The Omnivore's Dilemma

by Michael Pollan

  YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

  I asked Joel what he said to people who said his prices were too high.

  “Whenever I hear people say clean food is expensive, I tell them it’s actually the cheapest food you can buy. That always gets their attention. Then I explain that with our food, all of the costs are figured into the price. Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water—all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap.”

  He also reminded me that his meat would be considerably cheaper than it is if not for government regulations that forced him to send his cattle and hogs away to be processed.

  Still, whatever the reason, organic and beyond organic food does cost more at the cash register. That is going to make it hard for some people to afford it. Yet for the great majority of Americans, the reason is not quite so simple. After all, most people would agree that food is more important than a new cell phone or cable TV or name-brand sneakers. Why is it that we pay for those things without blinking but won’t pay an extra dollar for a dozen organic eggs? Nowadays many Americans are even willing to pay for water—something we can get for free from any tap. So why are we unwilling to pay more for better food?

  Joel pointed out that people generally understand that quality costs more, except when it comes to food. “When someone drives up to the farm in a BMW and asks me why our eggs cost more . . . well, first I try not to get mad. Instead, I take him outside and point at his car. ‘Sir, you clearly understand quality and are willing to pay for it. Well, food is no different: You get what you pay for.’”

  Agribusiness has bombarded us with the message that all pork is pork, all chicken is chicken. They tell us one egg is exactly like any other, but that’s just not the case. If that’s what you think, then you won’t pay a dollar extra for the same old carton of eggs. But when you know that some eggs are not only tastier, but also healthier to eat, then a dollar extra for a dozen seems like a bargain. When people know about their food, they start considering quality and not just price.

  FARMERS MARKETS AND BUYING CLUBS

  A short food chain helps the consumer know what he or she is buying. It also helps the farmer in another important way. As we saw earlier, farmers in the industrial food chain are often on the edge of going bankrupt. One reason is they make less money than supermarkets, wholesalers, and food processors. In fact, out of every dollar spent on food in this country, ninety-two cents goes to these non-farmers. By selling directly to consumers Joel gets to keep more of that money.

  That’s why Joel makes more money from his chickens than his beef and pork. He processes the chickens himself, and doesn’t have to pay someone else. So avoiding the industrial food chain isn’t just a matter of principle. It’s also good business.

  Besides the farm store, Joel sells Polyface meat and eggs at farmers markets in the Washington, D.C., area. The number of these farmers markets in the U.S. has almost doubled in recent years, from 1,755 in 1996 to more than 4,000 in 2008. Polyface also sells to buying clubs. These are groups of families, usually in cities or suburbs, who put together a big order once or twice a month. One person in the club collects the orders and takes delivery of the food. The size of the order makes it worth the farmer’s while to deliver, in Joel’s case sometimes as far as Virginia Beach or Bethesda—half a day’s drive.

  THURSDAY MORNING

  And then there is Joel’s brother, Art, who makes deliveries to area restaurants once a week. On Thursday I woke to the sound of Art’s panel truck noisily backing up to the salesroom door. The clock said 5:45 a.m. I threw on some clothes and dashed out to meet him.

  Art is five years older than Joel and, on first impression, a very different sort of character. He’s not nearly so sunny, or talkative: He’s even a little cranky sometimes. He’s more grounded in the world, more businesslike. But then, maybe he has to be. After all, Art spends a lot more time dealing with city traffic and parking and chefs who can sometimes be pretty picky.

  Every Thursday Art mounts a carefully planned military-style operation. His mission is to supply restaurants in Charlottesville, Virginia, with meat and eggs from Polyface. He also sells produce, dairy products, and mushrooms from a half dozen other small producers in the Shenandoah Valley. He gets the orders from customers, tells the farmers what he needs, and they arrive with their trucks at Polyface at dawn on Thursday.

  I spent the better part of Thursday riding shotgun in Art’s panel truck. It’s an old orange Dodge Caravan with a sign on the side that says: “On Delivery From Polyface Inc. Follow me to the Best Restaurants in Town.” Which seemed to be more or less the case. Many of Charlottesville’s best chefs buy from Polyface.

  We made most of our deliveries after lunch, when the kitchens were relatively quiet. I helped Art haul in plastic totes the size of laundry baskets laden with meat and produce. The chefs had high praise for the quality of Polyface products, and clearly felt good about supporting a local farm.

  Between stops, Art told me that it was the eggs that got him his new customers. I saw how this worked at a newly opened restaurant called the Filling Station. Art introduced himself and presented the chef with a dozen eggs. The chef cracked one into a saucepan. Instead of spreading out, the egg stood up nice and tall in the pan. The chef called his staff over to admire the bright orange color of the yolk. Art explained that it was the grass diet that gave the eggs their color. I don’t think I’d ever seen people so interested in an egg yolk—they were clearly impressed.

  SEASONAL FOOD

  Unlike supermarket eggs, Polyface eggs are different at different times of the year. They turn paler in the winter, when the hens are not in the pasture. Art told me this was one of his biggest challenges. Many customers were not used to the idea of seasonal food.

