Pretty Worked Up: "Unhealthy People Obsessed by the Idea of Eating Healthy"

I started Omnivore's Dilemma the summer before my senior year when I first became a vegetarian. I wasn't impressed. I wanted to hear about meat and factory farming, animal abuse, chicken nuggets, PETA, locally raised hogs. I felt empowered, and I didn't want to hear about corn. I think I got through the introduction, unfazed, and set it on my mom's beside table so she could read it for book club.

And honestly, I'm kind of glad I didn't get through Omnivore two years ago. I would have been FREAKED OUT. I was also much more trusting and idealistic then. I think if I had read about how much corn we’re ignorantly consuming on a daily basis, I would have taken drastic measures to avoid feeling forced into dietary illiteracy.

In my Sex and Sexuality class, we've been talking about the power of one's identity. The concept that what an individual chooses to label themselves can be used strategically is a relatively new one to me. An identity puts you into a category, it gets you into a group but it also distances you from other groups. While one’s sexuality can align people together, I think an individuals position on food can be just as strategic.

As a ‘vegetarian,’ I’m aligning myself with 7.3 million Americans, only 3.2 percent of the country. But by doing so, I’m also alienating myself from many of my friends, family and country. I know that sounds slightly melodramatic, but from my standpoint, it’s true. By going to my family’s Easter party and refusing to eat my grandmother’s ham, it’s really not just about me. It’s about my aunts asking if I want some of their potatoes because my plate looks so vegetable-y, it’s about my grandmother asking me several times if I would’ve eaten salmon if she had made that instead, it’s about being questioned if I still like the smell of ham while in my head I’m thinking “omygoodness-I-haven’t-smelled-ham-in-so-long-Hannah-you-never-even-liked-ham-it-won’t-taste-good-UGH-but-it-just-smells-so-good!” and then politely declining and say “Sorry, no. The honey on the ham smells good but not the ham.”

I say I’m a vegetarian, but my vegetarianism is more complex than avoiding meat. It also gives me a strategy to fight for the inherently moral food issues I believe in. After reading this first section of Omnivore, its scary to think about how Americans’ identity as eater/consumers has alienated us from the rest of the world.

I want to be French! I never want to eat a Twinkie again! I’ll stick to vegetarianism until factory farming is abolished or I find a way to afford sustainable meat! But at this point, it just seems so far out of our reach. It seems like the rest of this book will be Pollan letting us feel guilty, embarrassed about how we eat, and how it determines our entire identity. I’m a little scared to go on, but I think, in the case of our stomachs, ignorance is definitely not bliss.

CYOA: Where's the Beef?

Throughout the first few weeks of Food and Travel writing, I've been thinking a lot about the choices we have as individuals who consume food. While I was reading the first section of Michael Pollan's the Omnivore's Dilemma, the conflict of "what should we have for dinner" and the idea that we choose what we're eating became even more apparent.

I had heard food-conscious friends talk about how corn is in everything, but it didn't really phase me. It could’t be in everything, that just sounded ridiculous. But by the time I got to the end of the introduction, I was freaking out. The lines that have stuck with me through Part I—Industrial Corn were on pages 10-11:

What is perhaps most troubling, and sad, about industrial eating is how thoroughly it obscures all [of our] relationships and connections [. . .] Forgetting, or not knowing in the first place, is what the industrial food chain is all about, the principal reason it is so opaque, for if we could see what lies on the far side of the increasingly high walls of our industrial agriculture, we would surely change the way we eat.

This concept of 'eating blindly' has really been bothering me throughout the course and this investigative book seems to be getting at the heart of it.

Now, I hope this connection doesn't come off as crude, but since I've been thinking about our lack of insight to our diets, I keep going back to a story my friend told me about going to a'dining in the dark' restaurant when she was in Montreal. The restaurant is literally opaque, as in there is zero lighting in the whole restaurant. The guests choose their meal before entering the dining area and are led to their tables by seeing-impaired or blind waiters.

I know there's not a connection to an individuals actual ability to see and the ignorance Michael Pollan discusses, but I think the way the restaurant highlights one's perception of food links closely to what Pollan is saying. Plus, the concept of—literally—eating in complete darkness seems pretty cool—if not really intimidating. It has also become a wide-spread fad since it was first invented in Zurich. This Time Magazine article explains the alluring concept of eating in the dark.

Restaurant-goers at the Opaque restaurant in San Francisco, CA. Photo from travel.NYTimes.com

And just for your entertainment, here's the funny 'Where's the Beef?' commercial they allude to in the Time Magazine story.

Also, Michael Pollan has a really beautiful website if you'd like to check it out.