It's almost as if Pollan had decided that farming on a grand scale was apocalyptic and then pulled together data to support his view. His data with regard to corn prices are woefully out of date. Just check commodity prices over the last five years.
His choice of George Naylor must have required considerable searching in order to find someone who thought just the way he did. The history of price supports and the switch under the Nixon administration from a "loan" program to direct payments was something I had completely forgotten and had no idea how much influence it would have on corn production.
On the other hand, Butz's intent was to increase production to take the heat off Nixon following the huge increase in food prices as the price for corn had increased so dramatically. All that being said, there's a lot of useful information, particularly with regard to government policy, and lots of fuel to support the libertarian side of the equation.
There is no question that our over reliance on fossil fuels will get us into serious trouble very soon. A final comment. All of the recent food books could only have been written by a society that doesn't have to worry about where its next meal is coming from.
The problem we have is scale. Wrigley just changed their gum wrappers from the little foil wrap to paper and thereby saved the equivalent of 60 million cans of aluminum. There's the problem in a nutshell Fun trivia: the corn plant has 32, genes, more than humans. View all 21 comments. Nov 09, Elle ellexamines rated it really liked it Recommends it for: everyone. Shelves: zreads , literary-fiction , 4-star. Okay, but seriously, I'd recommend giving this a read. Give the teen version a read if you really can't take a page nonfiction book.
Either way, I think everyone needs to know exactly how the food industry works. And no, it's not advocating for you to become a vegetarian - it's simply showing truths. The lack of attempt to guilt readership is honestly what stands out about this book. By showing reality remember when this book, written by a proud meat-eater, accidentally made me a vegetarian? By showing reality without pushing an opinion on what the proper solution is , Pollan manages to be especially convincing.
I truly think this book is worth the read. Oct 30, Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it Shelves: history , health , 21th-century , non-fiction , political , science , united-states.
In the book, Pollan asks the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. As omnivores, the most unselective eaters, humans are faced with a wide variety of food choices, resulting in a dilemma.
Pollan suggests that, prior to modern food preservation and transportation technologies, this particular dilemma was resolved primarily through cultural influences. Mar 30, Patrick Gabridge rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: everyone. And I stumble across stories by him in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, often quite by accident, and then look at the byline to see who this talented writer is, and there's Pollan again.
I know my year-old daughter cringes when we go the store, and I inspect the ingredients, calling out, "Yep, there's corn in this, too. He takes a close look at the industrialization of food production which depends heavily and crazily on corn , large scale organic farming, and then at a sustainable farming operation, and then around a meal that he assembles using his hunting and gathering skills relying heavily on the skills of others.
For our family, this book seems perfectly timed, since we've been making huge dietary changes around here since Halloween, cutting out animal products and most refined and processed foods.
We were doing it for health reasons, but this books adds an entirely new level of justification. Not that Pollan is saying you should become a vegan. Not at all. He's saying that we owe it to ourselves to become more conscious about what we actually put in our mouths, and the effects that its creation is having on us, our culture, and our planet.
My only disappointment is that in the final wrap-up, he focuses on the extreme distance between the industrialized food he and his family consumes and the meal that he makes through hunting and gathering, without mentioning enough of the sustainable farm that he'd visited. That section made me want to go out and buy some land and start farming. We spent so much time with Pollan through this book, I wanted a stronger sense of whether all this had actually managed to change his day-to-day buying and eating habits.
But those are really minor points. Really, it's the answer to what was bugging me about the end of his book. It should be included as an addendum to every copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Dec 05, Matthew Quann rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Readers curious about what's on their plate. Recommended to Matthew by: Christy Bacque. Shelves: favourites , audiobooks , science. The Omnivore's Dilemma is definitely worth your thyme! Have you ever thought about where that burger came from? How about the diet of your store-bought salmon? Are you just tired about hearing about the exhaustive origins of your food at every fancy restaurant?
