I’m enrolled in a Special Topics class this semester titled: Food and Identity. According to my syllabus, this course "will whet your critical appetite through the analysis of food-related texts from the 16th century to the present day, from some of the earliest cookbooks in English to Mad Max: Fury Road."

So far, we have looked at food blogs, food shows, food podcasts, articles, memoirs, texts, and more. We studied a novel written by Michael Pollan for two class periods, titled The Omnivore’s Dilemma. We focused on a couple sections from the book in our class.

One of the main ideas we talked about was where our food comes from and what is in our food.

Do you want to know what makes up mostly all of our food? Corn.

This was a surprise to me. It made me think of all those commercials for dog food about corn being the number one ingredient in their food and how the pet owners couldn’t fathom feeding their dogs those brands once they were “awakened” to the ingredients.

If that’s the case, why aren’t there commercials letting the consumers know how much corn has taken over the food industry? And the answer is because corn is such a surplus food and it’s cheap.

You might be saying to yourself, well, why don’t we stop producing so much corn, that way the industry can’t find another way to boil it down or grind it up and put it in our food?

But there’s so many farmers that rely on their corn crops to get a meal on the table each night. The crazy part? They’re barely making anything. They’re making enough to survive and to plant corn again for another year.

The reality is that food has become too produced, too convenient. In Michael Pollan’s other novel, titled Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, he lists simple rules for people to follow to attempt to answer the question on what food we should eat.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Avoid food products containing ingredients a third-grader cannot pronounce.

Thiamine Mononitrate? Monocalcium Phosphate? Don’t trust it. 

Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not.

Ever heard of imitation vanilla or “I can’t believe it’s not butter?” Don’t do it. Just don’t.  

Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.

This means they are highly processed and full of carbohydrates and chemical additives (not to mention the sugar). 

And my all-time favorite…If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.

My message today is to stop eating the mass produced, won’t rot due to the preservatives, sugary-laden food products. Opt for more natural resources or at least ones with ingredient names you can pronounce. Instead of being a mere consumer, be an informed consumer!