I grew up on a farm in Michigan where we grew corn and soybeans. The years when we rotated our crops to grow field corn, it was harvested to feed the chickens at the local egg farm. Thus I have some first hand experience with the first few chapters of the Omnivore’s Dilemma and the chapter on the farm rang especially true for me.

This book is popular and enough time has passed that it probably qualifies as a classic and is certainly worth a read. It is a honest portrayal by a professor on the modern US food web highlighting many of the problems of our modern omnivore society spanning the spectrum from steroids to animal ethics.

There were four chapters that I would consider as excellent: The Farm, The Feedlot, Grass and the Forager. The other twenty chapters were ok.

I had no issue with the messaging of the book and wholly agree that it is important to understand where our modern food comes from. I will admit that I promptly ate organic vegetarian for my next meal after finishing the book as there are a few unpleasant facts associated with meat processing. I am sure I will become a carnivore again by tomorrow.

I did have a few problems with the construction of the book however.

1. At times it strayed from the science and empirical observations to become a little too professorial or perhaps too philosophical. This choice was understandable but gave me a meh kind of feeling.

2. At times the book was a bit boring, although there were some intriguing chapters mixed throughout the book.

3. I did not like most of the chapter titles such as Slaughter is a Glass Abattoir. Keep it simple like Cows, Corn, Chickens, Grass and the messaging of the chapter would resonate more.

I rate the book at 3.5 stars.

I will definitely be thinking about where my food comes from more and try to buy more locally from people who farm sustainably. I thought no the book could have been a lot shorter and still got the message across.

This is a book that'll stay with me, and not in a gross-you-out way that one might expect from commentary on where our food comes from (a la Supersize Me or The Jungle). It's shifted my perspective on everyday food, and not necessarily in a burdensome way that needs to be stifled to eat with a clean conscience.

Something that resonated with me—an aspiring vegetarian (if you can call wishing for something, without making any effort at all to achieve it, an aspiration)—was the conclusion that "what's wrong with eating animals is the practice, not the principle." I won't try to paraphrase the argument as I know I wouldn't do it justice, but Pollan fairly weighs both sides and even consults Peter Singer in writing that chapter. It helps to learn, too, that pasture-raised meat is healthier in addition to minimizing (eliminating?) suffering.

Despite the first 200 pages talking almost exclusively about farming corn, it's not pedagogical tedium—it's the insightful, captivating, and convivial Michael Pollan writing about farming corn. This isn't the type of nonfiction you feel obligated to pry into your queue to break up your streak of werewolf romances—I suspect this would be a fun read even for people who don't frequent nonfiction.

Lastly, I'm thankful for the conclusion of the book. There was fertile ground for Pollan to spend 100 pages philosophizing on what we just learned and reiterating what we might take away. His restraint in keeping the sentiment and abstraction to a few pages, mixed in with an anecdote, to boot, was greatly appreciated.

I loved this book almost as much as "The Botany of Desire". Pollan is a muscular writer. I don't recall any passive voice narrative whatsoever, and given the subject matter, it would be easy to retreat into a "don't blame me" attitude. I can't stand lazy, inarticulate writing.

Here he is describing his observations at Polyface Farm in Virginia: "Cows eating grasses that had themselves eaten the sun: The food chain at work in this pasture could not be any shorter or simpler. Especially when I compared it to the food chain passing through the feedlot, with its transcontinental tentacles reaching all the way back to cornfields in Iowa, from there to the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and farther still, to the oil fields of the Persian Gulf that had supplied much of the energy to grow the corn."

"The Omnivore's Dilemma" is something that I had not pondered until this book. Pandas don't have to contemplate what they should eat any given day... it's bamboo. However, an omnivore, whether human or rat, (because we'll both eat almost anything), must give some thought to what it ingests.

Pollan does a wonderful job getting one to think about what one is putting in your mouth and where it has come from. Well done.

Disclaimer: didn't finish the book, the first 100 pgs were too aggravating. Amazing that a journalist can identify a huge problem (gov corn subsidies), yet construct such a dumb argument against them. He elides the serious issues w corn policy (inefficiency of using ethanol for fuel, nitrogen contamination in streams, monocrop susceptibility to pathogens) in favor of weird personifications ("we are walking corn", "corn has conquered us") and ad hominems against agrobusiness (cargill-monsanto-ADM will rule the world, blah blah blah).

Tbh, the book and the democratic party suffer from the same debilitating flaw: they view problems morally (whose morals? their own!) rather than economically (whose $$ we all share, to varying degrees).

