Or: How Michael Pollan turned ”The Omnivore’s Dilemma” into a Young Reader’s Edition
Professor of non-fiction writing, currently teaching at Harvard University, journalist, author of In Defense of Food or the ground-breaking The Botany of Desire, TV show producer, environment activist – this is Michael Pollan and the complexity of his personality simply cannot be fully encapsulated in a single sentence. Winner of several prizes in science, environmental matters, non-fictional writing and journalism, Pollan addresses his public on stringent contemporary issues, sustained with valid proofs organized in a unique manner and content, meant to fight the disorders of the present American society on multiple levels. He is also well-known for his TED talks where he clearly defends his positions.
Pollan’s work is mainly focused on agricultural and environmental issues which go hand in hand with our health education, as well as economical and political situations. Take The Botany of Desire, for example: one of the explanations which Pollan presents there brings a new light to our minds. In the introduction of this book, Pollan introduces the term “coevolution” to refer to two species’ correlated evolution. Such is the way bees help flowers and the other way round; or the way we are the masters of agriculture and, conversely, the way agriculture masters us; or the way we need vegetables and fruit in order to feed ourselves, but, at the same time, these also need us to survive and expand their range. There appears to be an unspoken mutual pact which has been going on for thousands of years since the dawn of mankind. It has been there all along, but we have barely noticed it. We, as humans, tend to rule and reign, or at least this is our common assumption. Well, Pollan makes us wonder if we have ever done that, if we were indeed rulers of the planet. Such are Pollan’s hypotheses: daring, delightful and highly educational!
I consider that a fundamental book in this respect is The Omnivore’s Dilemma, where Pollan reconstructs and faithfully reproduces the steps of the three major food chains: the pastoral, the industrial and the personal. Agriculture and zoo-technology stand as a cornerstone to his research. His main focus is on the industrial chain and the alterations it causes in order to produce food for different tastes and price ranges.
Children and the Slaughterhouse
What is even more interesting is that Michael Pollan proves to be versatile enough to devise two versions of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: the initial one, subtitled A Natural History of Four Meals, written for adults, and a second one, subtitled The Secrets Behind What You Eat, which is an abridged and rewritten Young Readers Edition, meant for a juvenile audience. Of course, in the latter version the disturbing details of the slaughterhouse are either eliminated or modified, while still leaving the presentation of facts true and plain. To turn a book about the horrors of the slaughterhouses and the meat-processing industry into an acceptable reading for children might have seemed to the eyes of many people an impossible task. It appeared that children could not be made aware of such cruel realities – and yet again, Pollan comes to prove them wrong! And in doing so, he also proves that nowadays the youngest representatives show more and more interest in understanding the world around.
When reading the children’s version, I was surprised to see how the facts from the adults’ edition came to be retold in such an easy-to-understand manner and were complemented by highly illustrative images, graphs and photos. Moreover, the re-organization of chapters skillfully stirred my interest to read the next page, then the next and so on.
Through an impeccable journalistic vision, the author preserves his objectivity, leaving his readers the freedom to choose what to feel. Being aware of how human psychology works, the writer satisfies the child inside us by offering them all the necessary information.
Besides the book’s interest in agricultural issues (small scale biological farms versus industrial farming, adopting cultivation patterns from the Native Americans and so on), what appeals more to children is animal ranching and its relation to the animal food chain. Thus, the young reader is introduced to the generic Rosie, the “free-range chicken” and to “Steer #534”, a young bull. Each of them have an objective presentation, but one cannot help but feel attached to them.
Taking a closer look at “Steer #534”, for example, we find that it has got a story of its own, scattered throughout the book. Although never given a proper name, the veal is yet identified by its number; moreover, we are told its history and the course of events until its sacrifice. Why sacrifice? Because “Steer 534” remains just the object of a systematic industrial process, accelerated cattle raising for the meat processing industry. Pollan details the steps of turning this generic bovine into meat, following a process diagram aimed at cost and time efficiency. This production diagram, however, is turned by Pollan into a story meant to help children make their own future choices about nutrition. Did I make you curious enough to read the book? What if I told you that there is more than meets the eye?
Young Reader’s Edition of Omnivore’s Dilemma
Three years after the release of the edition for adults, Michael Pollan decided to come up with a young reader’s edition. Published in October 2009, again by Penguin, the newer version consists of 352 pages in the original format.
Pollan’s ability to transform his multi-layered personal experience from a book initially intended for adults into an educational book for children is a result of his linguistic flexibility and experience in working with people. According to the writer, the Young Readers Edition of Omnivore’s Dilemma is recommended to children ages 5 to 12. Yet, even teenagers would find the book appropriate to their level — as the complexity of its information and its comprehensibility make this book an enjoyable reading.
