More meaty quotes from The Omnivore’s Dilemma

I generally do my best reading while riding a recumbent bicycle in the basement.

My concentration is deep, pages fly by, I underline with jiggly lines many world famous quotes (well, they will be once everyone reads the same book and sees things the way I do), calories fall to the floor, beads of sweat form on my brow.

Not all of the beads are produced by the much-needed exercise.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma Michael Pollan writes:

“When humankind acquired the power to fix nitrogen (make fertilizer from mountains of ammonium nitrate left over from WWll munition production in the U.S.), the basis of soil fertility shifted from a total reliance on the energy of the sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel.” (pg. 44)

Of course, being self-reliant is commendable in many ways but we supplant the sun at great personal and environmental cost.

The personal: Mountains of fertilizer turn into mountains of corn which, along with a mountain of antibiotics and truckloads of fat, feed millions of cows that become the meal of the day (in North America we eat a fifth of our meals in cars and feed a third of our children at a fast-food outlet every day) for an obese population.


The environmental: “The ultimate fate of the nitrates spread on cornfields (e.g. in Iowa) is to flow down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where their deadly fertility poisons the marine ecosystem... creating a dead zone as big as the state of new Jersey”. (pg. 47)

I’ve finished only 20 per cent of the book so I’ve many miles to pedal before more important lessons have been learned.

But I can almost guarantee I’ll be less beefy by the time I reach the last page.

Quotes from ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ keep beef off my plate

I should take a few steps back from the line re meatloaf in my last post because, I’m not kidding, I have been eating a lot less meat for quite some time.

Though I do eat meat on occasion (yup, I’m a flexitarian) it is hardly ever beef - due to the influence of several books I’ve read, movies I’ve seen and informative comments from friends.

Good ideas in some books and great ideas in others usually find a home inside my little round head.

For example, I will never forget the sardonic Scaramouche (from the book of the same name by Rafael Sabatini) who was "born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."

I read the book twice while in my teens (all the way through too) and feel I am still much like him, though rather than mad I think the world is just a bit out of whack, slightly off kilter and in need of an extensive tune up. Now.

One of the three books I have on the go right now is affecting how I look at every meal I eat, and I eat a lot of them.


In The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan I am learning about the unsettling connections between oil, fertilizer, dead land, cheap corn, unnaturally fat cows, tons of antibiotics, truck loads of fat and doctors on factory farms who say things like:

“Hell, if you gave them (cattle) lots of grass and space, I wouldn’t have a job.”

It’s enough to make me take several more steps back from meatloaf.

Family secret: Making something out of nothing is a Harrison trait

One day when I was a wee tad I watched my mother stretch a pound of lean ground beef into a mighty meatloaf for seven.

She added oatmeal and bread crumbs and a bunch of other stuff to a mixing bowl, stirred in the beef and for the umpteenth time created a hearty meal fit for a king, queen and their brood of five runny-nosed kids.

[She usually included a can of peas, a few potatoes and tall stack of sliced bread on a Melmac plate to round things out.]

So, after I read a short story about Tim Horton’s plans to introduce self-serve coffee machines to Canadians, I knew that with a bit of oatmeal etc. I had myself a new weekly column.


[Photo: faithful customer worries about prospect of pouring his own coffee in the near future]

First thing I did was come up with a scary title:

Unfair! Un-Canadian! Tim Horton’s will pass hard times onto its faithful customers

(Twelve words long. Geez, I’m half done already.)

Then I fiddled around with ideas for the beginning, middle and end of a stretched-out story and posted them at the fastest growing group blog in Canada - Four Mugs and a Crock.

Though the posts are just practice, by deadline I’m sure it will be a brilliant column, almost as good (I hope) as meatloaf for supper.

gah