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1 " Our food system depends on consumers’ not knowing much about it beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it’s a short way from not knowing who’s at the other end of your food chain to not caring- to the carelessness of both consumers and producers. "
― Michael Pollan , The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Secrets Behind What You Eat
2 " It seemed to me not too much to ask of a meat eater, . . that at least once in his life he take some direct responsibility for the killing on which his meat-eating depends. "
― , The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Secrets Behind What You Eat
3 " Also, organic cows, like Rosie the organic chicken, are never fed corn that contains residues of atrazine, the herbicide commonly sprayed on American cornfields. The tiniest amount of this chemical (0.1 part per billion) has been shown to change the sex of frogs. There’s been no study to show what it does to children. "
4 " A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature’s complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain. At either end of any food chain you find a biological system- a patch of soil, a human body- and the health of one is connected- literally- to the health of the other. "
5 " When we mistake what we know for all there is to know, a healthy appreciation for one's ignorance in the face of a mystery like soil fertility gives way to the hubris that we can treat nature like a machine. "
6 " The great advantage of being a "reasonable creature" is that you can find a reason for whatever you want to do "
7 " The curse of the omnivore is that when it comes to figuring which of those things are safe to eat, he's pretty much on his own. "