The Omnivore's Dilemma
The Omnivore's Dilemma : A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan,
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
ISBN: 1594200823
Edition: Hardcover; 2006-04-11
Summary:
The bestselling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology
of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the
twenty-first century "What should we have for dinner?" To one degree
or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a
wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's
dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature
offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't-which
mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can
enjoy. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a
national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an
atavistic vengeance. The cornucopia of the modern American
supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering
landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those
tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time we're realizing
that our food choices also have profound implications for the health
of our environment. The Omnivore's Dilemma is bestselling author
Michael Pollan's brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these
little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.
Pollan has divided The Omnivore's Dilemma into three parts, one for
each of the food chains that sustain us: industrialized food,
alternative or "organic" food, and food people obtain by dint of
their own hunting, gathering, or gardening. Pollan follows each food
chain literally from the ground up to the table, emphasizing our
dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the species we depend on. He
concludes each section by sitting down to a meal--at McDonald's, at
home with his family sharing a dinner from Whole Foods, and in a
revolutionary "beyond organic" farm in Virginia. For each meal he
traces the provenance of everything consumed, revealing the hidden
components we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for
particular foods reflects our environmental and biological
inheritance. We are indeed what we eat-and what we eat remakes the
world. A society of voracious and increasingly confused omnivores, we
are just beginning to recognize the profound consequences of the
simplest everyday food choices, both for ourselves and for the
natural world. The Omnivore's Dilemma is a long-overdue book and one
that will become known for bringing a completely fresh perspective to
a question as ordinary and yet momentous as What shall we have for
dinner?
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