The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Rating:  441 reviews
Sales Rank: 31
Media: Paperback
Pages: 464
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0143038583
Dewey Decimal Number: 394.12
EAN: 9780143038580
Publication Date: August 28, 2007
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Product Description
A New York Times bestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating, this revolutionary book by award winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly simple question: What should we have for dinner? Tracing from source to table each of the food chains that sustain us whether industrial or organic, alternative or processed he develops a portrait of the American way of eating. The result is a sweeping, surprising exploration of the hungers that have shaped our evolution, and of the profound implications our food choices have for the health of our species and the future of our planet.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 436 more reviews...
 'Omnivore' may forever change the way you think about food April 11, 2006
JL
441 out of 514 found this review helpful
Michael Pollan's beautifully written, eye-opening new book already has me thinking about everything I put into my mouth. Clearly, this is an important, even a ground-breaking book. The Omnivore's Dilemma is much more than just an indictment of industrial food systems, or our treatment of animals, though. That's what other reviewers are concentrating on, and they're right. What I took away from this book, though, was just how thoughtless we have become about what we feed ourselves. More than anything else, Pollan's book is a plea for us to stop and think for a moment about our whole process of eating. Just as we get the political leaders we deserve, we also get the food we deserve. Pay attention!
Facing the dilemma I have been avoiding for years. May 12, 2006
W. Doyle (Boston suburbs, USA)
69 out of 73 found this review helpful
Since I read Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" over five years ago, I have refused to eat any fast food of any kind. Both morally and nutritionally, my position is that if I were to eat that food again, I would be tacitly accepting an industry that is abhorrent on so many levels. Knowing what I now know, that degree of cognitive dissonance is simply too great for me to overcome.
When my son was born two years ago, my thinking about food choices returned and has become an important part of my day-to-day consciousness.
When I first read about "Omnivore" online, I found the premise compelling. What exactly am I eating? Where does it come from? Why should I care? Exactly the kind of book that I'd been looking for, especially as I try to improve my own health and try to give my little guy the best start in life.
I bought the book as soon as it came out and found it to be highly enjoyable, yet almost mind-numbingly disenchanting. We all know about corn and cows and chickens and how the government subsidizes their production (mainly through corn subsidies). But Pollan has given me a completely new view of corn, its processed derivatives, and secondarily, has made me rethink my view of the farmers growing this stuff and the industries who buying it. There is so much wrong with this picture.
Corn, in the wrong hands, can be used for some terrible things, among them high fructose corn syrup (a major player in the obesity epidemic) and as feed for cows (who get sick when they eat it, requiring anti-biotics!). I can't compartmentalize anymore, just because meat tastes good. As Pollan clearly outlines, there is a very selfish reason why the beef industry doesn't want us to see inside a slaughter house. Many of us would never eat it again if we saw how disgusting and cruel the process typically is.
In the section on the ethics of eating animals, Pollan compellingly summarizes animal ethicist Peter Singer's case against eating animals, making a strong argument for vegetarianism. Then he tries to argue for a more moderate (read: carnivorous) world view, and I have to admit, I wasn't convinced. I am a lifelong meat eater, but am seriously thinking about switching to a vegetarian diet. I can no longer reconcile the slaughter of animals with my own appreciation of them. And beyond slaughter, there are plenty of health benefits to eating a plant-based diet.
Here's my bottom line: If you aren't prepared to question your views on food, or are afraid of what you might learn, then you really need to avoid this book. This has all made my head spin and my heart ache over the past month. Faced with the facts, I actually feel as though I am mourning the loss of my old diet. But I am terribly ambivalent about becoming a vegetarian, not at all happy to be making such a drastic (yet healthy) change. I am embarrassed about it, and worried about how I will deal with a meatless lifestyle in the years ahead. I am glad Pollan opened my eyes to this, but secretly wish I weren't so curious about these issues. The truth hurts.
Shocking: Iowa an Agricultural Desert, Cannot Eat Its Own Corn! February 4, 2007
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
19 out of 22 found this review helpful
I bought both his books, and now regret buying the Botany of Desire--that book is more of a whimsical discussion of the relation between four plants and humans, while this one is a deeper learning experience that is focused on sustainability. There are a number of gems that I noted down.
In something of a play on words and meaning, the author opens by noting that we have a national eating disorder because we lack a culture that places eating in a proper frame of reference where time spent preparing and enjoying food is valued, and then seques into how damaging to the environment, and to ourselves, are monocultures. At many points through the book the author documents how industrialized foods are less nutricious, more harmful to the human body, and more wasteful of the earth's resources, than organic foods.
The book is especially dramatic and deeply documented with reference to the bastardization of corn from something delicious for humans, to something that is not edible by humans but used to create a machine line for manufactured foods that can be transported great distances. The whole story of corn as the foundation for abusing cows, chickens, and other animals is extremely well told here, and shocking. It stunned me, for example, to read about Iowa as an agricultural "desert," whose farms cannot support families, only inedible corn destined for beef factories.