Pollan makes my point better than I could. Here, describing his McDonalds meal: "We could have slipped into a booth, but it was such a nice day we decided to put the top down on the convertible and eat our lunch in the car, something the food and the car have both been engineered to accommodate" (111). Michael Pollan, wealthy journalist who can afford to spend a week manually lifting hay bails on a utopian eco-farm in VA, puts down the roof on a sports car that only 5% of the American population can afford. One reason cars accommodate eating, of course, is bc some of the population—low income workers between multiple jobs, for instance—can't afford to stop and eat, like Michael Pollan obviously can. But that's not MP's point, is it. The point is that big business is out to make Americans fat (which, to be clear, he's right about) and we should stop them. We should instead "not begrudge" the price of "one dollar for an egg" and "fifty dollars for a steak." Perhaps he'll mortgage his convertible to pay for them.

I'm not the first person to notice this. Here, at "Say What, Michael Pollan?" blog: "Michael Pollan has a six-figure academic salary, he commands a $20,000 fee to speak for a few hours, and he has sold millions of books..." ... the diff between $1.00/egg and $0.15/egg is 0.0001% of his salary, and 0.005% (approx) of the average American's. The cost diff is 50x more important to our average Joe than Michael Pollan. Small wonder he ignores the cost of goods in Ominvore's Dilemma. Small wonder, too, the wealthy and secure liberal intelligentsia love this book.

Reading Ominvore's Dilemma is a little like the feeling of embarrassment when someone loudly agrees with you at a dinner table debate for all the wrong reasons. ( I don't know this guy......he's not with me.............) Corn is a problem. Gov policy is a problem. But by golly so is this book.

I had an idea of where this book was headed before I even read it--eat organic, local produce, and choose grass-fed meat over factory farm meat. I knew from a quote in Eating Animals that Pollan eventually dismisses vegetarianism as a decision not grounded in reality. What I didn't expect was for him to reach that conclusion so quickly and without so much as visiting a slaughterhouse.

Instead he visits Polyface farms, slaughters a few chickens in a manner far more humane than the fate met by the chickens sold in the supermarkets. He then hunts a wild pig, and feels good about eating meat again. His hunting expedition takes up far bigger chunk of the book than the measly slim chapter on the ethics of eating animals.

The problem I have with this is that his two experiences do not represent meat consumption as the majority of Americans know it today: it does not come from farms as sustainable as Polyface farms--and even such a farm currently operates below its own ideals since it is not allowed to slaughter any of its own animals except chickens--nor is it a product of "respectful" hunting.* With the latter, Pollan admits that it is not feasible to hunt for our food anyway because there are too many of "us" and too few of "them"--wild animals.

This book should be titled Michael Pollan's Dilemma since it does little to address "The Omnivore's Dilemma" once he completely forgoes examining the main sources of American meat--factory farming--and instead focuses on two exceptions to the rule.

Before starting this book, I knew I wasn't going to agree with Pollan's conclusion, but I did at least expect that its role of raising food awareness would still allow me to recommend it to others. It had a promising start. The chapters on corn and organics are interesting. I was already aware of the abundance of food in the American diet, but the information of how corn adapted was rather new to me. The chapters on organic and local produce leave me with more thinking and researching to do before I can decide how to best adapt my shopping habits. However, I fear that the idealization of hunting and "happy meat" overshadows any other message in the book. People look for justification to continue to eat meat--and Pollan provides them with this by accepting these exceptions, and not even seriously entertaining the alternative of abstaining from animal products altogether.

If this book does empower people to make more informed decisions, then I'm glad for it, but personally, I had a more positive opinion of Pollan from his contribution to Food, Inc. and various interviews than I did after reading this book.


* After his hunting expeditions, Pollan joins the rank of writers who try to make hiding in a bush and pulling a trigger seem poetic. Why anyone would feel pride over shooting a pig is beyond my understanding. It's not as if he's John Locke stranded on an island with only his knives and his instincts. He is more at risk gathering mushrooms. Pollan's account tries to convince the reader of a reverence the hunter feels for his prey, but growing up in a rural area, surrounded by hunters (and even being kin to them), I've yet to be convinced that American hunters feel much more than the thrill of killing and of course, having bragging rights and (of course) their stories to tell.

A truly important book by gifted writer and journalist Michael Pollan. It's not without its flaws, however, and for all the promise of the first two-thirds of the book, it kind of leaves the reader hanging at the end.

In the first part, Pollan exposes the damaging effects of industrial agriculture, and—-importantly—-this includes large-scale organic production which is not nearly as benign as most people would like to believe. Later in the book he addresses the inhumane aspect of industrial agriculture as well—-organic production included. He puts it succinctly: you look away, or you stop eating meat.

In the second part of the book, we see farming as it should be, on Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Here, farming practices are closely tied to nature including the natural behavior of farm animals. While the system doesn't adhere completely to organic regulations, it is far more sustainable and humane than industrial organic agriculture and certainly more so than conventional agriculture. Polyface Farm is not able to separate itself from industrial agriculture completely (by law, the steer are killed in conventional slaughterhouses) but it still seems like a very nice place. Unfortunately, the scale on which it operates means that this type of sustainable farming can never produce enough food for the U.S. population. Food from farms like Polyface is likely to be available to only a privileged few.