A Young Reader as a guide
If we read the Acknowledgements section in the adult version, it’s hard not to notice that a large paragraph is dedicated to Isaac, the writer’s son, who was 14 at that time.
This is the first book Isaac has been old enough and sufficiently interested in to actually help me with. His own approach to food — Isaac is the pickiest eater I know — has taught me a great deal about the omnivore’s dilemma. Though he declined to taste my boar, Isaac’s contribution to this book — coming in the form of smart suggestions, stimulating conversations at the dinner table, and, on the bad days, the best comfort a father could wish for — has been more precious than he can know. Thank you. (OD, 415)
The fact that Isaac willingly offered himself to guide his father in rewriting his book may have challenged the author to later modify the original version into one that is more approachable for young readers. Just like Isaac, many representatives of the young generation may find this book really interesting and informative and might wish to become the change this world needs. To almost completely change a mentality one must start with the roots. And the roots of the next generation are today’s children.
Besides, if the subject of this book made Pollan, the father, and Isaac, his son, bond in a stronger manner, then why shouldn’t this have the same effect on other families?
Great Teamwork
Michael Pollan’s children’s version is a result of great teamwork. Richie Chevat helped him adapt the text so as to be more approachable for a juvenile audience, Malia Wallen helped him with the visual resources, Alisha Liehaus, edited the project, Shanta Nevlin provided a dictionary to suit the book’s educational purpose and Jasmin Roubero skillfully created the explanatory schemes and the rest of the visual aids.
Michael Pollan also shows his appreciation to Gerry Marzorati, from the New York Times,
my longtime friend and editor… who first suggested five years ago that I spend some time writing about food for the magazine. Unbeknownst to either of us, he was pointing me down the path that led to this book. (YREOD 396)
He also thanks the friends and farmers whom he had encountered along his experience, who
gave unstintingly of their time, their wisdom, and their always excellent company. (396–7)
Smaller morsels
In writing this new children-oriented version, Pollan had to completely reinvent the structure of the book – this one no longer has three parts, but four, corresponding to the number of the meals of the day. The number of main chapters is slightly modified, increasing from 20 to 22. However this doesn’t mean that the new edition has a larger number of pages — as the book units are shorter, while also easy to comprehend and enjoyable to read.
The subtitle has also changed from “A Natural History of Four Meals” to a more suggestive “The Secrets Behind What You Eat”.
When analyzing the structure of the Table of Contents page, we realize that the titles in the Young Readers edition are either partially or completely modified, in order to become more comprehensible for the youngsters. Chapter 3 “The Elevator” in OD has been split into chapters 3 “From Farm to Factory” and 4 “The Grain Elevator” in YREOD. Similar alteration to chapter 9 “Big Organic” in OD, which was divided into chapters 10 “Big Organic”, 11 “More Big Organic”, III “The Local Sustainable Meal from Grass” and 12 “Polyface Farm” in YREOD. Chapters II “PASTORAL. GRASS” and 8 “All Flesh Is Grass” in OD have been reduced to chapter II “The Industrial Organic Meal” in YREOD and chapter 16 “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” in OD was moved to chapter 8, YREOD.
If we read the titles, we notice that they preserve the same meaning, while the way they are formulated differs.
Collage by Storynook Pooka, using public domain images: Colin Watts (jaguar), Livia Buhler (cow), Parents’ circle (child).
Subjectivity in Non Fiction
In the Young Readers Edition of Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan maintains his subjective outlook on his experience, although the nonfiction genre generally adopts an objective view. This is the novelty he brings to this genre: a first-person narrative point of view, where Pollan is both the hero and the narrator of his own book, sharing his knowledge and discoveries with his public.
Thus Pollan uses self-description: “M. Pollan, the Food Detective” (30), or “Pollan the Hunter” (272). The appellative “M”, from Mister is used by to convey a mentor’s position as seen through the eyes of the little readers, which serves to draw them closer. Pollan sometimes speaks of himself in the third person singular in funny chapter titles such as the gourmet “Polyface Chicken à la Pollan” (255) or “Chez Pollan” (355) .