As the author notes, the mutation of corn pushed the animals off the local farms and into a factory farm system. The author does not emphasize animal cruelty but that comes across clearly. Animals are grown in confined spaces, and drugs combined with forced feeding take an animal from 80 lbs to 1,100 lbs in 14 months, at which point they are killed.
Side notes on how beaks are cut off chickens to keep them from hurting another another in conditions that make gulags look like country clubs, are reguarly put forward, and very troubling.
The manner in which our mutant agriculture leads to obesity can be illustrated by the author's showing that corn fed beef is "marbled" with fat, and cleverly sold as a feature rather than the flaw that it is.
Processed food wastes energy. Later on in the book the author stresses that grass farming is the fastest way to harness the free renewable power of the sun.
On pages 130-131 he constrasts the two competing systems:
He constrasts industrial vs. pastoral; annual vs. perennial; monoculture vs. polyculture; fossil energy vs. solar energy; global market vs. local market; specialized vs. diversified; mechanical vs. biological; imported fertility vs. local fertility; and myriad inputs including fertilizer and chemicals, vs. chicken feed.
I learn that industrialized organic farming is just as fuel and corn consumptive as industrialized chemical farming.
The author affirms the productivity of local farms, while pointing out that it is the transaction and scaling costs that kill the family famr.
He paints an attractive picture of natural farms as not needing machines, chemicals, fertilizers, and so on, because they manage natural complexity is a way that produces balance, nutrition, productivity, and profit. Localized food is natural.
Chefs get a great deal of credit for helping localized farms survive, as they give testimony with their buying, of how much better the localized product are from the one size fits all drugged up factory foods.
I recommend The Ecology of Commerce or Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution in addition to this book, and also Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy the latter on our chlorine-based industry. I do not recommend the The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World unless you are interested in the spirit of the plant rather than the stabilization of the planet.
See also Diet for a Small Planet and Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet
Weed it and Reap February 8, 2007
Uitlander (Upstate New York)
13 out of 18 found this review helpful
I know there are dozens of books published every year about this poor planet's problems. Stupid wars, intractable hatreds, global warming, diminishing resources, economic imbalance... it is hard to stay abreast of our concerns. Can you handle another one? Read The Omnivore's Dilemma. It is a magnificently written book that should appeal to farmers, grocers, cooks and diners. Michael Pollan investigates the sources of our food in America. His botanical approach is powerfully revealing. I grew up on a farm and still dabble in agriculture. I am ashamed to admit how much I didn't know about the presence and practice of industrial farming.
Can the old fashioned, grass powered, diversified farm that recycles its wastes for maximum efficiency be restored? Clearly, we will not return to pre-WWII methods. But who would have predicted the growth of "organic" labels? The carefully managed , diversified farm such as Polyface in Virginia is a model for creating better soil, robust animals, more nutritious food and healthier people. Huge companies such as ADM and Cargill will not atrophy. But, they will adapt if consumers insist on quality. Very little research has been done as to the health benefits of naturally produced food. If a body of medical findings could be established to educate the public, we could well see a change in agricultural methods. Will my grandchildren think it hip to be farmers?
An even-handed analysis of the ethics of eating. May 12, 2006
M. Strong (Milwaukee, WI USA)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful
Here is an example on why you read books. To read a newspaper article or watch a TV news broadcast about animal rights or healthy eating is to get besieged by politics and heated debate, but to find little thought or consideration. Pollan takes the opposite tack, approaching what we eat and where it comes from in as open and thoughtful a manner as possible.
Pollan sets out to corn fields and natural farms, goes hunting and foraging, all in the name of coming to terms with where food really comes from in modern America and what the ramifications are for the eaters, the eaten, the economy and the environment. The results are far more than I expected them to be.
It is Pollan's open-mindedness and his insistence that he personally experience the entire process of getting the food to his plate from its very beginning stages before making any judgements that makes this book so good. He brings a reasonable approach to the discussion that makes for a great book, but probably wouldn't sell newpapers or draw TV viewers.
The conclusions Pollan draws from his experiences tend to eschew the ideas of radicals on either side of the food argument and instead focus on coming to terms with what we eat by truly appreciating where it comes from and what it consists of. He constantly refers back to a time when we were comfortable looking at the process by which our food got to our plates and still being comfortable eating it. Reading this book, you can't help but come away thinking that our inability to do that today has partly to do with the path the food takes to our plates today, a little to do with our becoming strangely uncomfortable with our true nature, and something to do with what we choose to put in our bodies.
All in all, this is a great book that will leave you thinking differently about eating and probably eating differently because of it.
Highly recommended.
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