One gets the feeling, even before diving into the first chapter of the voluminous The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals that it’s going to be a complex read. Then, the author, Michael Pollan, confirms this in the first two sentences of his introduction when he explains that his answer to the age-old question, “What’s for dinner?” will be complicated.
Pollan then goes on to explain, however, that he wishes food weren’t so complicated and that he doesn’t entirely grasp why or when it became that way, and that his book is an attempt to understand it better and share that knowledge with his readers. Sounds simple enough, but what he didn’t anticipate when he wrote this book, back in 2006, was that he’d sparked the fire of a revolution that, seventeen years later, still burns within local communities and among hospitality professionals.
Pollan’s desire for a less complex food system is the premise of the book. Not every reader is going to get or appreciate it. The book speaks to people who are mindful about what they consume. That mindfulness extends beyond what goes into their bodies to also want to eat food that’s farmed and grown in an ethical and sustainable manner.
This book is a direct assault on the food industry that dominates Americans’ lives. This is the industry that drives processed, fast foods that are devoid of nutritional benefits and produced in ways that harm people’s health, cause unnecessary pain to animals, and deplete the earth’s natural resources.
America has an enormous — no-pun-intended — obesity epidemic. The CDC states that “Obesity is a common, serious, and costly disease.” They estimate that the annual medical cost of obesity, collectively, nears $173 billion dollars and, for individuals, medical costs are approximately $1,861 higher than for those who are a normal weight.
It makes sense that Americans are fat. Consumers are confused and overwhelmed by food and by how to eat a balanced diet. The U.S. government issues dietary guidelines, but popular diets, like the Atkins Diet or the Keto Diet, seem to convey that following the government’s guidelines is not the way to lose and maintain a healthy weight. Americans could learn a great deal from Italians. In 2023, the Mediterranean Diet was declared the world’s healthiest diet, and Italy was named the world’s healthiest country.
The common-sense, natural approach to food espoused by the Mediterranean lifestyle doesn’t seem to work in the U.S., though, and the reason is that Americans are always entranced by some type of food trend that dominates the media. One moment, the headlines tell Americans that, if they want to be healthy, they should avoid gluten. The next moment, they’re being told that gluten is actually not bad for them. One TV weight loss guru tells them that fat makes them fat, and another tells them that fat is not what makes them fat.
In relation to food, the only thing that seems certain in the American diet is that there is no real American diet. On any given day, a hodge podge of beliefs drives food choices on the vagaries of whim driven by misinformation. Given that over 40 percent of Americans are obese, one would think moderate approaches, such as the Mediterranean Diet, would take hold, but Americans are determined to do everything quickly and that’s the underlying problem with America’s food culture.
Americans are so stressed and hurried—and they want so badly to eat quickly and on the go—that they often don’t stop to think about what the food they’re consuming is made from, where it comes from, or how it got to them.
Unfortunately, that lackadaisical approach to consumption is killing them and that’s what Pollan meant when he used the phrase, “national eating disorder.” That’s why the message in The Omnivore’s Dilemma is so critical. To proffer a solution, Pollan divides his book into three sections. The first deals with how the mass industrialization of corn farming has made it an unhealthy ingredient in the majority of foods that Americans consume. In the middle section, he looks at the alternative to mass industrialization by visiting a family farm, albeit an enormous one, in Virginia that does everything the way nature intends. In the final section, with the help of a garrulous Sicilian, he sets out to gather, forage, and hunt his own dinner.
An Over-Abundance of Corn is at the Root of America’s Obesity Epidemic
“When I started trying to follow the industrial food chain—the one that now feeds most of us most of the time and typically culminates either in a supermarket or fast-food meal—I expected that my investigation would lead to a wide variety of places. And though my journeys did take me to a great many states, and covered a great many miles, at the very end of these food chains (which is to say at the very beginning), I invariably found myself in the American Corn Belt.”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Michael Pollan has a working definition of industrial food. He says it’s, “Any food whose provenance is so complex or obscure that it requires expert help to ascertain.” That describes most of what one would find in the general grocery store that the average American shops in. Pollan says that every item, except salt and synthetic food additives, begins with a plant that grows in soil.
