APES- Reading Guide- Part #1 The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan Reading Guide Instructions: For each of the

statements listed below: DISCUSS the meaning of the statement, give your reaction and give an example from the book. Introduction: Our National Eating Disorder Pg. 1- What Should We Have For Dinner? How did we ever get to a point where we need investigative journalists to tell us where our food comes from and nutritionists to determine the dinner menu? When they post up a title what if fat wasnt the thing that makes you fat. That made me shocked because fat is fat. Pg. 5- Certainly the extraordinary abundance of food in America complicates the whole problem of choice Americans have never had a single, strong, stable culinary tradition to guide us We takes things for granted and that the US doesnt have culinary. Pg. 10- By replacing solar energy with fossil fuel, by raising millions of food animals in close confinement, by feeding ourselves those animals foods they never evolved to eat, and by feeding ourselves foods far more novel than we even realize, we are taking risks with our health and the health of the natural world that are unprecedented. Our technology can lead us to failures that leads to disease because the animals cant eat that. Pg. 10- Our eating also constitutes a relationship with dozens of other species- plants, animals and fungi- with which we have co-evolved to the point where our fates are deeply entwined. The plants and the humans have been surviving with each other help since a log time ago. Industrial Corn- One: The Plant- Corns Conquest Pg. 17- Except for the salt and a handful of synthetic food additives, every edible item in the supermarket is a link in a food chain that beings with a particular plant growing in a specific patch of soil (or, more seldom, stretch of sea) somewhere on earth. The humans are shaking the equilibrium of the ecosystem. Well, were are humans we cant just stop or else we lose financially. Pg. 18-19- There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn. Make a collage- showing the items that are made of corn in the average American supermarket.

Pg. 19- Why are Mexicans (descendents of the Mayans) referred to as the corn people? The corn was their food. Pg. 21- What is the C-4 trick by plants? It limits the H20 to leave. Pg. 22- What does the higher ratio of Carbon 13 (isotope) to Carbon 12 in a persons body tell us? They both have different atomic weight. The more corn in his or her diet. Pg. 22- How much wheat flour do we eat compared to corn flour? (Americans) 114 lbs wheat 11 lbs corn The Rise of Zea Mays Pg. 23- Explain why some people regard agriculture as a brilliant evolutionary strategy on the part of plants and animals? That scientist have made the plant better and more efficient Pg. 24- What was the biotic army that the white man brought to the new world? The domestic animals cattle, pigs Pg. 25- Explain how corn won over the wheat people because of its versatility. Because corn can be used in different ways Married to Man Pg. 26- Why is corn considered to be married to man? Because it needs the humans to survived Corn Sex Pg. 30- For to prosper in the industrial food chain to the extent it has, corn has to acquire several improbable new tricks- What did corn have to do? It had to be a different genes. It had be a hbryide