Do you wish your hipster friends would stop trying to get you to forage for mushrooms? Then I've got the book for you! It first started as a companion on a road trip, but gave way to the book I occasionally put on as I was doing some housework.
At first, I found it a bit dull and slow-moving, due in no small part to Scott Brick's slow, laborious narration of the book. But as soon as I ticked up the narration speed to 1. This book is about humankind's relationship to food, the environment, and our own personal health.
Earlier this year, I reviewed The Dorito Effect by Mark Shatzker, and while both books deal with food, Pollan's book is more concerned with ecology than taste and flavour. Though, it should be noted, that there are plenty of delicious sounding food descriptions littering the hour listening experience. Four Meals The premise of Pollan's book is based around four meals: fast-food, industrial farm, self-sustaining organic farm, and one meal hunted, foraged, and prepared by Pollan himself.
Using this intuitive structure, Pollan is able to progress from least enjoyable and viable to the most rewarding and delicious of his meals. It also works because Pollan digs deep into the thoughts, historical events, and effects on the larger world that have shaped our industrial food chain.
Though I like to think I know a lot about food and how the human body converts that food into energy, this book made me realize how little I know about the tumultuous transition between captured solar energy and the slab of meat on my plate.
Even if, when Pollan really digs into the ubiquity of corn in North American foods, I couldn't help but thinking of this clip.
I won't attempt to condense Pollan's ideas into this simple review, but I will say that it helped me to think more fully about the meal from its origins to my plate. I'll admit that I've often been semi-interested to hear the stories and origins of my food in restaurants, but I now have a deep respect for what those restaurants are trying to accomplish.
It makes more sense after listening to this book that you'd want to eat foods that are in season. Knowing where one's food comes from is an attempt to connect to that lost part of our evolutionary history, when eating meant that one had to discover, collect, and process a meal by their own hands.
I don't mind saying that this book makes me want to convert my backyard into farmland and that I began actively looking for opportunities to fish, hunt, and forage locally. Pollan makes convincing arguments, but is also an infinitely likeable guy. Pollan rarely preaches and he admits to enjoying the convenience that industrial foods provide. That Pollan is more of an everyman makes the listening experience more enjoyable, relatable, and helped me feel as if I could make some changes to my diet that would be more sustainable.
Books about food aren't for everyone, but this one makes a case for being one everyone should read or, as in my case, listen to.
Indeed, though I love to read fiction, nonfiction seems to work best for me in audio format. Though the book is a tad older originally published in , it is highly relevant today when many of us have to decide between the slightly pricier local vegetables and the more affordable industrial greens.
For the duration of my reading it made me a more conscious eater, and I have to say that I learned a lot more than expected! Be sure to check this one out! View 1 comment. Jan 13, Julie rated it it was amazing Shelves: non-fiction , favorites , 21st-century , american. I am a little late to the table with Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma but it is just as relevant now, if not more so, than when it was first published in The work deserves a permanent place on everybody's bookshelf.
Having been raised on a steady diet of good food as well as Diet For A Small Planet , the original Mother Earth News and Harrowsmith I felt confident that I was aware of the pitfalls of modern food production.
But, as aware as I was, and as informed as I try to stay, my I am a little late to the table with Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma but it is just as relevant now, if not more so, than when it was first published in But, as aware as I was, and as informed as I try to stay, my knowledge falls far short of the realities of the industrial food chain; my knowledge also benefited from an eye-wash when it came to the "organic" food industry -- industry being the operative word.
If I had only sensed, before, that we were being ambushed by food producers, Pollan re-affirmed my belief that one has to go a step beyond due diligence in seeking out food that is both good for us, and for the planet. I had not quite understood how an innocuous little grain like corn might well be one of the largest contributing factors to the end of civilization.
Pollan doesn't express it in those terms specifically, but there is enough fact and implication about the uses and abuses of corn, that one can only draw such an inauspicious end to us all. It is prolific in the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the bags into which we stuff our garbage, the shoes in which we walk away, in our smugness to think we're somehow ahead of the industrial food game when we make "organic" choices.
