I don’t eat meat. I don’t eat meat because it’s bad for our planet; it’s bad for our people; and it’s bad for my soul.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 200,000 miles of our nation’s running water resources are polluted with animal and chemical waste runoff from factory farms. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the global meat industry generates approximately 20% of greenhouse gases (GHGs). According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, there are 842 million million starving people in the world and yet, nearly 50% of the world’s global grain production is utilized to feed livestock. According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, over 99% of farm animals in the U.S. are raised in factory farms—driven solely by profit, these institutions pump livestock full of antibiotics, manipulate animals genetically to increase their size for our stomachs, and pack innocent lives into tiny, filthy, and dangerous spaces before they are cruelly murdered for our mouths. According to me, I am not able to kill for my own personal nourishment; if I cannot end a life myself, then I do not deserve to consume that life: simple.

However, I didn’t always know these treacherous facts and feel so passionately this way. A couple of months ago, I read environmental activist, journalist, and professor Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and it changed everything about the way I perceive the connections between my stomach and the system.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Pollan highlights the indisputable American “eating disorder” as the disease that defines the distorted relationship between the American food industry and the American people; said disorder plagues the people of the United States as millions of citizens endure the unregulated, unjust, and invasive system that epitomizes the unpredictability of our nation’s food and its origin. Throughout the 21st century, the various anthropocentric and gluttonous food production industries within the United States have single-handily denaturalized the sacred concept that food is unambiguously an organically acquired means for nourishment and life. Today, food harnesses a vital position within divided political realms, a major portion of the nation’s economy and global market, and an increasingly relevant position amongst conversations at the American dinner table.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is responsible for “protecting and promoting your health”—“your” referring to the health of United States citizens. “Recalls, Outbreaks & Emergencies”, “Foodborne Illness & Contaminants”, “Ingredients, Packaging & Labeling” are but a few of the major and unfortunate subject matters that the FDA is forced to thoroughly and constantly investigate and later publish on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services public webpage (FDA). In the 21st century, the definition of food and thus the definition of what it means to be an omnivore in the United States have journeyed far from their previous simplistic dictionary definitions; the convoluted definitions and FDA interventions highlight a fundamentally ill-constructed system that demands immediate revision so as to enhance lucidity and national transparency. Amongst the confusion, Pollan seeks to define two seemingly straightforward questions throughout his research: “What am I eating? And where in the world did it come from?” (Pollan: 17). Food is no longer simply a substance needed for survival; food is a source of energy and thus technological progress as well as an industrial commodity that is so deeply complex to unravel that it induces anxiety and terror amongst lay and even expert omnivores throughout the United States.

Today, the omnivore that peruses any of the roughly fifty national grocery store chains throughout the U.S. often encounters endless unknowns that bizarrely reflect the present American’s disengagement from the natural world; industrial food production has specifically tailored the food industry to exclude opposition e.g. the vast majority of lower and middle class America. The beginning of the industrial food age began and continues to thrive with Zea mays—“the giant tropical grass most Americans know as corn.” (Pollan: 18, 31). Today, there are more than forty-five thousand items in the average grocery store and more than 25% of those items contain some form of corn; with this uncommon knowledge, Pollan provides a more accurate definition of the 21st century American omnivore: “processed corn, walking” (Pollan 19, 23). There is no doubt that the average American omnivore knows little to nothing about the elaborate derivation of their dinner plates as agribusiness has worked tirelessly to shelter the public from the toxic process. As the industry gains power and dominance over small-scale and/or local producers, which are consequently more expensive due to the monopolized industry, more and more Americans lose the right to wholesome nutrition. Dr. Joseph Hibbeln at the National Institutes of Health claims that “[i]t’s quite likely that most of the diseases of modern civilization, major depression, heart disease and obesity are linked to the radical and dramatic shift in the composition of the fats in the food supply” (Gupta). As over 80 million acres of US land are planted to cultivate corn, it is clear that the crop has covertly infiltrated the American diet and plagued society with its encroachment on our livelihoods (USDA).

While the vision of the hearty Midwestern farmer sporting patchy overalls and standing proudly before his tall red barn surrounded by endless rolling hills filled with cows and chickens grazing amongst the idyllic acreage still exists within the minds of the American people, this vision is a 21st century mirage. As the desire for food—specifically cattle—rapidly increased in the latter part of the 20th century, companies such as Tyson subsidiary IBP, Cargill subsidiary Excel, Swift & Company, and National seized the opportunity to capitalize on the relatively untouched potential for a national and global meat monopoly (Pollan: 69). Today, the hearty farmer is a rarity as computerized Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)—agricultural operations where poultry, swine, cattle, and other animal types are both housed and raised in confined areas—dominate livestock production and consumption (Pollan: 67). CAFOs are environmentally detrimental agricultural entities for the operations flood water and air sources with harmful contaminants with waste products and hormonal additives, limit the potential for non-CAFOs to care for and produce safer and more humane meat products, and are cruel and neglectful operations that treat animals with disrespect and harm (Pollan: 80-84). The corn and meat monopolies are cyclical in their dependence and resilient to economic fault. The omnivore ideal, the hearty farmer, is a complicated find as many of even the most harmoniously organic-looking food products harness an enigmatic history.

While inherently well intentioned, the organic food industry often misguides the American people from the knowledge that is deserved, so as to increase market sustainability and profit. The organic food industry thrives upon the role of the archetypal relationship between man and munch: ‘“[o]rganic” on the label conjures up a rich narrative, even if it is the consumer filling in most of the details, supplying the hero (American Family Farmer), [and denying ] the villain (Agribusinness)…” (Pollan: 137). Every food product purchase reinforces a personal ethical decision—each laced with the consideration of expense and thus feasibility of purchase. Pollan hypothesizes that in the absence of diverse and moral leadership within the food industry, public uncertainty has allowed a nationwide “vulnerab[ility]… to the seductions of the marketer and the expert’s advice” (Pollan: 301).

Throughout the U.S. today, tens of millions of American stomachs are at the mercy of industrialization and capitalism. Michael Pollan questions and challenges the Rockefellers of the food production industry by unfolding the intricate web of interactions and exchanges amongst agribusiness proprietors that govern the terrifyingly homogenous grocery aisles for the American people.

Three square meals a day, American omnivores are forced to compete with colossal companies and confounded consciences. I am privileged enough to not participate in this madness. If you are so able, I encourage you to consider not participating with me and so many others—from supporting local food business whenever you are able, to participating in animal rights protests, to ordering a black bean instead of a bacon-coated burger every once and a while, a little goes a long way if we fight together.

The war for economic and nutritional diversification in the food industry involves each and every citizen that is willing and able to stand up and say “no”; it is the absolute responsibility for the American omnivore to fight for their food.