Methods in Rewriting for a Younger Audience
a. Rephrasing paragraphs
Comparing the style of the two versions, we can see that YREOD has brought down the original contents to its simplest, yet expressive and informative form. Let’s take the part where Pollan presents an American iconic place. In OD this starts without announcing its subject:
Air-conditioned, odorless, illuminates by buzzing fluorescent tubes, the American supermarket doesn’t present itself as having very much to do with Nature. And yet what is this place if not a landscape (man-made, it’s true) teeming with plants and animals? … (Pollan, OD, p. 15)
And this description stretches over three pages, still without naming its subject; the author is actually creating suspense for the adult reader, making it all seem like a riddle whose answer has to be guessed by the reader. The icon’s identity is at last revealed on the third page:
… The great edifice of variety and choice that is an American supermarket turns out to rest on a remarkably narrow biological foundation compromised of a tiny group of plants that is dominated by a single species: Zea mays, the giant tropical grass most Americans know as corn. (Pollan, OD 18)
While the adult reader might have the patience to read all this, the young reader would find it impossible to follow such a long description. Thus, in YREOD, Michael Pollan spares the curious mind of the child and promotes a story-like line:
The average supermarket doesn’t seem much like a field of corn.
Take a look around one. What do you see? There’s a large, air-conditioned room. There are long aisles and shelves piled high with boxes and cans. There are paper goods and diapers and magazines. But that’s not all. Look again. Somewhere, behind the brightly colored packaging, underneath the labels covered with information, there is a mountain of corn. (Pollan, YREOD 20)
The answer that the adult reader gets after three pages’ reading is given to children right at the beginning of the section. His text actively involves his indirect interlocutors by inviting them to “Look again!” (YREOD 20)
b. Avoiding graphic details
The hard-to-digest information cannot always reduced to the minimum; it sometimes needs to be there. It needs to show the child the wrong path which adults follow. Yet, rather than describing scenes of horror which could affect the young mind, the author focuses more on expressing his feelings. Here’s how the slaughtering of a boar appears in the Young Readers’ Edition:
Gently, he gave the head a quarter turn and then quickly drew his knife across the artery running alongside the bird’s windpipe. A stream of blood shot from the cut and poured down into a metal gutter that funneled it into a bucket. Daniel explained that you wanted to cut only the artery, not the whole neck. That way the heart would continue to beat and pump out the blood. The bird shuddered in its cone and its yellow feet jerked around. (YREOD 228, my emphasis)
The words in italics indicate the violent details. Comparing this with the original version, very few words seem to differ:
Gently, he gave the head a quarter turn and then quickly drew his knife across the artery running alongside the bird’s windpipe. A stream of blood erupted from the cut, pulsing slightly as it poured down into a metal gutter that funneled it into a bucket. Daniel explained that you wanted to severe only the artery, not the head, so that the heart would continue to beat and pump out the blood. The bird shuddered in its cone, its yellow feet dancing spastically. (OD, 231, my emphasis)
In the children’s edition, many morbid technical details have been eliminated, even if those remaining might still be hard to digest for the young reader. Several paragraphs have now been merged, thus reducing the three pages of the first version to just a little over a page in the second edition.
Using a short knife, Angelo made another shallow cut the length of the animal’s belly. He talked while he worked, mostly about the dishes he could make from the different parts of the pig. I could not believe Angelo was still talking about food. The pig was splayed open now. I could see all its organs: the bluish intestine and the spongy pink pair of lungs. I’d handled plenty of chicken guts on Joel’s farm, but this was different and more disturbing. That was probably because the pig’s internal organs looked exactly like human organs. (Pollan, YREOD 321)
In order to get the message through, one has to be honest. This is exactly what Michael Pollan did. If they are to be educated about their food choices, why should children be hidden the truth? Indeed children learn better from true factual accounts than from stories which turn out later to be fictitious.
c. Professional jargon made plain
Michael Pollan takes into account the fact that children may not recognize all the specialized terms that he used in his first version. Therefore, he chose to substitute, rephrase or simply let out technical jargon in the second edition.
In the paragraphs above, where I used my personal emphasis to point out the differences between the two versions, Michael Pollan acts like a true master of the English language. Graphic jargon — like “severe”, “erupted” or “spastically” — were replaced with everyday terms. These are medical terms, not used on a daily basis, so the young readers might not understand their meaning. Besides, as children have great imagination, they may be scared when recreating the dramatic scene in their minds. The word “head” has been substituted with “neck” for the same reason. And “dancing spastically” was replaced with “jerked around” because this is a more colloquial phrase which children use – besides, it moves them away from the grotesque image of death.
d. Leaving out some history
To appeal the curious young reader, Michael Pollan has also eliminated documentary and historical facts that might have appeared tedious. The bibliography at the end of the first version has now been completely eliminated, as were the historical details behind them.
The only historical facts that are presented is that Columbus found America, that there lived the Maya Indian people that were to be defeated by the Europeans. There is no mention of People’s Park, no New York Times, no “Alcoholic Republic”.