Growing corn and nothing but corn has also exacted a toll on the farmer's soil, the quality of the local water and the overall health of the community, the biodiversity of his landscape, and the health of all the creatures living on or downstream from it.
And not only those creatures, for cheap corn has also changed, and much for the worse, the lives of several billion food animals, animals that would not be living on factory farms if not for the ocean of corn on which these animal cities float.
It's a good thing this plant can't form an impression of us, for how risible that impression would be: The farmers going broke cultivating it; the countless other species routed or emiserated by it; the humans eating and drinking it as fast as they can, some of them -- like me and my family -- in automobiles engineered to drink it, too. The Day of the Triffids comes to mind in a not-so-ironic farce. Pollan ploughs through the organic food industry just as deftly as he analyzes industrial farming.
We are not as organic as we think when it costs more in energy and fuel to grow our contaminant-free lettuce.
The lettuce itself may be relatively free from chemical additives, but everything else around it, sacrificed to its production, is a little worse for it, including ourselves because we bought into the lie in the first place. With all the doom and gloom hovering just above our dinner plates, it leaves one to wonder what could possibly be left to eat. Pollan's thesis on the sustainable farms is a brilliant dissertation on what can be -- and should be -- possible to reclaim the true title of "sustainability" within our food culture.
Ironically, this new, sustainable farm bears a striking resemblance to the old family farm, where everything that was eaten was grown or raised on the premises, and the rest was carefully sourced out. The irony is not lost on Pollan who has brought us full circle in our quest for a pure, unadulterated lettuce salad. By no means does Pollan suggest we should all be gathering our pitchforks, hitching up our suspenders and heading out to the back 40 with a bale of hay to feed our ethically raised cattle; but he does give us the information on how to source out good food that is truly what it purports to be, and not just the over-processed pabulum pumped out by the giant food purveyors on either side of the "organic question".
To add balance, restore a certain light-hearted equanimity, Pollan undertakes a hunting-and-gathering project in an effort to evaluate and assess what it means to be one-hundred-percent responsible for our meal, from the stalking, killing and preparation of an animal, to the gathering of fruits and nuts, a la paleo. Even this food-choice becomes its own dilemma.
The brilliant synthesis of our omnivore's dilemma in this book is by no means reductive. It offers a choice, a balance, irony, humour -- and even a solution. What more could one ask for in our search to clean our plates, our consciousness, and our consciences.
View all 7 comments. Nov 05, d4 rated it it was ok Shelves: reviewed , read-in I had an idea of where this book was headed before I even read it--eat organic, local produce, and choose grass-fed meat over factory farm meat.
I knew from a quote in Eating Animals that Pollan eventually dismisses vegetarianism as a decision not grounded in reality.
What I didn't expect was for him to reach that conclusion so quickly and without so much as visiting a slaughterhouse. Instead he visits Polyface farms, slaughters a few chickens in a manner far more humane than the fate met by the I had an idea of where this book was headed before I even read it--eat organic, local produce, and choose grass-fed meat over factory farm meat. Instead he visits Polyface farms, slaughters a few chickens in a manner far more humane than the fate met by the chickens sold in the supermarkets.
He then hunts a wild pig, and feels good about eating meat again. His hunting expedition takes up far bigger chunk of the book than the measly slim chapter on the ethics of eating animals.
The problem I have with this is that his two experiences do not represent meat consumption as the majority of Americans know it today: it does not come from farms as sustainable as Polyface farms--and even such a farm currently operates below its own ideals since it is not allowed to slaughter any of its own animals except chickens--nor is it a product of "respectful" hunting.
This book should be titled Michael Pollan's Dilemma since it does little to address "The Omnivore's Dilemma" once he completely forgoes examining the main sources of American meat--factory farming--and instead focuses on two exceptions to the rule. Before starting this book, I knew I wasn't going to agree with Pollan's conclusion, but I did at least expect that its role of raising food awareness would still allow me to recommend it to others. It had a promising start. The chapters on corn and organics are interesting.