So, for example, he asks the reader to think how a steak in the Meat section came from a cow that was born in South Dakota but fed in Kansas on grain grown in Iowa. The meat is emblematic of the complexity of the American food chain. It takes a bit of detective work to trace back to the origin of the feed. What Pollan wants people to understand is that, despite the variety of products on display in the average grocery store, corn is the foundational ingredient.
Animals feed on corn, which, in turn, becomes meat, milk, egg, cheese, and so forth. He uses the example of a chicken nugget to demonstrate just how pervasive corn is in our food.
The chicken is fed on corn, and the coating is made from corn flour and adheres to the nugget using corn starch. He then further explains that even the additives are made from corn. Following Pollan’s line of thought, one could feasibly argue that a chicken nugget is corn.
Pollan then goes on to provide a scientific explanation of everything about corn. He covers how it grows and how it’s evolved. He explains that, because it’s a heartier grain than wheat, it became so prevalent in American food. He explains how the corn industry has hurt other crops and farmers. Most disturbingly, he explains how, in 1947, the chemical fertilizer used for corn crops, was the result of, “government’s effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes.”
The point Pollan is making about corn is that all things considered, it’s not good for Americans’ health because it’s processed to be devoid of nutrients and it’s addictive. The way it’s being farmed also hurts farmers and its production and processing harms the planet.
In other words, the staple of the American diet, in its current manifestation in American agriculture and food, is toxic.
The Grass is Greener
“We think of grass as soft and hospitable stuff, but once it’s been dried in the sun and shredded by machines―once it’s become hay―grass is sharp enough to draw blood and dusty enough to thicken lungs. I was covered in chaff, my forearms tattooed red with its pinpricks.”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
For his research, Pollan spent seven days working at Polyface Farms which encompasses 100 acres of pasture and another 450 acres of forest in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. The owner of this farm, Joel Salatin told Pollan that he considers himself, first and foremost, a grass farmer, though on the farm he raises chicken, beef, turkey, eggs, rabbits, pigs, tomatoes, sweet corn, and berries.
Polyface Farm describes itself as “…America’s premier non-industrial food production oasis.” They’re trying to emotionally, economically, and environmentally enhance agriculture by disregarding conventional industrial farming wisdom. When Pollan arrived, Salatin explained that the animals do all the work at his farm. By this, he meant that he doesn’t use industrial farming techniques, like chemical fertilization. He follows a natural approach and allows the animals to roam free and do what they’re inclined to do.
This means, for example, that hens eat the parasites in the grass that could harm the cows that feed on it. Chickens take care of the pasture by applying thousands of pounds of nitrogen and laying several thousand eggs. The cycle of nature is allowed to run without human interruption, which proved to Pollan that nature does better when it’s left alone. Polyface is the opposite of the industrial farms that produce corn. It’s an example of how good food can be when the natural processes that happen on a farm are unhindered.
Pollan explained that at Polyface “This is an astounding cornucopia of food to draw from a hundred acres of pasture, yet what is perhaps still more astounding is the fact that this pasture will be in no way diminished by the process—in fact, it will be the better for it, lusher, more fertile, even springier underfoot (thanks to the increased earthworm traffic).”
What Pollan wants readers to understand about Polyface is that the American farming system works just fine without mass industrialization, without misguided human interference. He then moves on to talk about native grass and how the marriage of humans to the grass, which he refers to as the “invention of agriculture” marked the moment everything went south in the American food system. He explains how ancient grasses were nutritionally dense, but human farming methods destroyed those nutrients.
He takes a great deal of time to speak about what he calls, “Supermarket Pastoral.” By this, he means how supermarket chains, such as Whole Foods, have created stories around organic, farm-raised, and grass-fed foods. He makes a case for why, if American food hadn’t become such Big Industry, there’d be no need for specialty markets that sell organic food because food would just be food, as nature intended.
