The Omnivore’s Dilemma, written by Michael Pollan, and published in 2009 made quite an impact on the food industry and nearly everybody who so happened to read it. The book details what happens behind closed doors of supermarkets, how the food is made, how the animals soon to be meat are handled and treated, and asks the question, how do we know if what we’re eating really is healthy? Chapter 8 of the book: The Modern Omnivore, highlights this question, among others, especially what we’ve been asking ourselves… what is the omnivore’s dilemma? The omnivore’s dilemma is that modern Americans have such a large variety of food making us uncertain about what should and should not be eaten. What food is good food? What food is bad food? What’s healthy
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If more people were informed about the lives of these animals it may make them reconsider where they shop for food, thus narrowing down their options of what to eat. Pollan explains that while it may not seem like they can feel emotions the way humans do, there is no excuse for everything they have to endure in factory farms and feedlots. “Believe me, the people who run those places don’t waste any time thinking about animal suffering. If they did, they’d have to go out of business” (255), the egg farms are especially bad. The laying hen will be forced into a tiny, wire cage with six other hens. Pollan goes into even further detail, describing to us how the chickens try to eat at each other, rub their breasts against the cage wire until they bleed, just thinking about it is enough to make a person sick. The sad truth about all this is that the businesses are often blind to the damage they are causing. “Customs, culture, ideas about right and wrong all fall away under the pressure to increase production and get a higher return on investment” (256), if they showed these animals mercy than no money would come of it, and we might not even be able to purchase such food. However, eating animals is natural for humans, you could say it’s in our culture but that’s true for most any culture, human beings were born to eat meat, the food industry sees these chickens, pigs, and cows as just food, not as living, breathing
If more people were informed about the lives of these animals it may make them reconsider where they shop for food, thus narrowing down their options of what to eat. Pollan explains that while it may not seem like they can feel emotions the way humans do, there is no excuse for everything they have to endure in factory farms and feedlots. “Believe me, the people who run those places don’t waste any time thinking about animal suffering. If they did, they’d have to go out of business” (255), the egg farms are especially bad. The laying hen will be forced into a tiny, wire cage with six other hens. Pollan goes into even further detail, describing to us how the chickens try to eat at each other, rub their breasts against the cage wire until they bleed, just thinking about it is enough to make a person sick. The sad truth about all this is that the businesses are often blind to the damage they are causing. “Customs, culture, ideas about right and wrong all fall away under the pressure to increase production and get a higher return on investment” (256), if they showed these animals mercy than no money would come of it, and we might not even be able to purchase such food. However, eating animals is natural for humans, you could say it’s in our culture but that’s true for most any culture, human beings were born to eat meat, the food industry sees these chickens, pigs, and cows as just food, not as living, breathing