chapter 16 and 17

In Chapter 16 of Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, he discusses different tastes, appetite cravings, and cooking styles and all about the communities preference of food and how special it is to the area. Michael has many different opinions on food, obviously. And he believes things like immigrants attempt to create a culture here is a failure. I completely dissagree with this. I believe that what immigrants bring to the table can be complete assumulations of their home town. The idea that meals can bring back culture is one major thing that immigrants do these days.
In Chapter 17 Pollan talks about the ethics that people have of eating animals. From the book I get the view that I have always had, yet from things like Food Inc. that we watched in class I believe that it gives me a view that eating animals is wrong and seeing what is done to them makes it hard to eat meat, even when I am a natural meat eater. I wish that I could say that the meat companies should change their ways and they should not hurt the animals, but how could that possibly happen with all the demands, mine included. This industry is so sad, and it is sad how things are handled, but nothing really can be done to help it improve.

Chapters 8 10 11 Omnivores Dilemma

In this section of the required reading of Omnivore's Dilemma, the author Pollan tells of how he encounters his experience with what he says is a beyond organic famer named Joel Salatin. Joel classifies himself as a so called grass farmer. All that this means, or what Joel depicts a grass farmer exactly is is that every animal that he raises on the farm lives off the grass that is on his land only.
Salatin shows pollan the method of how he grows the grass and letting the cows and other animals live and graze on it. As I read this I came to realize how the whole process is really self involved, and seems to work very well. It is as they said all organic, and that means there are no fertilizers involved which makes it cheaper and healthier. Joel is very lucky because many other larger farmers can not do this because of their size and their need to industrialize and produce so much money. The entire organic process seems very difficult, and I can say that from the reading I did not follow exactly how it works. Yet, I do see why it is done. It is natural, and makes you appreciate the organic process more since it takes so much more than the industrial farming process.

Omnivore's Dilemma ch 12-13

In the reading of Michael Pollen, there are a ton of things uncovered. In chapter twelve, he discusses how he learned the difference between dealing with small animals on a farm, such as chickens, and larger animals, such as cows. What he learned was that because of government regulations, only small animals were able to be slaughtered. There are several reasons to this as well as the fact that slaughtering must be done in the eye of the government. I do agree with the statement that animals only should be slaughtered in the governments rule so farmers do not do anything illegal. I also do agree with the fact that large animals should not be slaughtered. This is mostly because of the fact that I believe they have higher purposes.

In the next chapter of the Omnivore’s Dilemma, it shows the inside scoop to farmers markets. The controversial issue here is the fact that some farmers do not believe this is a good way to sell their products, that they indeed lose money this way. When farmers sell their products to food companies and that is more reliable and definitely a better wager. Every farmers market I have been to from where I am from is more of something you go to once a week to get your fresh vegetables and fruits for the weekend. And when I go whether I am with my family or my friends or boyfriend, it is mostly just to go and experience it, I never find myself being a big spender there. For example in the summer my boyfriend and I try and make a few trips down to the Pike Place Market, and for me, since this is where I am from, I do not go to buy tourist type things or jewelry. All I usually end up buying there, and in Kirkland, Redmond, and Bellevue, is a bouquet of flowers and some fruit. I encourage farmers to keep doing markets, but it is understandable some do not because of the money issue.