People Would Approach Food Differently if They Grew, Hunted, and Gathered It
“My wager in undertaking this experiment is that hunting and gathering (and growing) a meal would perforce teach me things about the ecology and ethics of eating that I could not get in a supermarket or fast-food chain or even on a farm. Some very basic things: about the ties between us and the species (natural systems) we depend upon; about how we decide what in nature is good to eat and what is not; and about how the human body fits into the food chain, not only as an eater, but as a hunter and, yes, a killer of other creatures.”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
In the final section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan has arrived at the place where he’s ready for a meal from, “…the shortest food chain of all.” He’s ready to prepare a dinner from ingredients he’s hunted, grown, and gathered. He admits to no familiarity with guns. So, the prospect of shooting an animal is daunting. He wonders if he needs a license. He also shares that his mother instilled in him a fear of toxic berries and mushrooms, so foraging and gathering present risks, too. Having recently relocated from New England to Northern California, he doesn’t know anything about the land that surrounds him.
Pollan concludes that he’s ill-equipped for what he has set out to do. He explains, “What I badly needed, I realized, was my own personal foraging Virgil, a fellow not only skilled in the arts of hunting and gathering (and butchering), but also well versed in the flora, fauna, and fungi of Northern California…”
As luck would have it, he keeps running into Angelo Garro at social gatherings. Garro lives nearby in San Francisco and is Sicilian by birth. Though he’s a master blacksmith by trade, his “consuming passion” is food. He reminiscences about the food culture of his Sicilian childhood where herbs like wild fennel and spices like chili peppers were included in the foods his Nonna made.
Pollan marvels at how Garro has created a life in the U.S. that honors his cultural background. “Angelo spends many of his days in California recreating the calendar of life in Sicily, a calendar that is strictly organized around seasonal food.”
In the remainder of the book, Pollan takes the reader on his adventure. He talks about many aspects of the meal he’ll be prepared from start to finish, including learning from Temple Grandin how cows are slaughtered humanely and wondering about the ethics of eating animals
It’s interesting that when Pollan sets out to return to nature, so to speak, by hunting, gathering, and foraging his own meal, he turns to an Italian to be his guide. It’s a testimony to the connection that Italians have with food. For so many, that connection is direct. There’s no speed dial in authentic Italian food. The philosophy is slow, seasonal, and connected to nature, the same philosophy that drives the team at Toscana Divino Hospitality Group.
In describing Garro, he also pinpoints a key difference between the Italian and American approaches to food. Italians bring passion to food preparation, and they insist on the finest and freshest ingredients. That’s what attracts people to Italy and to the authentic Italian table. In many ways, the conclusion that Pollan makes after he travels through America investigating the U.S. food chain is one that Italians already know: For health and happiness, embrace life and stay close to nature.
At Toscana Divino, we epitomize the essence of the Italian approach to cuisine, where every dish is a work of art crafted with passion, precision, and the utmost dedication. Our commitment to excellence is evident in the meticulous selection of the finest and freshest ingredients, setting us apart as one of the best Italian restaurants in Miami.
Just as in Italy, we believe that the true allure of authentic Italian cuisine lies in the harmonious blend of exceptional flavors and carefully sourced ingredients. At Toscana Divino, we leave no stone unturned in our pursuit of culinary perfection. Our skilled chefs create each dish from scratch, paying homage to tradition while infusing innovative techniques to elevate the dining experience to new heights.
Every element on our menu reflects the rich heritage and culinary artistry of Italy. Our commitment to excellence extends to our thoughtfully curated wine selection, showcasing the finest varietals that complement our dishes, creating a truly extraordinary gastronomic journey.
Step into our world of Italian culinary excellence, where every visit is a celebration of life, nature, and the timeless charm of Italy. Indulge your senses and immerse yourself in the captivating flavors that have made Italy renowned worldwide.
Join us for an evening of unparalleled sophistication and let us transport you to the heart of Tuscany, right here in the center of Brickell.
Buon Appetito!
