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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $10.88
You Save: $5.12 (32%)
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Rating:  466 reviews
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 0143038583
Dewey Decimal Number: 394.12
EAN: 9780143038580
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| Editorial Reviews:
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 uswhether industrial or organic, alternative or processedhe 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 461 more reviews...
 Books I wish students would read November 22, 2008
As a teacher and omnivorous reader, I evaluate books in terms of "is this something I wish students would read?" (or- is the time invested worth the knowledge gained?) This one earns a qualified "yes". The qualifier is simply that many of them wouldn't read a non-fiction book of this length without a weapon pointed to their heads. But the combination of easy to understand science and personal example is exactly what can encourage students to begin learning outside of the standards-based curriculum that has come to rule education today.
Aside from all that, why do I like this book? My mom was the original "eat your vegetables" mom. Every dinner, she said, should have at least two vegetables; one green. We lived far from the urban centers, so local produce was easy to find. I early on noticed the difference between my grandfather's tomatoes and those from the supermarket.Then I lived in New Orleans where the Whole Foods Coop was walking distance from my apartment. When I became a mom, I used a little grinder to prepare my own baby food.
Time marches on. Now I work full time outside of the house, and am happy with myself if I manage one fruit and two veggies in a whole day to offer to the kids. But I still care about what we eat, and wish we had more viable options to our perfectly beautiful supermarket food, which I suspect to be less than "wholesome".
Maybe with education, we can create more demand, and give more people the option to choose healthier food, and support small scale sustainable farming. I think this book a valuable contribution to that goal.
 Food will never look the same again November 20, 2008
The author does an excellent job of explaining how ethics, policy, biology, culture and big business are connected and have shaped the foods that we eat today. Many of our eating habits in the Western diet simply do not make sense and ultimately have global repurcussions.
The author raises many good questions without sounding moralistic or judgemental. Why eat imported organic produce from a foreign country if the shipper burns huge quanitities of fossil fuels to deliver it to you? Why continue to feed cattle corn when their stomachs cannot digest it? Can we really say a food product has "natural raspberry flavor" when the flavor is actually derived from corn?
I enjoyed this author's writing style so well that I will likely buy his other book, "In Defense of Food".
Amazing Read November 11, 2008
All of the information in the book is something a well informed person should know. It was an interesting journey though, and quite an easy eye opening read. Highly recommended.
Thought-provoking and terrifying November 11, 2008
Pollan gives us a ton of information about food production in hopes that we can treat our meals with a little more reverence and understanding. Unfortunately, since I've read the book, I think I feel more food-related anxiety than appreciation. I can't go into a grocery store without having panic attacks. Sweaty palms and irregular breathing on Aisle 2. Seriously.
The truth is, there's a lot to be nervous (and furious) about when you start looking closely at large-scale agrobusiness. And there doesn't seem to be any easy way out. Pollan has done some incredible research here, and although he sometimes slips into foodie-self-indulgence, the book is both interesting and affecting.
The True Cost of Eating Your Lunch November 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Journalist Michael Pollan has written what appears on the surface to be a boring book. He decides to eat four meals and explore the history and consequences of each. He chooses an industrial agricultural meal (fast food), a large-scale organic meal, locally raised farm meal and finally he hunts and gathers his last meal.
By capturing the social, economic, and ecological as well as the moral, and ethical consequences of each meal, Pollan has written a modern day masterpiece on a task most people take for granted - eating their lunch. It's an intricately woven narrative with a massive amount of pain-staking research. But one thing "The Omnivore's Dilemma" is not is boring. Its captivating reading.
It should be required reading for anyone who as eaten a Big Mac or thinks that shopping at Whole Foods is going to save the planet. Every food item people purchase and consume is a political statement and has rippling effects on their health, the environment, and our society. Pollan has written a wake-up call to all of us.
And for those vegetarians out there? Pollan makes one of the best arguments I've ever read about why vegetarians are inherently hypocritical and why the vegetarian lifestyle may be more unnatural and nature defying than any other diet.
Here are some of the highlights from Pollan's fascinating book:
* Meat might not be that bad for people. The problem is the way we raise cattle. Cows evolved to eat grass. Their stomachs are complicated six chambered organs designed to break down and digest grasses. Industrial raised cattle are fed ground up corn, which is unhealthy for them. As a result, the cattle become ill and the corn has to be injected with antibiotics and other chemicals. It's the corn that marbles beef and causes it to be unhealthy. "In the same way ruminants are ill adapted to eating corn, humans in turn may be poorly adapted to eating ruminants that eat corn," according to Pollan.
* Cattle are fed corn for about 150 days before they are slaughtered. It's a good thing because it is unlikely that cattle could survive the chemical-laced corn diet for much longer than that. Even at 150 days, most of the cattle we eat are sick.
* Food companies have an enormous challenge in order to grow and meet Wall Street expectations. The biggest problem: "fixed stomach." People can only consume a limited amount of food each year - about 1,500 pounds. So food companies are forced to do one of two things: entice people to eat more or convince them to pay more for what they already eat. This has lead to the development of a new type of corn starch which has zero calories. In other words, the food companies are on the verge of developing food with no calories so you can eat as much as you like.
* A child in the U.S. born in 2000 has a one in three chance of being diabetic.
* Hunger is complicated in human beings due to our feast or famine digestive system. As a result of this evolutionary trait humans won't stop eating when they are full. In fact, when presented with an overabundance of food, human will eat up to 30 percent more. It's one of the reasons why "super-sizing" portions has worked so well at fast food chains.
* There is butane in chicken McNuggets. Why? Lighter fluid apparently adds freshness. The FDA allows 0.02 percent of the chemical TBHQ in food. That's kind of them because one gram of TBHQ causes: "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, and a sense of suffocation and collapses." Five grams of TBHQ kills human beings.
* People in the U.S. each more corn than any other food. Corn byproducts are in nearly everything we consume. A breakdown of corn in a typical McDonald's meal looks like this: Soda (100 percent corn), milk shake (78 percent), salad dressing (65 percent), chicken nuggets (56 percent), cheeseburger (52 percent), and French fries (23 percent).
* The organic food movement is starting to look a lot like big business. The grocery chain Whole Foods, for example, buys most of its food from two enormous organic food companies Earthbound Farms and Grimmway Farms - rarely buying food for local farms. For example, milk can be called organic and the only difference in treatment and conditions for the cows is that they are fed organic corn instead of regular corn. Cows, of course, don't naturally eat corn.
* Under pressure from big organic farms, the U.S. government allows synthetic additive including "guar and xanthan gum" and "carrageenan" to be called organic. That's why consumers can buy organic TV dinners, which, if you think about it, isn't really possible.
* Lots of organic farming operations uses fraudulent claims to entice people. A perfect example are chickens. Pollan visited a farm that claimed its birds were "range free." This conjures images of uncaged birds roaming grassy lots. He found these chickens in a shed crammed with 20,000 birds - fed, of course, organic corn. They got to call the birds range free because there was a door on the side of the shed that lead to a small fenced in yard. But the door is only unlocked after the chickens were five to six weeks old. They are slaughtered two weeks later.
* Mushrooms are not plants - they are fungi and actually closer related to animals than plants. There is a fungi in Michigan that takes up more than 40 acres and may be centuries old.
* Pollan takes on the vegetarian mentality. He says the concept of "mourning" the death of an animal is a new modern emotion - a departure from the way nature is. Death - animals killing other animals for food - is the way nature was designed. It's the grand design.
Read more "Literate Blather" at the Dark Party Review [...]
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