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title: "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals"
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# The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals [Pollan, Michael] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Review: An important story told by a great storyteller - I listened to this book on audio after it was recommended by a friend, and I'm glad I did. I hope you will purchase it and read it, too! The first thing to know is that the author is such a good storyteller that he teaches writing at Harvard. To dissect and tell the very complex story of the USA food system, he uses four case studies (consisting of four meals) as a framework to examine the overall system in the United States through which food is produced, regulated, subsidized, packaged, distributed, marketed, and sold in the USA. The four meals he uses to dissect and analyze this system bring it down to earth in a practical way that enables one to understand it. The four meals consist of (1) a fast food meal consumed by his family, (2) an "organic," "natural " meal using the ingredients purchased from a high-end retail grocery chain, (3) a meal produced by a farm family that grows virtually everything they eat, and (4) a meal in which he attempted to mirror the type of food a hunter gather might have been able to obtain by foraging and hunting their own food. For each of these meals, he examines each ingredient used and traces that ingredient back to its ultimate origins. When I say ultimate origins, I mean for example not just the cow in the slaughter lot for the McDonald's hamburger, but the corn that fed that cow, the systems by which the corn farmer produced the grain, the USDA agricultural subsidies that resulted in the production of that corn, the transportation and delivery systems ... you get the drift. He uses this example to examine an extremely complex system and a way that makes it understandable and digestible. Best of all, it's not ever boring. He tells the story In such a way that you feel like you get to know the people involved and their stories, why they do what they do, what their challenges are, and what rewards are. And then for each meal, he describes what it was like to eat it, which is kind of fun too. For the fast food meal, he and his family drove while they ate it, since it was supposed to be "fast" and "on the go" (my words). For the second meal, the organic meal, he discusses the initial movement for sustainability and how that got co-opted by big business and the USDA, so that the term "organic" got to be controlled by industry and now no longer means what a lot of people think it does. Instead, the requirements for being called "organic," are so complex that small farms are shut out, and the huge operations that have grown to meet the demand for "organic " are just about as industrialized as the industrial agriculture described in the fast food restaurant meal. The third meal, originating from a sustainable family farm that grows all its own food and produces all its own fertilizer, is the most intriguing for me personally. It discusses the challenges faced by that small family farm and ways they have Ingeniously worked around outrageously cumbersome USDA agricultural regulations that are designed to control excesses of industrial farms but which are also applied to the tiniest of family farms without regard for differences in scale or farming methods. For the last meal, he reveals his credentials as an amazing home cook, when he describes the feast he prepared for his guests after he participated in a hunt to kill a wild boar and roast it. I hope my description hasn't included too many spoilers, because the information in the book is extremely worthwhile and worth your read and your time and your consideration as you think about the sources of your food, the nutritional value of food, how to become a more ethical consumer of food, and importantly, to be aware of our overall food system and ways that it really needs to be completely restructured , including especially restructuring of USDA agricultural policy, if the US food system is to be come responsive to human nutritional needs and sustainable for the future.
Review: One of the most important books in decades - I have to say, this is one fantastic book. Amazing. One of those rare books that forces your eyes wide open to an issue that you'd only dimly been aware of. It's one of those books everyone in the country should read, one that should be of cataclysmic proportions and Change Everything. I won't destroy the effect of the book by trying to re-state the information in the book and doing a bad job. Let's just say that everyone who eats food should read it. As a rationalist, I've always been sympathetic to the "Organic foods" movement but uncomfortable with all the pseudo-mystical thinking that's often associated with it. It made sense to me in principle that growing food the way evolution intended made sense, but I found the arguments I often encountered to often be mostly feel-good, unspecific talk about Cycles of Nature and Gaia and Earth Mother and so on. They weren't fact-y enough for me. This book definitely is. It doesn't have one pseudoscientific vibe to it. Conservatives can read it just as comfortably as the most crunchy-granola hippie. Pollan should have won a Pulitzer Prize for this book. It's magnificently researched and written. It has plenty of hard fact, but instead of being boring, his clear, simple writing brings them to life and gives them meaning. He makes his cases carefully, using evidence and fact, and gradually builds to conclusions that I'm forced to admit are inescapable. It's one of those few fantastic books that takes a subject that's usually dull and dry and makes it not just interesting but, at least for me, *gripping*. It not only educated me about a whole hell of a lot of things I didn't know, but it walked me though, step by logical step, the reasons why the way our current food production system is seriously broken and horrible for us the consumers, for the farmers, for the plants and animals involved, and for the planet. I had heard this time and time again from various people, but I always took it with a big grain of salt because the people saying these things also often said ridiculous things about other topics, and I thought their virulence might be largely fed by generic anti-capitalist bias. While I was never exactly an opponent of natural foods or a fan of factory farming, my feelings were nonspecific because I hadn't really looked into it very much, and I had a real skepticism of all the wild accusations made by the more radical people in some movements. But now, I'm convinced. Michael Pollan has presented me with actual objective facts, presented clearly and logically, in an unbiased way, and convinced me through the sheer power of his reasoning. My mind wasn't changed 180 degrees, but it was definitely changed 90 degrees. In some cases the logic is so clear it had me practically slapping my forehead in shock at how stupid people can be. It's been quite a long time since I've been so captivated by the crystal clear beauty of the elegant logic in a perfectly crafted argument. One thing I like best is that Pollan is largely unbiased himself. Yes, the book does come to conclusions that are very much against some practices and for very much for others, but he makes the arguments so clear and strong that you can only end up agreeing with him. He doesn't, for example, come out with a glowing, uncritical, credulous affirmation of "organic" food, as I had expected. While generally positive, he acknowledges serious problems with the system. I can't recommend this book any more strongly. If it's completely ignored by government and industry - and I'm sure it will be - it's a crime. This may be the most important book in decades.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #15,457 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #11 in Gastronomy History (Books) #32 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences #100 in Sociology Reference |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (5,446) |
| Dimensions  | 5.45 x 1 x 8.36 inches |
| ISBN-10  | 0143038583 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0143038580 |
| Item Weight  | 2.31 pounds |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 450 pages |
| Publication date  | August 28, 2007 |
| Publisher  | Penguin |