  We have forgotten that meats used to be as seasonal as fruits and vegetables. For example, lambs are born in the spring. They’re not ready to be eaten for eight to ten months—in the next winter. Yet supermarkets sell “spring lamb”, which is meat shipped in from New Zealand. The natural seasons for red meat are fall and winter. The natural seasons for chicken are the spring and summer. If local food chains are going to succeed, customers will have to get used to eating that way again. Will consumers be ready to give up the “convenience” of any food any time? Perhaps they will, if they see what they are getting in return.

  Chefs around the country, like the ones who buy from Polyface in Virginia, are trying to teach consumers that food actually tastes better when it is fresh, in season, and grown without chemicals. These chefs, along with the buying clubs and the farmers markets, are all part of a worldwide movement. It is a movement away from the industrial food chain and toward a more local, organic food system.

  EAT YOUR VIEW

  In Europe, there’s a bumper sticker that says: “Eat Your View!” That’s what the Polyface customers are doing—preserving the landscape by supporting the local farmers. They are part of an international movement to change the global food system. The movement includes farmers in Europe who try to preserve local food products and eating habits. Then there are farmers in India who have protested the sale of patented seeds by agribusiness. There are farmworkers in South America who protest the use of dangerous pesticides. And there are people in many countries who are trying to stop the spread of genetically modified food.

  It’s not surprising that food has become the focus of an international movement. Food is, after all, the center of our lives in many ways, even if we no longer pay very much attention to it. And it is one part of our lives we can still control. We can still decide, every day, what we’re going to put into our bodies, what sort of food chain we want to be part of. We can vote with our forks.

  Consumers in the U.S. have already made big changes in the food system. Our desire to have cleaner, healthier food has created a $20-billion market for industrial organics. Farmers like Joel
Salatin, his customers, and all the people who buy from farmers markets and food clubs are trying to make another change. They are making the word local just as powerful as the word organic.

  Changing to a truly local food economy won’t be easy. It might not even be completely possible. But the advantages of moving in this direction are very clear. When consumers know once again how their food is produced, they are naturally going to want it produced in the cleanest, most humane and environmentally healthy ways. Eating locally is also an act of conservation. Keeping local farms in business keeps the countryside from being overrun by cities and suburbs.

  “Eat Your View!” takes work. It means not being able to buy a tomato in December. It means giving up many processed foods. And once you give up processed foods, you have to learn to cook, a skill that is disappearing from many American homes. Are we prepared to go that far?

  IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL EAT

  On my last day on the farm, a soft June Friday afternoon, Joel and I sat talking at a picnic table behind the house. A steady stream of customers dropped by to pick up their chickens. I asked Joel if he believed the industrial food chain would ever be replaced by a local food system.

  “We don’t have to beat them,” Joel patiently explained. “I’m not even sure we should try.” I guess I would sum up his view as: “If you build it, they will come.” He believes that more and more consumers will make the choice to buy local, “beyond organic” food. The rest will take care of itself.

  I think he has a point. We may need a great many food chains that combine organic food and slow food and local foods in different ways. There may be other food chains we haven’t even thought of yet. Nature produces diversity. Polyface Farm is home to diversity. Maybe the food system should be diverse too.

  Sitting on the porch with Joel, watching his customers buzzing about, I could see part of that new food system taking shape. It certainly seemed like a good start.

  17

  My Grass-Fed Meal

  A WEEK’S PAY

  Before I left the farm Friday, I gathered together the makings for that evening’s dinner. I had originally thought about filling a cooler with Polyface meat and bringing it home with me to California to cook there. But after all of Joel’s talks about eating locally and short food chains, that didn’t seem right. So I decided to cook dinner for a few old friends who lived close by in Charlottesville. We would eat the food within a short drive of the farm where it had been grown.

  From the farm’s walk-in cooler I picked out two of the chickens we had slaughtered on Wednesday. I also took a dozen of the eggs I’d helped gather Thursday evening. Then I stopped by the hoop house and harvested a dozen ears of sweet corn. Joel refused to accept payment for the food, calling it my pay for the week’s work.

  On the way into Charlottesville, I stopped to pick up a few other items. I tried as best as I could to look for local produce. As much as possible I wanted this meal to be bar code-free. For my salad, I found some nice-looking locally grown arugula. At the wine shop I found a short shelf of Virginia wines, but here I hesitated.

  EATING LOCALLY

  Virginia is known for many things, but wine isn’t one of them. Did buying local have to include the wine too? I hadn’t had a sip of wine all week and was really looking forward to it. Then I spotted a wine for twenty-five bucks, an awful lot for a bottle from an area not generally known for its wines. I decided the wine makers must have been confident it was good, so I added the bottle to my cart.

  I also needed some chocolate for the dessert I had in mind. The state of Virginia produces no chocolate to speak of. Since there was no local product, I was free to go for the good Belgian stuff. I did it without guilt, since even the most extreme eat-local types say it’s okay to buy goods that can’t be produced locally. That meant coffee, tea, sugar, and chocolate were safe. (Whew . . .)

