1) According to Pollan, the omnivore’s dilemma is the cause of having too many food options which makes it difficult to pick food to buy or eat. In the text, Pollan says “Certainly the extraordinary abundance of food in America complicates the whole problem of choice(Pollan 1).” In other words, people in America have many foods to choose from which causes an issue when picking what they want to eat. Pollan later explains how certain foods can be good or bad for a person which also adds to the dilemma.
8) Pollan brings up the rise of vegetarianism and animal rights awareness because it was a way to tell us that people are becoming aware of what they are eating which is the cause for these two. Pollan uses examples of culture and basic human doings to help back up his claim. In the text Pollan says “But the general question consensus has always been that humans were indeed omnivores and, whatever spiritual or moral dilemmas the killing and eating of animals posed, our various cultural traditions ( everything from the rituals governing slaughter to saying grace before the meal) resolved them for us well enough.(Pollan 3)” In other words, people have always eaten animals including cultures but for some reason, some have stopped eating animals. In my opinion, it could be that people are unsure what they are eating because most of the time they are just eating without questioning until the people who do know tell others, and then that info spreads and causes others not to eat animals.
9) When Pollan said “The schizoid” he meant that people do not have sympathy for animals causing people to eat them. In the text Pollan says “The disappearance of animals from our lives has opened a space in which there’s no reality check on the sentiment or the brutality;…(Pollan 4)”. Meaning that people don’t see animals before they die so they can’t feel anything towards the animals. Pollan says humans just consume without questioning the animal’s life meaning they have no remorse towards it.
10) From Bergers essay, Pollan highlights the drifting contact between humans and animals. Humans have shown to not care much for animals before eating them and Bergers essay tries to bring it to light. The text says “In which John Berger suggested that the loss of everyday contact between ourselves and animals-and specifically the loss of eye contact–has left us deeply confused about the terms of our relationship to other species(4).”. In other words, humans don’t show emotions towards animals because we don’t see animals as much. Most people just see animals as meals rather than as living things.
