I know it's very fashionable right now to bash McDonald's and fast food and pesticides and corporate farming and bioengineering and all of it.
I mean, I read Fast Food Nation. I re-read The Jungle and mareveled at Upton Sinclair's grasp of the exploitative nature of the food industry. I did the requisite three months of vegetarianism and, truth be told, I still can't bring myself to eat at a fast food joint (with the notable exception of Chipotle, which, it is a well-documented fact, puts crack in the guacamole).
But something always bugged me about Fast Food Nation. Shlosser doesn't even pretend to be objective. He leaves out facts, he tells only one side of the story, he casts anecdotes in such a way that no self-respecting jury would deny probable doubt.
In short, were he a newspaper reporter, his editor would have shredded his story so quickly it would have ignited.
So I approached Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire with some trepidation. The book's back covers summarizes Pollan's thesis such: "...plants have evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. And just as we've benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating who?"
Despite the pulled-punch of a jacket, the book is incredible. Pollan achieves the trifecta of entertainment, education and amazement. Essentially, his thesis is that human desires over the last few millenia have done as much to shape the evolution (or devolution) of four plant species as did millions of years of climate changes and natural selection.
And, in the course of our domestication of these plants, the plants themselves have played an incredible role in the development or destruction of human society. Consider the apple's role in making Ohioo pioneers feel more comfortable with their wild surroundings and thus greasing the wheels of manifest destiny as no other plant could. Or the way the modest, Apollonian tulip brought the commodities market of Holland to a screeching halt, introducing the idea of "the bubble" to economic theory. Or how research into marijuana, sponsored by the U.S. government to counteract reefer madness sweeping America's beat generation, has led to a greater understanding of human neuroscience than perhaps any other course of research. And, finally, how the social impacts of potato cultivation drastically altered the power structure of the European continent and later changed the literal face of the United States.
But all that aside. Pollan infuses his theories with ACTUAL fact. By actual fact I mean he gives all versions of the facts. His sections on genetic engineering and the impact it will have on evolution of plants, pests and people do not take on the predictable pallor of an Al Gore argument. Rather, he admits that genetic engineering may well be, as the scientists at Monsanto would have you believe, the next step in the human-plant evolutionary dance. But he also points out that he's just not comfortable, for whatever reason, eating a salad made with Monsanto vegetables.
There is no Supersize Me blanket condemnation of agriculture (although Pollan does advance the seed (sorry) of the anti-monoculture idea he further explores in his next book, The Omnivore's Dilemma). Instead, The Botany of Desire simply offers food for thought (again, sorry).
Next: How about a little eco-terrorism? Monkeywrench Gang. I might be the only college educated Westerner who hasn't read it. Think I should catch up.
