The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals | Michael Pollan

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals | Michael Pollan | Eye-opener/mouth-closer

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The Omnivore's Dil...

	The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan Penguin, 2007 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 464 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Well Blended Research & 1st Person Narrative

"Omnivore's Dilemma" takes the title from the concept that eating can be risky -- is that a good mushroom or will it make me sick? You have to take chances to learn about food, or find some other way to test it. Pollan follows the most common food ingredients through the chain and, ultimately, I think that what he has uncovered is that the Standard American Diet is making us sick.

This isn't exactly news -- Pollan's story and the way he illustrates the food chain, processing and consumption patterns is engaging and moves along at a great pace. It feels more like a description of a personal journey which I think would make this very appealing to a lot of people. It's not very didactic, and there are some funny parts in there. The chapters on hunting and mushroom hunting gave me some giggles.

Bottom line - don't eat processed food, support local farmers, even if they aren't necessarily organic (ask about "pesticide free" produce) and stop eating things that aren't food.

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Eye-opener/mouth-closer

A very engaging look at the food industry. Mainly answers the questions: "What it is we're eating? Where it came from? How it found its way to our table?" But: "What should you eat?" is in the end left to you and a zillion diet books. How about just fish and vegetables? That apparently is what some Japanese mountaineers in their seventies are eating in preparation for an attempt to become the oldest people to summit Mt. Everest.

Enjoyed this book from cover to cover!

I have been reading a lot about food and nutrition and was really fastinated with the information in this book. It is a fun read but I was kind of worried that it might be sort of one-sided politically (many on the subject seem a bit one-sided and you wonder if you are getting the full story). The book seems refreshingly objective and dispassionate to me as far as the imformation about food, etc. It was made more interesting by Michael explaining his own person journey of discovery and his thoughts, feelings and self-examinations along the way. Get your older kids to read this book and they will never look at a McDonald's meal the same way again!

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a delight to be educated through wit and prose

What struck me most while reading this book was discovering along with the writer how little I know about where my food comes from, how it reaches me and what has been done to it along the way. Very rewarding were Pollan's sense of curiosity, courage, determination and integrity in looking at the truth of industrialized food, to pulling the trigger in the forest, hauling hay, standing knee-deep in excrement with "534", and firing up the grill for the sake of having an authentic knowledge, not just a label with a barcode. And it started to bother me that I really had no idea where my (extremely important and life-sustaining) food had come from or how much coordinated effort it took to get it to me.

I know I will never see through the same lens when I step foot in a supermarket, grocery store, convenience store or restaurant. I will think twice about eating corn-fed meat, not for a moral repulsion to eating meat, but for a moral repulsion to the way our country obtains our meat and what they stuff our animals with before we ingest. If our industrial abattoirs cannot be humane, then perhaps we can't call our civilization civilized.

Yes, every eater - herbivore, carnivore, omnivore - should read this book! Pollan has an honest voice and an engaging way with words.

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Very good book!

This book puts a light on how we grow our food and where our food comes from. Its highlights the dangers of eating some foods that we would normally eat everyday. I absolutely loved this book, I'm sure if you are interested in going organic this is a must read!

reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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