the omnivore's dilemma

"The curse of the omnivore is that when it comes to figuring out which of those things are safe to eat, he's pretty much on his own."

As Pollan discovers, being an omnivore does have it's curses and blessings. The fact that we have so much choice in what we are able to eat means that for humans, eating can be more than just a necessary practice, it can be an experience. Instead of getting all our nutrients from one source, we obtain nutrients from a variety of sources depending on our preferences. This freedom of choice unfortunately comes with a downside as well. Pollan says how we have to decide what is safe to eat and what isn't; we also have to figure what nutrients we need to eat in order to sustain ourselves. As Pollan explains, for humans, eating is not as straight forward a task as it is for a monarch butterfly who only eats milkweed. Humans are unique in a sense that we have to learn for ourselves what is safe for us to eat. We are unlike other animals who instinctively know what to eat in order to survive. Try as food producers might there is no such item on the market that provides us with all the nutrients that we need. There are protein bars and meal supplements that try to mimic the simplify of nature without the burden of choice but in my opinion these things take away from the adventure of eating. I am a huge food lover and I would rather go through the effort of having to think about what to eat rather than to just have a bar or powder handed to me. What we eat reflects the culture and location in which we were raised but also varies from person to person since things like allergies make some foods deadly to certain people. Although having to choose what is safe or appropriate to eat is sometimes a difficult decision to make it is one that I think is worth mulling over so that we are not restricted to the mundane routine of eating the same thing day after day. Sometimes we might try things that make us feel sick or disgusted but it is only through the sampling of a variety of food that we can figure out what we enjoy eating. If it wasn't for the bravery and curiosity of our omnivore ancestors, we would never have been exposed to crops like potatoes or cherries, which are delicious as long as you do not eat the poisonous leaves. We also would have never have been introduced to the puffer fish whose internal organs contain so much poison that the consumption of them results in death!