## Images

![The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81harH8SHoL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ An important story told by a great storyteller
*by A***X on July 6, 2024*

I listened to this book on audio after it was recommended by a friend, and I'm glad I did. I hope you will purchase it and read it, too! The first thing to know is that the author is such a good storyteller that he teaches writing at Harvard. To dissect and tell the very complex story of the USA food system, he uses four case studies (consisting of four meals) as a framework to examine the overall system in the United States through which food is produced, regulated, subsidized, packaged, distributed, marketed, and sold in the USA. The four meals he uses to dissect and analyze this system bring it down to earth in a practical way that enables one to understand it. The four meals consist of (1) a fast food meal consumed by his family, (2) an "organic," "natural " meal using the ingredients purchased from a high-end retail grocery chain, (3) a meal produced by a farm family that grows virtually everything they eat, and (4) a meal in which he attempted to mirror the type of food a hunter gather might have been able to obtain by foraging and hunting their own food. For each of these meals, he examines each ingredient used and traces that ingredient back to its ultimate origins. When I say ultimate origins, I mean for example not just the cow in the slaughter lot for the McDonald's hamburger, but the corn that fed that cow, the systems by which the corn farmer produced the grain, the USDA agricultural subsidies that resulted in the production of that corn, the transportation and delivery systems ... you get the drift. He uses this example to examine an extremely complex system and a way that makes it understandable and digestible. Best of all, it's not ever boring. He tells the story In such a way that you feel like you get to know the people involved and their stories, why they do what they do, what their challenges are, and what rewards are. And then for each meal, he describes what it was like to eat it, which is kind of fun too. For the fast food meal, he and his family drove while they ate it, since it was supposed to be "fast" and "on the go" (my words). For the second meal, the organic meal, he discusses the initial movement for sustainability and how that got co-opted by big business and the USDA, so that the term "organic" got to be controlled by industry and now no longer means what a lot of people think it does. Instead, the requirements for being called "organic," are so complex that small farms are shut out, and the huge operations that have grown to meet the demand for "organic " are just about as industrialized as the industrial agriculture described in the fast food restaurant meal. The third meal, originating from a sustainable family farm that grows all its own food and produces all its own fertilizer, is the most intriguing for me personally. It discusses the challenges faced by that small family farm and ways they have Ingeniously worked around outrageously cumbersome USDA agricultural regulations that are designed to control excesses of industrial farms but which are also applied to the tiniest of family farms without regard for differences in scale or farming methods. For the last meal, he reveals his credentials as an amazing home cook, when he describes the feast he prepared for his guests after he participated in a hunt to kill a wild boar and roast it. I hope my description hasn't included too many spoilers, because the information in the book is extremely worthwhile and worth your read and your time and your consideration as you think about the sources of your food, the nutritional value of food, how to become a more ethical consumer of food, and importantly, to be aware of our overall food system and ways that it really needs to be completely restructured , including especially restructuring of USDA agricultural policy, if the US food system is to be come responsive to human nutritional needs and sustainable for the future.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ One of the most important books in decades
*by H***N on April 26, 2007*