  During the week I’d given some thought to what I should make. Working backward, I knew I wanted to make a dessert that would feature Polyface eggs. All those chefs had said the eggs were magical. So I decided to try something that calls for a bit of magic—a chocolate soufflé. For a side dish, sweet corn was a no-brainer. No one had tasted corn yet this year. But what meat to serve?

  Because it was only June, Polyface had no fresh beef or pork or turkey. Joel wouldn’t begin slaughtering cattle and turkeys till later in the summer. He wouldn’t get to the hogs until the fall. There was frozen beef and pork, but it was last season’s. I wanted to make something fresh. Rabbit seemed risky. I had no idea whether my friends Mark and Liz liked it, or if their boys would want to eat bunny. So that left chicken. Which, truth to tell, left me feeling a little queasy. Was I going to be able to enjoy chicken so soon after working in the processing shed and gut-composting pile? I was about to find out.

  POLYFACE CHICKEN A LA POLLAN

  When I got to Mark and Liz’s house, there were still several hours before dinner. I had decided to brine the chicken—a soak in saltwater brine causes meat to absorb moisture and breaks down the proteins that can toughen it on the grill. My plan was to slow roast the chicken pieces on a wood fire, and this would keep the chicken from drying out. So I cut each of the two birds into eight pieces and put them in a bath of water, kosher salt, sugar, a bay leaf, a splash of soy sauce, a garlic clove, and a small handful of peppercorns and coriander seeds.

  To be honest, there was another reason I chose the brining and grilling method. Once the chickens were cut into pieces, they wouldn’t look quite so much like the birds I had helped kill and gut on the farm. Soaking them in brine would change their taste and aroma. That would help cancel out the scents I remembered from the processing shed. Cooking changes the animals we eat and gives us some distance from the reality of the slaughterhouse. In the same way, when we buy a package of hamburger at a supermarket, we rarely think of the living cow. (There are, of course, those who prefer their fish, poultry, or pork served with the heads still on.)

  After soaking them in the brine for a few hours, I removed and rinsed the chicken pieces. Then I spread them out to dry for an hour or two. Drier skin would brown and get crispy on the grill.

  Mark and Liz had a gas barbecue, but I wanted some smoke and flavor of a wood fire. I snipped a couple of twigs off their apple tree and stripped off the leaves. Then I placed the twigs on top of the grill, where the green wood would smolder rather than burn. I turned the gas down low and, after rubbing a little olive oil on the chicken pieces, arranged them on the grill among the apple branches.

  POLYFACE EGG SOUFFLE ’

  While the chicken roasted slowly outside, I got to work in the kitchen preparing the soufflé. I was assisted by Willie, Mark and Liz’s twelve-year-old son. Willie melted the chocolate in a saucepan and I separated the egg whites from the yolks. The yolks were a gorgeous carroty shade of orange. They were so firm that separating them from the whites was easy. After adding a pinch of salt, I began beating the egg whites. Beating whites makes them turn white and stiff. That’s when you begin adding sugar and turn the beater on high. The beater forms billions of microscopic air pockets and stiffens the egg proteins. A soufflé grows in the oven because the heat causes these air pockets to expand. At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

  The egg whites doubled in size, then doubled again. Once they formed into stiff, snowy peaks, they were ready. Willie had already blended the yolks into his melted chocolate. Now we gently folded my egg whites into the thick syrup, then poured the airy, toast-colored mixture into a soufflé dish and put it aside.

  Willie and I brought the corn out on the deck to shuck. The ears were so fresh that the husks squealed as you peeled them back. I explained to Willie that the corn had grown in a deep bed of composted chicken manure. That was probably not the sort of detail you’d want to mention on a menu. (Polyface corn a la chicken crap?) But Willie agreed there was something pretty neat about it.

  I also told him that the variety of corn we were eating was called Golden Bantam. It dat
es back over a hundred years, before all corn was just “corn.” Today’s hybrid corn is bred to keep its sweetness over long-distance transport. At the same time, that breeding has made it lose a lot of its earthy corn flavor. Our corn had been picked that morning, just a short drive away. Since it didn’t have to stand up to the stress of a cross-country trip, we were able to enjoy this corn the way it was supposed to taste.

  GRASS, NOT GRAIN

  I had made pretty much this same meal several times before. The list of ingredients looked the same. Yet I knew this wasn’t the same food at all. That was because the chickens had spent their lives outdoors on pastures rather than in a shed eating grain. When cattle, chickens, and other animals eat grass—and not just corn or other grains—they are actually healthier for us to eat. So is the milk or eggs that come from grass-fed animals. This is no accident. Humans evolved to eat meat from wild animals, animals that ate little or no grain. Animals raised outdoors on grass have a diet much more like that of the wild animals. It makes sense that their meat, milk, and eggs would be better for us.

  Green grass has large quantities of beta-carotene, vitamin