Michael Pollan
Humans are uniquely burdened by the open-ended choice of what to eat, a dilemma now exploited by an industrial food system that prioritizes cheap calories over nutrition and ecological balance.
Because humans can eat almost anything, we rely on cultural traditions rather than biology to guide our diets, but in the modern American context these cultural guideposts have eroded and been replaced by food science.
The American food system is overwhelmingly dependent on subsidized industrial corn, which is chemically processed into countless additives and used to unnaturally fatten feedlot cattle.
Large-scale industrial organic farming often mimics the unsustainable practices of conventional agriculture, relying heavily on fossil fuels and massive distribution networks despite avoiding chemical pesticides.