I have to say, this is one fantastic book. Amazing. One of those rare books that forces your eyes wide open to an issue that you'd only dimly been aware of. It's one of those books everyone in the country should read, one that should be of cataclysmic proportions and Change Everything. I won't destroy the effect of the book by trying to re-state the information in the book and doing a bad job. Let's just say that everyone who eats food should read it. As a rationalist, I've always been sympathetic to the "Organic foods" movement but uncomfortable with all the pseudo-mystical thinking that's often associated with it. It made sense to me in principle that growing food the way evolution intended made sense, but I found the arguments I often encountered to often be mostly feel-good, unspecific talk about Cycles of Nature and Gaia and Earth Mother and so on. They weren't fact-y enough for me. This book definitely is. It doesn't have one pseudoscientific vibe to it. Conservatives can read it just as comfortably as the most crunchy-granola hippie. Pollan should have won a Pulitzer Prize for this book. It's magnificently researched and written. It has plenty of hard fact, but instead of being boring, his clear, simple writing brings them to life and gives them meaning. He makes his cases carefully, using evidence and fact, and gradually builds to conclusions that I'm forced to admit are inescapable. It's one of those few fantastic books that takes a subject that's usually dull and dry and makes it not just interesting but, at least for me, *gripping*. It not only educated me about a whole hell of a lot of things I didn't know, but it walked me though, step by logical step, the reasons why the way our current food production system is seriously broken and horrible for us the consumers, for the farmers, for the plants and animals involved, and for the planet. I had heard this time and time again from various people, but I always took it with a big grain of salt because the people saying these things also often said ridiculous things about other topics, and I thought their virulence might be largely fed by generic anti-capitalist bias. While I was never exactly an opponent of natural foods or a fan of factory farming, my feelings were nonspecific because I hadn't really looked into it very much, and I had a real skepticism of all the wild accusations made by the more radical people in some movements. But now, I'm convinced. Michael Pollan has presented me with actual objective facts, presented clearly and logically, in an unbiased way, and convinced me through the sheer power of his reasoning. My mind wasn't changed 180 degrees, but it was definitely changed 90 degrees. In some cases the logic is so clear it had me practically slapping my forehead in shock at how stupid people can be. It's been quite a long time since I've been so captivated by the crystal clear beauty of the elegant logic in a perfectly crafted argument. One thing I like best is that Pollan is largely unbiased himself. Yes, the book does come to conclusions that are very much against some practices and for very much for others, but he makes the arguments so clear and strong that you can only end up agreeing with him. He doesn't, for example, come out with a glowing, uncritical, credulous affirmation of "organic" food, as I had expected. While generally positive, he acknowledges serious problems with the system. I can't recommend this book any more strongly. If it's completely ignored by government and industry - and I'm sure it will be - it's a crime. This may be the most important book in decades.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review
*by P***R on December 27, 2021*

I am a fan of this writer and have got other books written by him which have been very helpful for my work. this is a new book and I am just beginning to read it. but like all his other books this too is a very good addition to my book shelf. thank you.

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*Last updated: 2026-03-17*