I was already aware of the abundance of food in the American diet, but the information of how corn adapted was rather new to me.
The chapters on organic and local produce leave me with more thinking and researching to do before I can decide how to best adapt my shopping habits. However, I fear that the idealization of hunting and "happy meat" overshadows any other message in the book.
People look for justification to continue to eat meat--and Pollan provides them with this by accepting these exceptions, and not even seriously entertaining the alternative of abstaining from animal products altogether. If this book does empower people to make more informed decisions, then I'm glad for it, but personally, I had a more positive opinion of Pollan from his contribution to Food, Inc.
Why anyone would feel pride over shooting a pig is beyond my understanding. It's not as if he's John Locke stranded on an island with only his knives and his instincts. He is more at risk gathering mushrooms. Pollan's account tries to convince the reader of a reverence the hunter feels for his prey, but growing up in a rural area, surrounded by hunters and even being kin to them , I've yet to be convinced that American hunters feel much more than the thrill of killing and of course, having bragging rights and of course their stories to tell.
Sep 24, Gendou rated it did not like it Shelves: non-fiction. Michael Pollan is anti-science. He blames scientists for the misappropriation of scientific language in advertising. He touts folk wisdom. I saw him at a book reading and asked him why he is critical of science. He said the science is too easy to abuse, so it should just be ignored. This is horrible advice.
Ignorance doesn't solve anything. It leaves people vulnerable to those who would mislead and deceive them. I found Part I to be overly detailed and one-note, constantly harping on about corn.
View all 8 comments. Nov 08, Richard rated it it was amazing Shelves: nonfiction , environment , food , read-these-reviews-first. Update: The Wilson Quarterly provides a very nice slideshow of Polyface Farm, in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, which plays a key role in Pollan's examination of sustainable agriculture. But the material is provocative, and some reviews on this and similar books Update: The Wilson Quarterly provides a very nice slideshow of Polyface Farm, in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, which plays a key role in Pollan's examination of sustainable agriculture.
But the material is provocative, and some reviews on this and similar books induce yet more thinking. I suppose that has always been the case, but two relatively new topics have shoved their way onto the bestsellers list.
First, the health angle. The other hot topic examines the many ways in which feeding the human race has become very bad for the planet and its inhabitants, especially those we eat.
Threaded through both of these is the ethical problem: what should an enlightened human being be eating, anyway? And if that diet includes meat, how should we treat our meat? In an important sense, Pollan has written a very different book, one that very gently deals with a deeper problem. After all, Pollan does investigate the factory farm system, and its horrors are quite evident. Our dilemma, in a nutshell, is that unlike many other creatures, we are forced to choose what to eat and what not to eat.
We have the advantage over other omnivores that our decision can be informed by culture and education; but we also have the burden that our decision has ethical and cultural consequences. Pollan divides his book into three meals. Corn , it turns out, plays an astonishingly larger role in this process than one might expect; so much that even a meal that notionally contains no corn might still actually draw the vast majority of its original caloric energy from that heavily domesticated tropical grass.
Only a tiny number of additives are actually derived from petroleum—so far The second meal is derived from a small farm that depends, as far as can be managed, solely on solar energy via plants.
Specifically, grass plays the central and foundational role in an integrated and carefully orchestrated ecosystem of farm animals. The bucolic atmosphere and almost complete lack of industrial inputs makes us consider this form of pastoral farming pre-modern, but the ecological management is so information-intensive that it is also post-industrial. This is clearly an approach that is better for people, for animals, and for the environment Furthermore, getting the food to consumers is another task that has found no easy solutions.
Direct farm-to-consumer connections can be found in some areas, but not many. The final meal described is definitely pre-modern; in fact it is an attempt to recapture a pre-industrial mode of eating. Pollan did his best to personal gather all of the ingredients for a meal, including gathering wild mushrooms, harvesting produce and fruit, and hunting wild boar.