When it comes to the agricultural policy of President Roosevelt’s, the facts were presented in a plain manner, enumerating the existing tensions, while the New Deal remains unnamed:
Less than a century later the picture is very different. Corn has muscled out most of the other plants and animals. The sheep, chickens, pigs, and horses are gone. So are most of the fruits and vegetables. George Naylor grows only two crops on his 470 acres — corn and soybeans. Corn has even pushed most of the people off the farm. Out of 300 million Americans, only 2 million are still farmers. That means the average American farmer today grows enough food to feed 140 other people. (YREOD 35)
If we are to analyze the words which are used in this fragment, Corn is again personalized, just like in most of the present book. “[c]orn has muscled.… corn has even pushed”. Corn seems to be the leading character in this non-fictional story.
Paul Rozin’s discoveries are summarily presented, with no mention of his book. Pollan chose to reproduce the main ideas as textbook lessons, mentioning all the authors in the Acknowledgements section. Mentioning them within the text of his book might have led to the disruption of the reading act. Young readers are curious about facts, not credentials.
There is a full subchapter called “Rats”, where Pollan describes the rat as an omnivore, while clearly stating the difference to the human omnivore:
Rats are also omnivores. But unlike us, rats can’t pass lessons or food habits down to their many, many children. (YREOD 121).
The koalas don’t have a chapter of their own, but their strict vegetarian regime is condensed in a brief paragraph, that points out the essentials of their diet.
The koala eats eucalyptus leaves. Period. To the koala, eucalyptus leaves = food. (YREOD 113)
The correlation between diet and brain development postulated in the adult version, is now condensed to a memorable catchphrase: “In other words, as the koala’s diet shrank, so did its brain.” (YREOD 117)
e. Bringing in visual aids
As we have seen so far, Pollan has found the most ingenious methods to describe his own experience with American food and make it more appealing to the younger public. But what would a book which is addressed to children be like without visuals?
Children have a great visual memory and our writer makes use of photos, charts, labels or notes in order to get his message through. “A picture is worth a thousand words”, says the English proverb – and so it is. Michael Pollan’s images have their own stories. They have multiple roles: to complete the text, to double the text and explain the information, to aid the text showing a new fact or to offer basic background data.
f. Photos
(Reproduced from Polan YREOD, p.36.)
In YREOD, Michael Pollan uses real photos of himself and the people he had met when writing the book. He also offers explanations of the pictures. Some of them are shown bellow.
Michael Pollan chose George Naylor’s farm as the first destination in his journey to trace down the industrial food chain. This picture shows the last stage of corn processing at Naylor’s farm, as the writer explains:
George Naylor loads his truck with corn from his storage bin, which he’ll then tow to the grain elevator in town. (YREOD 36)
This calf drew Michael Pollan’s attention because it was easy to recognize thanks to the three white distinctive marks on his forehead. He had chosen it to the strict recommendations of the veterinarian caring for the cattle at the Blair Ranch.
Ed Blair suggested, half jokingly, that I might as well buy one. Then I could have the whole beef-making experience. He told me how to pick out a good calf: one with a broad straight back and thick shoulders. Basically you’re looking for a sturdy frame on which to hang a lot of meat. (YREOD 75)
Michael Pollan’s description of the picture is the following:
This is Steer #534. I purchased him as a calf so I could follow him as he traveled through the meat-making part of the industrial food chain. (YREOD 36)
(Reproduced from Polan YREOD, p. 203 / 158)
The photo above is a family snapshot of
the Salatin family and farm crew. From left to right: Peter, Daniel, Lucille, Galen, Teresa, and Joel. (YREOD 203)
The most traditional and ecological farm in the book, Polyface stands at the same time for the real standards of organic food. The Salatins and the farm employees are together a family, they eat together, live in the same place, they are equals and enjoy a healthy way of living. They were the ones who completely changed Michael Pollan’s way of understanding the world.
These photos not only show Pollan’s experience, they also show the way food is produced, the way people work – children can easily identify the environment, make connections, maybe relate to their own lives and experiences.
g. Graphs make it clear
Another category of useful visuals are the graphic drawings. These help visualize statistics that are either explaining the text or giving additional information.
Pollan uses the graph above to inform and raise awareness of the fact that the obesity rate is increasing continuously and it requires immediate action. The graph, reproduced from a professional source (the Journal of the Medical Association of USA), grants visual impact to the informative text.
