Arby's 5 for $5.95 deal

I've recently begun watching cable television again after a long absence; thus, I am once more subjected to the television advertisement, a noxious little invention I've lived happily without for three years. One commercial, especially, keeps catching my eye: an Arby's spot advertising their 5 for $5.95 deal.

What the deal entails is a limited list of menu items that are available 5 at a time for the low price of $5.95. I decided to participate in this to the extent that is possible: as a lactose-intolerant mostly vegetarian eater who does not eat fast food. So I made a let's-pretend menu. For my 5 for $5.95 meal, I ordered an Arby's Melt, a small Diet Pepsi, a small curly fry, an apple turnover, and an order of mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce. My meal, in total, costs only $5.95, but consists of an enormous 1,444 calories. That's a lot of bang for your buck.

In comparison: I bought asparagus the other day at the market, attempting to buy the wide range of green vegetables that are recommended for a balanced vegan diet. Asparagus cost $3.99 per pound and holds 91.4 calories. (Bear with me now as we venture into the scary proposition of me doing math). Asparagus then costs $4 per 100 calories (or so). The Arby's value meal costs $.41 per 100 calories.

I'm not going to go into a complicated breakdown of nutrition or anything like that because it seems a moot point. Given the fact that calories are the measurement of energy in a food source, who would choose to buy the asparagus when the 5 for $5.95 offer is clearly a better value? Read: more energy for your dollar? Well, fortunately, we have a basic understanding of nutrition and so for those of us who hold that understanding and have the means available to us,we purchase the asparagus. But for so many, the knowledge and the means are simply not there.

This is one of the points that Michael Pollen raises, among many others, in The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin, 2006). The book is an in-depth study of the origins of our food. Pollen traces the origins of four meals: a McDonald's meal consumed in a car, an all-organic meal from Whole Foods, a local meal prepared of ingredients raised on a single, sustainable farm, and a mostly-foraged meal of wild boar and mushrooms. The food chain, something that was once such a constant, immediate presence in humans' lives, has become a distant concept for modern Americans, used to buying shiny red apples all year round, preparing microwaveable meals in disposable containers, and comparing wines from around the world under fluorescent lights. Our food chain is immediate nor local, something that has, up until recent history, been a constant.

Pollen traces what has become of our food chain and how it evolved into the industrial beast that it is. One example is the history of corn, which Pollen follows in its evolution from a simple grain cultivated in Central and South America, to a monolithic American crop (with a bit of help from the government), cultivated so that it might be a part of almost everything we eat. (If you don't believe me, check out how many labels include high fructose corn syrup, only one of the many corn derivatives used regularly in the United States). Sometimes the details are a bit dense--overly scientific discussion of the genetics of corn, for example--but they're sections worth pushing through for the vast amount of knowledge packed into the prose about a topic that is so pertinent to everyone's life.

Eating is one thing that brings us together as humans: we all eat, across cultures, continents, and classes. Our food supply is something with which we are all connected and everyone should be concerned. If you're a person who ever spends $3.99 to buy a pound of asparagus, this book is a must-read.