He reluctantly abstained from eating meat while he dealt with this, even going so far as to discuss the issue via email with Peter Singer , the contemporary philosopher most associated with animal rights and veganism. Harvesting grain — even organic wheat — is typically done with a combine: a large machine that will frequently shred field mice and other small critters that get in the way.
Modern agriculture is problematic for everyone, not just liberal omnivores. Pollan never solves the dilemma for us. None of these three approaches will solve the problems we face in our attempt to both feed billions of people and keep the planet and our consciences happy.
We can eat better—we almost can not eat worse—and we must eat better. But our personal choices create our food culture, and none of these choices are simple.
View all 4 comments. Jul 20, Rashaan rated it liked it Shelves: academics-textbooks-pedagogy. A wise man recently told me, "Capitalism is here to stay. Yes, this is an eye-opening read that will, at first, make you want to stop eating all together then compel you to grab a sturdy pair of boots you can kick around in, throw on some clothes that will certainly get dirty, if not bloody, and step into the splendors of the na A wise man recently told me, "Capitalism is here to stay.
Yes, this is an eye-opening read that will, at first, make you want to stop eating all together then compel you to grab a sturdy pair of boots you can kick around in, throw on some clothes that will certainly get dirty, if not bloody, and step into the splendors of the natural world.
Pollan leads us on an epicurean journey that most of us could take only through the guiles of his literary skills and a comfortable armchair. We dredge through the horrors of industrial farming, contemplate over the simplicity of small, sustainable growers, and track through the forests of Northern California hunting wild boar and foraging for chanterelles.
What we discover on his trek for the "Perfect Meal" is no real surprise to anyone who pays attention to the news. Americans are squeezed tightly between the behemoth corporate Charybdis that's killing us with corn-fed livestock and wreaking havoc across the country, spilling into our oceans. Then there's Scylla to our left, the over-priced, just beyond our reach, pure and golden harvest of sustainable, organic, locally grown food. However, unless you live in Northern California--and Pollan does!
Pollan seems to willfully neglect the chasm between the haves those who can waltz into Chez Panisse, meet with Alice Waters, and enjoy fresh goat cheese and endive and the vast amount of have-nots, who demand and therefore fuel our fast food nation.
In one chapter Pollan indulges in the quintessential American family experience of ordering 2 Big Macs, super-sized fries, and a Happy Meal.
He queasily downs the over-processed, cholesterol clogging feed with his family in the comfort and convenience of his convertible car.
What he fails to recognize is that people do this not necessarily because its fun, but if we're treated as "Human Resources" we will act like Human Resources. Just pull onto your nearby freeway, and you'll see for yourself. It's not hard to spot any nameless driver passing by, cheeseburger or breakfast burrito in one hand, steering wheel in the other. For most people, eating is not a ritual to be shared with the family and support local businesses.
Eating is simply re-fueling; something workers or resources do on their way to or from work. Expressways as feedlots is by no means acceptable, but it is the state of our society, or at least a stratum and economic phenomenon that Pollan has decidedly left out.
Pollan means well and we certainly can't go on eating the same food in the same way. Lest we keep pumping money into a health and food system, which in turn pumps our television with commercials that in one minute entice us with grease-laden, over-processed meat to clog our hearts and arteries. Then the next minute another commercial urges us to get hooked on Lipitor or Lopressor, which we probably wouldn't need if we hadn't eaten those cheeseburgers in the first place.
We also can't ignore that the cost of our appetites is speedily deteriorating the Elysian fields that made us a First World Super power. Capitalism is here to stay, and consumers need to be informed--should be informed, about what we put in our bodies and how we feed our children. We need to start paying the real cost of food up front instead of getting hit with the hidden costs through doctor's bills and E Coli recalls.
Still, Pollan's feast is difficult to swallow, much less nearly impossible to sit down to and really enjoy because he has an expense account and two years to scour the East and West Coasts for his meal. The Omnivore's Dilemma is perilous indeed. But I can't help wonder who exactly is this omnivore that Pollan's referring to?
