Summary Of The Omnivore's Farewell Address By Michael Pollen

Half a century ago, President Dwight Eisenhower took the Oval Office and led the Americans through the aftermath of World War II. At the end of his 8-year presidency, Eisenhower left the country with a flourished economy, an America’s first standing army, and a final warning. Mentioned in his 1961 Farewell Speech, Eisenhower introduced a powerful concept about the corruption of human betterment by the undue commercial interest. He warns that the growing military-industrial complex would exert an unwarranted influence on the government which ultimately would threaten the well-being of the civilians. Half a century later, the Americans today find themselves in Eisenhower’s fear. The only difference is that our enemy is more imminent; instead

The battle of men and food industry is described in Michael Pollen’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. As Pollen takes us through the modern food production, we see how misplaced power, driven by greed for profit, has degraded our society and put American’s ideology at risk.
Allocation of power has a direct consequence in people’s welfare. When handling properly, the country’s health, happiness, and fortune are ensured. When misplaced, as Eisenhower suggests in his speech and Pollen describes in his book, would bring disastrous effect to the prosperity of a society. With the military-industrial complex thriving and burgeoning at Eisenhower’s time, the former president sees that more forces and money are joining the industry. The resulting outcome is today the unbeatable U.S. military, whom its power has been seen and recognized worldwide. Yet, with this mighty force comes an alarming danger. As Eisenhower stated in his speech, the temptation for power and profit is too alluring to be disregarded, and people would do anything to seize this

Ever since the technology evolution inspired by the rise of military-industrial complex, the government and private corporations funded millions of research with the goal to improve people’s welfare. With such noble ambition in mind, Eisenhower reminds us in his last speech that intellectual and capitalism should be independent. Research for the purpose of welfare improvement should not be hinder or delay by any other special interest. However, in today food industry, research for health improvement are pushed aside by research for sales enhancement. Funded by corporations who sole interest is to increase their profit, Pollen claims that many “food scientists spend their days designing the future of food- its flavor, texture, and packaging (92).” The change in research priority shows that the people’s welfare is being devalued, and the world today only concerns about the economic growth. To illustrate the potential cost of this mentality, we should consider the disease for the twentieth century, type II diabetes. With all the resources rush to finance the research in food sales, no investigation is done with the cure for the disease. Correspondingly, people with diabetes continue to suffer. Furthermore, increasingly more people would be diagnosed with it as corporations’ research successfully put more calories and sugar into our