After the graph, Pollan added worrying observations such as:
kids in the U.S. today may turn out to be the first group of Americans with life spans that are shorter than their parents’. To put it simply, Americans are getting fatter and it’s killing us. (YREOD 102)
Another example of visual aid is the notebook sketch bellow, that provides a graphical representation of the digestive function in cows:
(Reproduced from Pollan, YREOD, p. 74)
And here’s Pollan’s discussion of bovine anatomy:
Cattle have four separate stomach compartments, while other farm animals such as chickens and pigs have only one. (Pollan, YREOD, p. 74)
As children would have had difficulties to follow a text-only presentation of the complicated bovine metabolism, Michael Pollan chose to facilitate their understanding with this school-like visual aid.
Another graph that stirs the reader’s curiosity shows the great lengths that the Polyface Farm went to avoid compromising the freshness of the product and minimize its carbon footprint.
Once a year, Joel Salatin sends a card to all his customers saying “Greetings from the non-bar code people.” (YREOD 239). “Non-bar code” means that the customer receives the food directly from the producer – Salatin’s farm, in this case – rather than via FedEx (which uses a bar code for parcel tracking).
(Reproduced from Pollan, YREOD, p. 74 )
h. Sticky notes and labels
The last but not the least of the visual aids are the notes and labels which the author uses to reproduce definitions and offer background or basic information.
One such note is the definition of the consumers implied in the food chain. Although students are supposed to already know this since they learn it in school at a pretty early age, Pollan preferred to keep his message safe and inserted the following:
(Illustration 14 reproduced from Pollan, YREOD, p.114)
A note on the beloved Nuggets lists the chemicals that make them so tasty and exposes the danger they pose to the consumer.
(Image 15, reproduced from Pollan, YREOD, p.133)
These “fast food” flavors make a lot of fast-food meals taste the same. Even Chicken McNuggets have the same fast-food taste as the hamburgers or French fries, though they’re technically chicken, not potato or beef. (Pollan, YREOD, p. 133)
The menu below gives the reader a fore-taste of environment-friendly meal Pollan organized. It was to contain hunted meat, hand-picked mushrooms and vegetables from his personal garden. As we are to see, he was up to a meticulously prepared challenge.
(Image 16 reproduced from YREOD.)
Post-Reading recommendations
YREOD’s role is to open the young readers’ mind and make them aware about our environment and its close relation to man. Nature keeps us alive, gives us the fresh air we need so much and also feeds us.
If the adults can think for themselves and are invited to make their own choices at the end of the adult version, Michael Pollan shares some of his solutions which children should apply to create themselves a better and healthier future. Thus, he extends his book with an “Afterword” section.
The author gives the young readers some tips for eating, which he chose to structure in three parts: “Eat Real Food”, “Buy Real Food” and “Eat Real Meals” and recommends the further reading of his book In Defense of Food. Some of the advice Pollan gives children: always trust their grandmother when food is implied, as her mentality is probably closer to the organic food chain than that of their parents; be their own food detectives; consume food from their own garden or bought from farmers; eat at the table, slowly, and with company!
Illustration 18 reproduced from Pollan, YREOD, p. 368
Pollan Answers
The book also contains a ”Q&A with Michael Pollan” section. Joyful by nature and willing to inform as much as possible, Michael Pollan makes himself available and openly answers to the questions.
Children were mostly interested in Steer 534, in Pollan’s culinary preferences and in his hunting experience.
Here is an example:
WHY DIDN’T YOU NAME STEER #534?
I thought about it. In fact my son, Isaac, suggested I name him “Night,” since he was black. But I decided that was a bad idea. He wasn’t a pet and I didn’t want to bond with him. I also didn’t want my readers to bond with him, because if they did they might be angry with me when I allow him to be slaughtered. (YREOD 383)
Further on, Michael Pollan puts at the disposal of his young readers 23 sites and a list of video recommendation that will help them make healthy choices and guide their path towards becoming little environment activists.
Thus the instruction of young learners does not stop once they are done with reading this book. Pollan trusts that their little minds are always hungry for more information. Children generally ask a lot of questions to feed their curiosity and it is our duty, as responsible adults, to guide them towards nature and everything that it has to offer.
Michael Pollan has succeeded to achieve such guidance through this book. Now it’s our turn. Shall we?
Bibliography:
“About Michael Pollan”, Michael Pollan official website, Online: — www.michaelpollan.com/about/ (accessed March 5th 2020)
Pollan. Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma. A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006. Referred to as OD in the present paper
Pollan, Michael. TheOmnivore’s Dilemma. The Secrets Behind What You Eat. Young Readers Edition. New York: Penguin, 2009. Referred to as YREOD in the present paper
Kalins, Dorothy. ”Two Great Books to Chew On,” Newsweek, July 24th 2006
(written May-June 2018)
Erica Gabriela Győrfi
