The Omnivore's Dilemma by Micahel Pollan, copyright 2006
"And this, I suppose, points to what I was really after in taking up hunting and gathering: to see what it'd be like to prepare and eat a meal in full consciousness of what was involved. I realized that this had been the ultimate destination of the journey I'd been on since traveling to an Iowa cornfield: to look as far into the food chains that support us as I could look, and recover the fundamental biological realities that the complexities of modern industrialized eating keep from our view." (Page 281, in a chapter titled The Forager)
Michael Pollan's search for the "natural history of four meals" took him to vast cornfields in Iowa, a feedlot in Kansas, Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley, Berkeley's neighborhoods, and a burned section of El Dorado National forest, in addition to other unidentified spots good for hunting mushrooms but top secret, lest everyone descend on them. In his quest, he takes his readers along, following his curiosity about the food we eat and where it comes from to some beautiful places, and some scary ones.
I learned so much fascinating information that is mostly lost to modern eaters, from the fact that cows do not naturally eat corn but eat grass, and to be able to digest corn they have to consume large quantities of antibiotics. I discovered the growing "local foods" movement and since I began reading this book have noticed so many more people and businesses committing themselves to more conscious buying habits (take Burger King's recent decision to buy cage-free eggs and pork made from uncrated pigs).
Meat-eaters will be glad to hear this book is not a rant against the eating of meat. In fact, I came away without a sense of the author preaching "thou shalt" do anything, except look at your relationship to food and what you can do to make it a more conscious process. Through his experiences, readers can draw their own conclusions about the industrial agriculture system, farmer's markets, and organic foods. All he asks is that we not look away from the realities of where our food comes from.
Michael Pollan's search for the "natural history of four meals" took him to vast cornfields in Iowa, a feedlot in Kansas, Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley, Berkeley's neighborhoods, and a burned section of El Dorado National forest, in addition to other unidentified spots good for hunting mushrooms but top secret, lest everyone descend on them. In his quest, he takes his readers along, following his curiosity about the food we eat and where it comes from to some beautiful places, and some scary ones.
I learned so much fascinating information that is mostly lost to modern eaters, from the fact that cows do not naturally eat corn but eat grass, and to be able to digest corn they have to consume large quantities of antibiotics. I discovered the growing "local foods" movement and since I began reading this book have noticed so many more people and businesses committing themselves to more conscious buying habits (take Burger King's recent decision to buy cage-free eggs and pork made from uncrated pigs).
Meat-eaters will be glad to hear this book is not a rant against the eating of meat. In fact, I came away without a sense of the author preaching "thou shalt" do anything, except look at your relationship to food and what you can do to make it a more conscious process. Through his experiences, readers can draw their own conclusions about the industrial agriculture system, farmer's markets, and organic foods. All he asks is that we not look away from the realities of where our food comes from.
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