Post #6: Chapter 15

Chapter 15 was a very interesting section that I really enjoyed reading. By this point in the book, Pollan has had a chance to take a deep look into the industrial and pastoral aspect of where our food comes from. He decides that his last endeavor should be to prepare and eat his own food, by hunting and gathering it. I think that this is important for him to do to get the full experience of how easy or hard it would be to catch and prepare one's own food, and decide if it is realistically something that Americans could do on a day to day basis. The three basic components he wanted to include in his meal were plants, animals and fungi.
To be able to forage for his own food, many roadblocks needed to be knocked down in order for him to succeed. These same problems would stand in way of most Americans if they attempted to eat a diet that only consisted of food they picked, killed, or grew themselves. Being able to distinguish between a poisonous and non-poisonous mushroom, being able to shoot and kill an animal, or being able to grow and harvest your own plants, are all difficult aspects of this way of life. Though this might be doable and acceptable to some people throughout the world, it is not physically possible for all of Americans to live this way. There are not nearly enough animals or plants left in the wild for all of us to live on. So even though agriculture has some very negative impacts on humans, animals and the environment, it is what we need to survive at this point in time.