Michael Pollan is a journalist, and an omnivore, curious about where the food he puts in his mouth comes from. In the book he follows four meals from the very beginning of the food chain to his plate. What he finds is that the food we put in our mouths turns out to be a big decision- a moral, political, and environmental one.Part One- CORNThe discussion begins with CORN. Part one of this book is shocking. I knew corn was the main crop grown in America and that farmers growing it are in big troub...

Update 5/23/2010 Terrific piece by Michael Pollan in the NYRB June 10, 2010, "The Food Movement, Rising" in which he reviews five books: Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal, Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities, All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?, The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society, Eating AnimalsI am beginning to wallow and bask in the mire of food politics, subject of Pollan's piece. It's interesting to read the comments secti...

I was resistant to reading this book because I’m not an omnivore, and also I thought that Pollan’s book The Botany of Desire was brilliant and I suspected I would not feel as fond of this one, which is certainly true. He does write well, but I didn’t find that this book had the eloquence or elegance of the other.The sub-title of this book could read: It’s Really Ok To Eat Dead Animals, Really It Is. Which I realize for most people it is. But eating flesh foods and other foods made from animals s...

He makes some good points but in the end, it smacks of well-off white man over simplifying an incredibly complex issue. What the book has going for it is that it's a best seller, especially to the faux-liberal, over educated set and it's at least making them THINK about where their food is coming from. What I don't like though, is that it lets them off the hook as far as accountability if they just go about buying the RIGHT kind of meat. Well, all of that free range "humane" meat goes to the sam...

Man, this book is great. The best book I read last year, easily. Mushrooms, chicken slaughter, sustainability, french fries, soul-searching questions, it's all here. Just read it already. Okay, if that didn't sell you, here's more info, from the review I wrote for my farm community (Stearns Farm, Framingham, MA): The Omnivore’s Dilemma created a lot buzz since its publication in 2006, so you may have read it already. If you haven’t picked it up yet, consider checking it out. At 464 pages, it is

I liked Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma so much that I searched goodreads reviews for reasons not to like it.Let me explain.Whenever a really influential book like this comes out, there's a pretty reliable pattern that follows. There's the newspaper "toast of the town" effect, followed by bland and ubiquitous morning TV interviews, and, if you're lucky, an innocuous appearance on Oprah, probably followed by a massive boost in sales. However, there is usually a fairly large group of peopl...

The “national eating disorder” (which, sadly, lumps Canada in with the US of A – because while Canadians don’t quite have the same issues than our neighbors to the south do, it would be preposterous to claim we are not also affected by food-related madness, if only by proximity) Michael Pollan wrote about in this book is something that has always fascinated me. I was raised in a Franco-Italian household, so food and cooking were always big deals; it was not unknown for my mother to laugh right i...

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael PollanThe Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is a nonfiction book written by American author Michael Pollan published in 2006. 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 transportat...

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

A wise man recently told me, "Capitalism is here to stay." With that in mind, Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma is a feel good guide to consumerism at its most sustainable, organic, locally grown, and ultimately high-end. 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...

remember when this book, written by a proud meat-eater, accidentally made me a vegetarian?Okay, but seriously, I'd recommend giving this a read. Give the teen version a read if you really can't take a 450-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

I thoroughly enjoyed The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. He's been one of my favorite writers, ever since I read A Place of My Own, some years ago. 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.The book has the distinct danger of making you annoying to your spouse/partner/children, because you'll be reading along and feel compelled to share a fact a...