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From Publishers Weekly
[Signature]Reviewed by Pamela KaufmanPollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly."Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I'm not convinced I'd want to go hunting with Pollan, but I'm sure I'd enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota. (Apr.)Pamela Kaufman is executive editor at Food & Wine magazine.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Humans were clearly designed to eat all manner of meats, vegetables, fruits, and grains. But, as Pollan points out, America's farmers have succeeded so wildly that today's fundamental agricultural issue has become how to deal sensibly with overproduction. The result of this surfeit of grain is behemoth corn processors, who have commoditized the Aztecs' sacred grain and developed ways to separate corn into products wholly removed from its original kernels. This excess food and Americans' wealth and rapid-paced lifestyles now yield supersized portions of less-than-nutritious eatables. Pollan contrasts the technologically driven life on an Iowa corn farm's feedlots with the thriving organic farm movement supplying retailers such as Whole Foods. Pollan also addresses issues of vegetarianism and flesh eating, hunting for game, and foraging for mushrooms. Throughout, he takes care to consider all sides of issues, and he avoids jingoistic answers. Although much of this subject has been treated elsewhere, Pollan's easy writing style and unique approach freshen this contemporary debate. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Shocking, Enlightening, Empowering,
By
This review is from: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Paperback)
In this comprehensive book, Michael Pollan presents many of the grisly details of the industrial food system which dominates North American society. While many readers may have encountered stories of animal abuse, genetically engineered foods, and irresponsible agri-business/ government partnerships, this book ties all the threads together in a somewhat bleak picture of current food market conditions. Alternately though, Pollan presents a variety of options that conscious consumers may choose to empower themselves in their culinary choices, while supporting local, sustainable farmers. The highlight of this book is the introduction to the innovative, post-modern farming techniques employed by Joel Salatin and others like him. This author presents a problem, and is refreshingly responsible enough to provide solutions.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Modern North American discovers the reality behind his food,
By
This review is from: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Paperback)
This is the most basic culinary detective book. In modern America, Michael Pollan wonders what to eat: "... imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found it's way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost."Of course most North Americans can't answer these questions in any self-satisfying way, so Pollan sets off on the case. He journeys through the belly of the food industry beast -- to the massive government-subsidized corn plantations of Iowa, the huge cattle feed lots and the slaughterhouses. He visits the plants where trainload after trainload of corn is refined into the chemical components of processed food, and then he takes his family to McDonalds. Searching for alternatives to totally explore, Pollan visits large-scale organic plantations. He works for a spell on an organic family farm in Virginia, helping to slaughter the chickens for his next gourmet meal. And last he goes whole hog back to the hunter-gatherer days, searching for mushrooms and shooting a wild pig in the forests of Northern California. The whole experience yields tons of great stories, and the kind of good common sense I can't resist quoting: "A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximise efficiency at any cost and the moral imperatives of culture, which have historically served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market. This is another example of the cultural contradictions of capitalism -- the tendency over time for the economic impulse to erode the moral underpinnings of society. Mercy toward the animals in our care is one such cruelty." (p. 318) But aside from the politics of soil and animal abuse, Pollan ends up with some damn fine meals, eaten with friends he makes along the way: "Was the perfect meal the one you made all by yourself? Not necessarily; certainly this one wasn't that. Though I had spent the day in the kitchen (a good part of the week as well), and I had made most everything from scratch and paid scarcely a dime for the ingredients, it had taken many hands to bring this meal to the table. The fact that just about all those hands were at the table was the more rare and important thing, as was the fact that every single story about the food on the table could be told in the first person." (p. 409)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enlightening,
By
This review is from: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Paperback)
Reading this book inevitably will forever change the way you think about the food you eat and buy for yourself and your families. While we eat for many different reasons, many of us don't necessarily know where what we feed ourselves comes from and the important implications; environmentally, ethically and economically. While somewhat tedious at times to read, i give it five stars because of the wealth of knowledge and the candid explanation of important implications found within its pages. Pollan has done brilliant work and i'm personally recommending this book (as well as one of his others which i've recently read; In Defense of food) to all my friends and family because i think creating awareness is powerful and the only way to incite change. While Canadian's food diets are different to american's in many respects, many have adopted a "fast few lifestyle" and disconnect with their food and our population (though perhaps to a lesser degree) share the plethora of diseases associated; high cholesterol, diabetes,cardiovascular issues. This book is about so much more than the fast food diet but i make the parallel as we see more and more conglomerate corporations introducing and pushing their products in foreign markets and as we see many of their citizens replacing traditional diets with western ones and emulating American lifestyles more and more, this book is relevant to most everyone regardless of nationality. If you care about the world we live in and your health and that of those around you, this book is for you.
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