The last part of the book struck me as downright nonsensical. Pollan explores the possibility of putting together the ultimate local meal—-one composed of food that he himself has hunted, gathered and grown. But don't try this at home, he says. It is not at all a realistic way to eat. Well—-no—-not if you do it by gathering chanterelle mushrooms with a bunch of chefs from Chez Panisse, hunting wild boar in the California woods, and diving for abalone along a rocky coast. Granted, most Americans would be hard-pressed to produce their own food, but Pollan doesn't even explore the option in any kind of realistic or meaningful fashion.

In the end, it appears that the problems associated with food production are insurmountable. Industrial agriculture provides most of the food in this country and is a wasteful and unsustainable system. But more sustainable systems are not realistic for feeding the population. Pollan does not offer any clear cut answers, much to my surprise. (I didn't expect him to solve the problem; I did expect a little guidance!) But the thoughtful reader can still pull together a plan of action to minimize the environmental and ethical cost of a meal. Reduce intake of animal foods. Buy locally-produced food. Grow or produce as much as is realistic for you. Pollan makes his readers think about where their meals come from and how to measure the true cost of our "inexpensive" food. This is a must-read for anyone who expresses a desire to live and eat responsibly.

remember when this book, written by a proud meat-eater, accidentally made me a vegetarian?

Okay, but seriously, I'd recommend giving this a read. Give the teen version a read if you really can't take a 450-page nonfiction book. Either way, I think everyone needs to know exactly how the food industry works. And no, it's not advocating for you to become a vegetarian - it's simply showing truths. The lack of attempt to guilt readership is honestly what stands out about this book. By showing reality without pushing an opinion on what the proper solution is, Pollan manages to be especially convincing. I truly think this book is worth the read.

This was an amazing book. Pollen takes the reader on a food adventure that is thought provoking, disturbing and quietly challenges they way we all look at the meal in front of us - all without being obnoxious or righteous.

The book begins simply enough in an Iowa cornfield as Pollen breaks down the history of corn and the future of this simple grain. He deftly weaves this into how we eat this product and what it’s doing to us and agriculture. From Iowa we travel with him as he visits his steer (#534) in the Colorado fields and in the feedlot of Kansas (Nebraska?).

The middle portion of the books moves into sustainable agriculture at its finest as he spends a week at Polyface farm. As a person familiar with farms, Polyface was amazing. Pollen starts the week on his stomach in a field examining the soil, he helps to move the cows from pasture to pasture, he assists in moving the chicken pens and describes they symbiotic relationship between the chickens and the cows. He talks about the rabbit and chicken house and the symbiotic relationship that exists there, he describes the cow barn in the spring and how the pigs turn 3 feet of cow muck, hay and fermented corn into black compost. And Pollen contrasts and compares “conventional farming” with this picture of “sustainable farming”.

In the third segement, Pollen has moved to California and examines what it means morally and ethically to be a vegetarian (giving up meat for a month). He has also decided to make a meal completely from those items he has grown, foraged and hunted himself.

This book is presented in such a down to earth matter that the reader can’t help but start to question how their food arrived on the table. Pollen doesn’t pontificate. He doesn’t raise his fist and pump it toward the sky and tell us we are all Bad People for Eating Meat. He doesn’t bombard us with anthropormophisism or silly sentiment. He took himself on a quest, shown us what he found, and I appreciated that more than anything.

Has this changed how I view my eating habits? You bet it has. Even more surprising, it changed the husbands.

Тим, хто цікавиться їжею - маст-рід.
Тим, хто не цікавиться - потрійний маст-рід.

Насправді часто ловила себе на думці, що це звісно все цікаво, але нового тут для мене не те щоб багато. Потім дивилася на рік публікації, і розуміла, наскільки революційною ця книга мала бути двадцять років тому. І можливо те, що для мене в ній не було багато чого нового - це і є завдяки її впливу.

Michael Pollan is anti-science.

He blames scientists for the misappropriation of scientific language in advertising. He touts folk wisdom.

I saw him at a book reading and asked him why he is critical of science. He said the science is too easy to abuse, so it should just be ignored.

This is horrible advice. Ignorance doesn't solve anything.
It leaves people vulnerable to those who would mislead and deceive them.

This guy deserves an extra star just for the sheer depth of his coverage! I don't necessarily agree with some of his conclusions, but I admire the way he went out there and immersed himself in the topics he was studying.
Books like this always make me feel good about the changes I've made in my eating habits over the last few years as well as motivating me to remain vigilant when I start to get lazy.
I look forward to trying more of this author's books.