The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals | 
| Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  436 reviews
Sales Rank: 3894
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6
ISBN: 1594200823
Dewey Decimal Number: 394.12
EAN: 9781594200823
ASIN: 1594200823
Publication Date: April 11, 2006
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Product Description
The bestselling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century
"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't-which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance. The cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time we're realizing that our food choices also have profound implications for the health of our environment. The Omnivore's Dilemma is bestselling author Michael Pollan's brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.
Pollan has divided The Omnivore's Dilemma into three parts, one for each of the food chains that sustain us: industrialized food, alternative or "organic" food, and food people obtain by dint of their own hunting, gathering, or gardening. Pollan follows each food chain literally from the ground up to the table, emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the species we depend on. He concludes each section by sitting down to a meal--at McDonald's, at home with his family sharing a dinner from Whole Foods, and in a revolutionary "beyond organic" farm in Virginia. For each meal he traces the provenance of everything consumed, revealing the hidden components we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods reflects our environmental and biological inheritance.
We are indeed what we eat-and what we eat remakes the world. A society of voracious and increasingly confused omnivores, we are just beginning to recognize the profound consequences of the simplest everyday food choices, both for ourselves and for the natural world. The Omnivore's Dilemma is a long-overdue book and one that will become known for bringing a completely fresh perspective to a question as ordinary and yet momentous as What shall we have for dinner?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 431 more reviews...
 Informative and Entertaining July 19, 2008
This book was very well written. Before starting, I was worried that it would be a rather dry read (after all, how much can you say about food?). Well, apparently there is an awful lot to say about food, and Pollan does a great job at making it interesting. He brings to light some of the problems with industrial agriculture that I just never knew existed. He doesn't just present problems is this book however. He also talks about some ways to help make things better. The one thing I did not like was when he had wine while hunting. However, this has nothing to do with the book's readability.
I reccomend this book because I'm not a food fanatic and I found this book interesting.
Food For Thought July 15, 2008
The well written, most interesting read on the state of agriculture in the United States is definately "food for thought." The book's author, Michael Pollan visited three different kinds of farms: first a Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO); second, three big business organic farms: Cal Organic, Earthbound Farms and Cascadian Farms; third, a farm committed to locally grown, free range food called Polyface. The last part of Pollan's journey involved foraging for own food. Pollan even killed a wild pig to serve at the meal he cooked his friends. Each phase of his jouney concluded with a meal derived from the type of farming operations Michael had just visited. For example, Pollan and his family ate at McDonalds for the CAFO meal.
It took them a full ten minutes speeding down the highway to finish their McDonald's meal. I liked his comment about fast food eating. He says, "Perhaps the reason you eat this food quickly is because it doesn't bear savoring." He goes on to say about fast food, "The more you concentrate on how it tastes, the less like anything it tastes. I've said before that McDonalds serves as kind of comfort food, but they are selling something more schematic than that-something more like a signifier of comfort food. So you eat more and eat more quickly, hoping somehow to catch up to the original idea of a cheeseburger or French fry as it it retreats over the horizon. And so it goes, bite after biite, until you feel not satisfied exactly, but simply, regretably, full."
For all of their good qualities, the big business organic farms have driven many smaller organic famers out of business. Places like Walmart and Target do not want to buy organic food from various small suppliers, but from one large organic supplier that can supply them with all the vegetables, etc. they need. Big organic farms do much harm to soil by continually running the weeding machines over it. Since they don't use herbicides, they have to have a way to control the weeds.
Polyface Farm raises a variety of animals (chickens, pigs and cows) that are pastured and eat the food they were created to eat. Polyface farm doesn't raise more animals than it can care for in a humane manner and refuses to ship it's prcuduct out, but only sells it locally.
I personally buy organic or free range meat. After looking at how our farm facory animals are raised on unnatural feed, in overcrowded conditions, dosed with antibiotics and growth hormones, I will pay the extra money for healthy meat. How far you can go in eating local depends on what part of country you live in (I live in Wisconsin, with its short growing season). It also depends on whether you live close to a source of local food or can grow your own, and also your budget restrainsts.
Now on to the reasons I could not give the book a five star review. Contrary to what Pollan says at the beginning of the book, bread and pasta are not two of the most wholesome foods known to man. Try telling that to a carbohyddrate addict or someone with celiac disease and see what they say. Also, saturated isn't bad for you. It's a traditional fat that's been used by healthy cutures for thousands of years. The trans fats, as well as, fats from CAFO animals are the real killer fats. When you feed animals unnatural diets, their ratios of saturated to unsaturated fat changes in a very unhealthy manner. Free range meat has a healthy balnce of various kinds of fats. Also, how could a person who has seen how a CAFO is run say he would ever again eat at a McDonalds. If I were starving and had no other food choices, then and only then would I eat there.
 Changes the way you look at food! July 13, 2008
An amazing tour de force of food in the US! Pollan writes with wonderful wisdom and honesty. The book has a wonderful bibliography.
Industrial food is at the heart of all the major health problems in this country. Pollan will open your eyes to the fact and make you wnat to learn about the alternatives.
Highly recommended!
Wonderful book, well spoken July 7, 2008
This book was extremely informative and very interesting. Some parts are a little slow but if you're driving down the road its easy to get lost in the discussion of various foods and how they succeed or fail based on their ingredients, big corporations, and government intervention.
Corn is a substance nearly incapable of growing without human intervention and is being used, regardless of health issues, in just about anything.
If this doesn't change your way of thinking about industrialized food, nothing will July 5, 2008
Simply put, if I could force one book upon every living soul, this would be the one. I don't see how anyone couldn't learn something at the very least, and more than likely it will change your way of thinking to some degree. It would bring the industrialized food market to its knees if even a percentage of people took this book to heart as much as I have.
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