The omnivore's dilemma : a natural history of four meals

Pollan, Michael. The omnivore's dilemma : a natural history of four meals. 2006. 451p. ISBN 1-59420-082-3. Available on the library shelves at 394.1 POL.

When you go to a supermarket to buy food, the variety can be overwhelming. Each grocery store has on average over 100,000 different items available to satisfy any craving you might have. Unfortunately, variety of food does not mean a diversity of ingredients. In fact, Pollan argues that corn in all its forms has grown to occupy a central place in the American diet, both in its most well-known form, corn on the cob, but also as a sweet syrup, as filler and food for animals we in turn eat, as fuel to process and transport goods to market, and in a myriad of other industrial uses. Our diet has mainly become made up of corn and its derivatives.

In this provocative book, Pollan explores the disproportionate impact on the American diet, the American farm, and the American economy that corn has. From factoring farming to inhumane slaughterhouses, Pollan describes how corn and Second World War policies came to shape our current food supply and tastes. Using for basis four meals, from the industrial to the organic to the hunter-gatherer style, Pollan discusses what happens to his food from the moment it is planted to the time it arrives on his plate, and everything in between.

This book may change your mind about how and what you eat. And even if it doesn’t, at least you will understand how our food industry has so fundamentally transformed what and how we eat that our ancestors from even a hundred years ago would be hard pressed to recognize what it is a typical American meal today. Pollan literally provides food for thought on a subject most of us know next to nothing about.