*What Do We Eat?*

Michael Pollan's, The Omnivore's Dilemma explores and answers the "What should we have for dinner?" Despite being assigned this book, I actually enjoyed it immensely. At parts of the book it actually scared me. The first part of this book is entirely about corn, that is 123 pages just about corn. According to the book, the industrial food chain is largely made up of corn "whether it is eaten directly, fed to livestock, or processed into chemicals such as glucose and ethanol."As stated in the book, many industrial food company and farms feed livestock grains and corn which most animals are not meant to eat, the protein given to the animals make the animals bigger in short amount of time in time of slaughter.

In the documentary, The Future Of Foods and in the book by Ozeki, All Over Creation, most food have products of genetically engineered food which can have small traces harmful toxins. Even food that claims to be "organic" might still have traces of chemical substances. Disturbingly, as shown in the documentary, patenting life is now permitted, however no labeling of genetically modified organisms in food is required. Knowing this, it is hard not to be scared about what we are eating, as stated before, no labeling is required. This holds up the question, what do we eat? What can we eat? Of course, the most obvious answer could be organic and as stated by the book In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Unfortunately, not everybody enjoys eating just vegetables and organic produce is expensive compared to industrial food. Food from stores like Trader Joe's or Whole Foods that are "organic" will be more expensive compared to foods in Safeway or Walmart. While I have yet to visit the U-district farmer's market, I have been told that it is not cheap, which I can agree with since the farmer's market back at home in Federal Way was not cheap either. All in all, while I am aware of how our food production is not exactly "pure", I know that there really isn't much I can do about it. While I can start eating organic and start buying food from Trader Joe's or the local farmer's market, I don't have the funds to start buying organic produce. It would also cut out conveniance, which I do love. I do however, hope that in the future, that our food situation will get better.