Poring over his book, I learn his omnivore has time to hunt for morels, knows how to make a souffle, and has two weeks to spare to arrange a dinner party for twelve guests among the bountiful gardens of Berkeley, California.
Pollan's omnivore's dilemma comes down to what to eat and how to eat it when you have the time and means to contemplate. That's all very well and good, but the rest of us "omnivores" are still over-worked, under-nourished, and starving.
Jan 30, Stacie rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: People who eat food. Shelves: borrowed , non-fiction. I learned how to take an ear off the stalk at a very young age — probably around the same time that I learned how to bale hay — because across the farm from the rows of corn, we also had a field of alfalfa and wheat.
Unfortunately my grandparents are no longer around to ask. What I sometimes think is ironic, is that while there are over 60 of us, not one of us stayed on the farm, even though the farm never really left us.
In my family, we are gardeners — whether we are tending a flower garden or a vegetable garden — we are growing some of the food that will be presented at our tables. Hunting was always a big thing in my family as well. What he did teach us was that you ate what you killed. Hunting and fishing another thing we did a lot of was not a sport, it was a way of life — it was a way to feed our family.
While I liked this book for the memories of childhood lessons it conjured for me, it also helped to remind me of my ideals around food. Ideals that have become lax of late. She did not partake in any pre-made food, and was a vegetarian until she was about two years old. I am not sure when my desire to feed her naturally ended, but now she eats processed food when I feel busy — processed food that I sometimes cannot pronounce the ingredients much less figure out where it came from. Pollan, without ever preaching, without ever scolding, reminds the reader that we owe it to ourselves and to our families to know where are food is coming from.
I felt this was a very well written book — both in its content and writing. It is a book that will make you stop and think about what you are putting in your mouth.
If you eat, you should read this book. View all 5 comments. Aug 04, Roy Lotz rated it it was amazing Shelves: meat-and-potatoes , americana. The titular dilemma refers to the difficulty omnivores have in choosing what to eat. But for a human, capable of eating everything from fried beetles to foie gras, this choice can be dizzyingly open-ended. Traditionally, culture has cut through this infinitude of options by prescribing a typical diet. But in the United States—a place nearly bereft of culture—we have come to rely on government regulation, food science, and big industry to take the place of these traditional prescriptions.
The problem, as our waistlines reveal, is that these make poor substitutes. So Michael Pollan sets out to investigate the American diet, using four meals as focal points. The first is an order from McDonalds, which represents industrial food.
Unsurprisingly, it is a depressing picture. Farmers grow acres upon acres of genetically modified corn, which is itself not fit for eating, but meant to be processed into any number of food products. Much of this corn along with soybeans is also fed to cattle, who are not really evolved to eat the stuff, but are fed it anyway because the corn makes them fatter, faster. The next meal is a dinner cooked with ingredients from Whole Foods, which represents industrial organic.
The truth, he concludes, is that many of these products are only marginally better than their non-organic industrial counterparts. Salatin uses what you might call deliberately old-fashioned, small-scale techniques to create an ultra-sustainable farm—where cows, chickens, and pigs are used to graze, clean, and fertilize the soil.
He sells his products directly to customers. The final meal after Pollan eats a chicken from Polyface is one that he grows, gathers, or hunts himself. Because, Pollan says, this is the only meal he has ever had in which he knew exactly where everything came from, and what it took to get it to his table. In contrast to the meal from McDonalds, in other words—which is made out of who-knows-what from who-knows-where—the food is entirely transparent. In the end, then, Pollan is advocating that we eat very much how Joel Salatin wants us to: old-fashioned, and small-scale.
Perhaps it would be quickest to describe him as a modern-day Rousseauian—someone who thinks that the natural is always preferable to the artificial.
He argues, for example, that scientists have not truly discovered what makes soil fertile or food nutritious, so traditional practices are possibly better guides. He thinks we should eat what we can get locally, and in-season, so that we can feel a connection to the land and understand where the food came from.
