The Omnivore's Dilemma

A Natural History of Four Meals

Paperback, 450 pages

English language

Published Aug. 28, 2007 by Penguin Books.

ISBN:
978-0-14-303858-0
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
1139759102
Goodreads:
93504

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(106 reviews)

Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. Will it be fast food tonight, or something organic? Or perhaps something we grew ourselves? The question of what to have for dinner has confronted us since man discovered fire. But as Michael Pollan explains in this revolutionary book, how we answer it now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may determine or survival as a species. Packed with profound surprises, The Omnivore's Dilemma is changing the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating. --back cover

10 editions

As overused as the phrase is: this is a must read!

As someone who went down the rabbit hole of not eating processed foods or factory farmed meat for several years, I really thought I knew all there was to know about the way America produces its food. But wow was I wrong.

This book continually astounded me with the facts and figures of just how silly our food chain really is. Also I learned so much more about eating seasonally and locally than I was expecting. I could not stop sharing quotes with people as I was reading and I would consider this a must read for anyone who lives in a society that doesn’t live off the land.

Look Closely at Your Food

This book is about where your meals come from, and the options you have. Michael says that he often gets approached about this book, years after it came out. "Your book changed my life!" He says just how it changed their life is always different; some people go vegetarian, some add meat to their diet. For me? It answered a question I never knew I asked, many years ago.

Review of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" on 'Storygraph'

This book has been on my shelf for 13 years. I finally dusted it off, literally, and got down to reading. It has forced me, as I knew it would, to yank my head out of the sand with regard to food, where it comes from, what its production does to the animals and the earth, and a few other things I had happily chosen to forget since my vegetarian days.

While not a book for everyone, I found it informative and sometimes entertaining. I'm not quite ready to give up meat but I have found a local butcher shop that sells farm-raised, grass and pasture-fed animals. So there's a start.

Review of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" on Goodreads

1) "You would think that competition among individuals would threaten the tranquillity of such a crowded metropolis, yet the modern field of corn forms a most orderly mob. This is because every plant in it, being an F-1 hybrid, is genetically identical to every other. Since no individual plant has inherited any competitive edge over any other, precious resources like sunlight, water, and soil nutrients are shared equitably. There are no alpha corn plants to hog the light or fertilizer. The true socialist utopia turns out to be a field of F-1 hybrid plants."

2) "I was curious to know what feedlot beef would taste like now, if I could taste the corn or even, since taste is as much a matter of what's in the head as it is about molecules dancing on the tongue, some hint of the petroleum. 'You are what you eat' is a truism hard …

Review of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" on 'Goodreads'

This was a slower read than In Defense of Food and more of a personal narrative, as Pollan talks about his efforts to explore the food chain and trace foods from their origins to our plates. It was still an interesting and thoughtful read, but I would recommend starting with In Defense of Food instead.

Review of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" on 'Goodreads'

It's 2010. By now you know about CAFOs, Big Agriculture, and destructive government subsidies. You'll chug DDT before touching HFCS. You think about your food... or you think you do. Is there anything you can learn from Omnivore's Dilemma? Any reason to read it? Well, yes. Do you know the carbon-sequestering adaptation that makes corn so efficient? Why the "NPK mentality" is so (seductively) dangerous? What about alternatives: what does "organic" mean? There may be much in here that you already know, but I'm confident that there's much you don't. More importantly, this is stuff we need to be reminded of, stuff we need to think about regularly.

Review of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" on 'Goodreads'

A great read. At first I was skeptical of the very personal first-person writing style, given that the book is still journalistic non-fiction at its core, but the style wound up enriching the content and driving many of the points home. Highly recommended to anyone who is interested in learning more about the way we eat.

Review of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" on 'Goodreads'

Bravo! This is the kind of book from Pollan that I wanted to see after reading [b:The Botany of Desire|13839|The Botany of Desire A Plant's-Eye View of the World|Michael Pollan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166573832s/13839.jpg|908398]. Researched and well-edited, but refreshingly introspective and well-balanced with real life experience. Pollan journeys into the heart of conscious food preparation and eating and brings his insight to fruition in an extremely thoughtful manner, by tracing 4 different meals to their source and explicating the process of how they came to his table. On the way, he teaches us of the irony behind the industrial use of the term "organic", reminds us of the horrors of agribusiness, chides vegetarians for their philosophical naivete, and gently guides us into appreciation of what it is to be grateful for and be fully aware of what we put into our bodies.

Pollan, as in The Botany of Desire, loves to embark on tangential …

Review of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" on 'Goodreads'

Really good read. Very interesting though hard to pin down exactly what it's about. Food... something. The omnivore's dilemma basically boils down to what do we eat when we can eat just about anything? The book touches on that a few times, but mostly is an account of the author's journey to bring together a meal completely (almost) of his own making. Through hunting, gathering, foraging, of all local, in season ingredients. An excellent read, Mr. Pollan has an excellent voice, and I found myself wanting more at the end of this book.

I'd recommend it to anyone interested in food issues, and life issues in general.

Review of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" on 'GoodReads'

I was loaned this by my friend, Jasmine, who thought I'd enjoy it/should read it and I have to say that her prediction was spot-on.

If you've ever wonder about the state of our industrial food system today (what's wrong with Agribusiness, mass distribution of heavily-processed food, the apparent necessity of such a system given our ever-expanding national and world population, how we got to this point), this is the book to read. Pollan covers everything from the co-evolution of corn and modern agricultural practices to the conditions of large feedlot operations to "grass farmers" to the benefits and limitations of foraging and hunting to the definition of "organic" in our present-day food economy.

This book is a sweeping tour de force that encompasses a LOT in its 300 or so pages. Some have accused Pollan of misrepresenting possible "solutions" to problems he addresses here, but I think he does …

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