He is, in a word, an anti-industrialist. Even so, I cannot help but suspect that he is advocating something unworkable.
I simply do not think that we could feed the world using farming practices like those in Polyface. And how could everyone in a major city eat locally?
This is not to say that we cannot create more sustainable farms or attempt to reduce food transportation. Admittedly, Pollan was writing when the issue of global warming was not as omnipresent an issue as it is today. He has an entire chapter on the morality of meat-eating, for example, without mentioning what has become the primary reason for reducing meat consumption: greenhouse gas emissions. It would be unfair to end this review without mentioning Pollans many virtues.
For one, he is a great writer, able to both paint a scene and explain a concept with style. He is also intellectually broad. During the course of this book, he weaves a story together that includes chemistry, biology, government policy, history, philosophy, anthropology, and of course gastronomy.
And he is thorough. He visits an industrial cornfield, buys a cow in a CAFO, spends a week at Polyface Farm, and learns to fire a rifle and identify wild mushrooms. I very much appreciated these eyewitness reports, as I often feel myself quite disconnected from my own personal food-chain.
In sum, if you want to think more deeply than ever before about what to have for dinner—so deeply that you accidentally start pondering the whole cosmos—then I can heartily recommend this book. May 09, Tracy Rhodes rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: anyone who eats. Shelves: nonfiction. I'll never look at corn the same way again. This book provokes a lot of thought about the origins of our food and the biological, political, social and economic implications of those origins.
I liked that Pollan approached the topic journalistically, with admirably little in the way of political agenda. To structure his book, he uses the format of following the path of four finished meals from origin to plate - one McDonald's meal, one comprised of supermarket organic products, one from a "beyond I'll never look at corn the same way again. To structure his book, he uses the format of following the path of four finished meals from origin to plate - one McDonald's meal, one comprised of supermarket organic products, one from a "beyond-organic" self-sustaining farm in Virgina, and one he forages almost entirely on his own.
Pollan goes into food science labs and discovers how ubiquitous the use of corn has become in modern diets, and how corn-derived food systems are synthesized and refined into ever more variations to increase our usage and meet industrial demands for market growth. Pollan makes a strong case for how corn and its refined offspring have contributed to the ever-expending girths of Americans in recent decades. Next he looks at the organic market, examining the compromises that many organic producers have had to make to support the demands of national chains like Whole Foods, and what "organic" does and does not necessarily mean.
The story of how this farmer guides his farm in a sustainable, symbiotic cycle is absolutely amazing. California something my own husband recently did, much to our culinary benefit.
Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves? To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating.
His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Now, as we face immense challenges on our planet - including climate change, the threat of nuclear war, and the development of artificial intelligence - he turns his attention to the most urgent issues facing us.
Will humanity survive? Should we colonize space? Does God exist? These are just a few of the questions Hawking addresses in this wide-ranging, passionately argued final book from one of the greatest minds in history.
By: Stephen Hawking , and others. In troubled times there is an urgency to understand ourselves and our world. We have so many questions, and they tug at us night and day, consciously and unconsciously. In this important volume, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh - one of the most revered spiritual leaders in the world today - reveals an art of living in mindfulness that helps us answer life's deepest questions and experience the happiness and freedom we desire. We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face.
Longer training, ever more advanced technologies - neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. By: Atul Gawande.
Maps have a mysterious hold over us. Whether ancient, crumbling parchments or generated by Google, maps tell us things we want to know, not only about our current location or where we are going but about the world in general. And yet, when it comes to geo-politics, much of what we are told is generated by analysts and other experts who have neglected to refer to a map of the place in question.
By: Tim Marshall. Writing from both the cutting edge of scientific discovery and the front-lines of elite athletic performance, National Magazine Award-winning science journalist Alex Hutchinson presents a revolutionary account of the dynamic and controversial new science of endurance. By: Alex Hutchinson , and others. 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 best-selling author Michael Pollan's brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.
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? You're not likely to get a better explanation of exactly where your food comes from. Be careful of your dinner! Plants are one of the best ways to experience nature from the comfort of your own home. With such a wide variety of plants appropriate for all skill levels, almost anyone can jump in.
Rather than write ourselves off as hopelessly black-thumbed, many more of us are becoming confident in our ability to keep our green friends alive and thriving.
Pollan's examination of the cultural, moral and socioeconomic tradeoffs we make when eating food is a deep and exhaustive consideration of the consequences of seeming simple choices. By structuring the work around 4 meals, he presents four alternative relationships to nature and the world, and lays bare the personal consequences of each. I found that the detail was, at times unnecessarily fastidious, as when Pollan agonizes over the authenticity of hunting, but not killing, the wild boar in his hunter and gatherer meal, and then taking us through the process again, just so he can personally pull the trigger.
I would have rather he had just lied, and took credit for the first kill. The mix of science, economics and gastronomy was what I would like the Food Network to really be about. The personal perspective of the book sometimes got in the way, but gave it a visceral feel that kept my interest. What did I learn from the book? That sorting out the food chains involved in what I eat daily is way too complicated to really address it in real life.
I would have liked to see an epilogue that explained the way Pollan has worked it out. He hints at this at the end, but doesn't ever present a cogent agenda for how making responsible choices about food fits into the real world of budgets and schedules that we have developed since making the evolutionary choice to not spent most of our waking hours feeding ourselves. I learned how mushrooms are gathered and the physiology of corn. I learned more than I would ever really want to about the beef industry, and the ecology of grasses.
Overall, it was an enjoyable read that will stick with me longer than the meal of boar and mushrooms Pollan serves to his friends at the end of the book. When the book opened, I thought it was going to become some PETA fueled anti-meat rant, and then I thought it was going to become some anti-GM food hippy organic food rant, but I was wrong on both counts. It touches those subjects and many more. In fact, the book moves seamlessly between many subjects. The author loves meat, and food, but he wants to know exactly where it comes from.
He starts by homing in on corn, which is by far the most important component of our diet, being in almost everything we eat in one form or another interesting, eh? He then looks closer: how did corn come to dominate our diet, and why do farmers get paid less for their corn than it costs to grow it, and what is the real cost of all that cheap corn?
He then looks at the organic movement, and shows that organic is far from the pastoral ideal we imagine it to be. It is better than over-tilled and fertilized fields and manure filled feedlots, at least. I know a lot of farmers and I have seen some of this first-hand. Then the author focuses on a truly sustainable farm, and the genius farmers who not only make it work, but make it work well.
They can also tell you precisely why it works. And that's only the first half of the book. The author keeps moving, filling the pages with startling facts and truly excellent writing. The author is apparently a journalist, and it shows in his extensive research and persuasive arguments.
I enjoyed this far more than I expected to. It helps, I suppose, that I was receptive to it. Still, I couldn't put it down, and I can recommend it to anyone who eats. This is a fascinating soup to nuts description of the food chain particularly in America. It felt like Mr. Pollan did a great job of presenting all sides of many questions in a way that leaves the reader free to make the best of some rather difficult choices.
Right now, many people don't even realize there ARE choices. One great point of this book is that we don't really know what we are putting in ourselves. Scott Brick wasn't as hammy as usual since it was non-fiction. I really enjoyed Michael Pallin's last book and this one is very good too. The section on local agriculture was very interesting. Bu the narrator was overly dramatic to the point of being difficult to listen to. I'm a dedicated listener, and I liked the book, but I nearly turned it off a few times due to the narration.
While raving to a friend about Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", she recommended this book, so it was my next purchase. But it turned out to have some fascinating and valuable information about the way our food is grown, processed and transported, so it was well worth reading. As for the narration I've listened to several other books narrated by Scott Brick, and he's never been a favorite, but this was just baaaaddd.
This book did NOT require a dramatic reading, but that's what it got! And I wish someone would give narrators a list of uncommon words in advance so he or she can be prepared!
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