The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Book Review: The Life of Corn and the Death of American Health
Summary: 5 Stars
The author has four hypotheses about how we Americans may have become such dysfunctional eaters, and about how our food supplies and our diets came to be the way they are.
Although interesting, this book was not exactly what I was expecting. I was hoping Pollan would get deeper into how the collusion between the US Food and Drug Administration and Agribusiness have conspired to product the "sugar and fat laden" diets that have become the staple of our nation for ordinary Americans and how we cannot easily get around Coke Cola, McDonald's Hamburgers and French fries etc. to a more healthy diet - at least without being better educated and without it being very inconvenient and expensive to these life-shortening and health-killing alternatives. As an almost 70-year old Southerner who grew up on red meats, fried foods, coke, cigarettes and hard liquor, and now have the ABCs and D's of American health (Asthma, Arthritis, hardening arteries, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart problems and diabetes, I can attest to the fact that there is little time to wax eloquent and romantic about the niceties of the American diet.
Although the history of the life cycle of corn, and how it effects our lives is interesting, and goes part of the way down the path to better understanding, it does not go nearly far enough. Given that it is no accident that 65% of us are overweight, and experience serious health problems similar to my own, and at an increasingly earlier age, and that we have no secure health system, American health is indeed no casual or laughing matter.
In light of all of this, this piece seems a bit gratuitous - just short of being flippant and in a larger sense a bit negligent. I believe a much needed golden opportunity to educate the American public about the forces that conspire to shape and "lock us into" our poor diets and health, was lost.
At another time and another place (perhaps in Europe, where the older people are healthier than the young in the U.S.), this would have been a book to celebrate. But today, with our health as well as our healthcare crisis, this book is a luxury that the ordinary American public can ill-afford. For a missed opportunity, and for making only a timid and glancing blow at the nation's number one health problem, three stars. Otherwise, it would have easily been a five star effort.
Book Review: Informative and Entertaining
Summary: 4 Stars
This book was very well written. Before starting, I was worried that it would be a rather dry read (after all, how much can you say about food?). Well, apparently there is an awful lot to say about food, and Pollan does a great job at making it interesting. He brings to light some of the problems with industrial agriculture that I just never knew existed. He doesn't just present problems is this book however. He also talks about some ways to help make things better. The one thing I did not like was when he had wine while hunting. However, this has nothing to do with the book's readability.
I reccomend this book because I'm not a food fanatic and I found this book interesting.
Book Review: Food For Thought
Summary: 4 Stars
The well written, most interesting read on the state of agriculture in the United States is definately "food for thought." The book's author, Michael Pollan visited three different kinds of farms: first a Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO); second, three big business organic farms: Cal Organic, Earthbound Farms and Cascadian Farms; third, a farm committed to locally grown, free range food called Polyface. The last part of Pollan's journey involved foraging for own food. Pollan even killed a wild pig to serve at the meal he cooked his friends. Each phase of his jouney concluded with a meal derived from the type of farming operations Michael had just visited. For example, Pollan and his family ate at McDonalds for the CAFO meal.
It took them a full ten minutes speeding down the highway to finish their McDonald's meal. I liked his comment about fast food eating. He says, "Perhaps the reason you eat this food quickly is because it doesn't bear savoring." He goes on to say about fast food, "The more you concentrate on how it tastes, the less like anything it tastes. I've said before that McDonalds serves as kind of comfort food, but they are selling something more schematic than that-something more like a signifier of comfort food. So you eat more and eat more quickly, hoping somehow to catch up to the original idea of a cheeseburger or French fry as it it retreats over the horizon. And so it goes, bite after biite, until you feel not satisfied exactly, but simply, regretably, full."
For all of their good qualities, the big business organic farms have driven many smaller organic famers out of business. Places like Walmart and Target do not want to buy organic food from various small suppliers, but from one large organic supplier that can supply them with all the vegetables, etc. they need. Big organic farms do much harm to soil by continually running the weeding machines over it. Since they don't use herbicides, they have to have a way to control the weeds.
Polyface Farm raises a variety of animals (chickens, pigs and cows) that are pastured and eat the food they were created to eat. Polyface farm doesn't raise more animals than it can care for in a humane manner and refuses to ship it's prcuduct out, but only sells it locally.
I personally buy organic or free range meat. After looking at how our farm facory animals are raised on unnatural feed, in overcrowded conditions, dosed with antibiotics and growth hormones, I will pay the extra money for healthy meat. How far you can go in eating local depends on what part of country you live in (I live in Wisconsin, with its short growing season). It also depends on whether you live close to a source of local food or can grow your own, and also your budget restrainsts.
Now on to the reasons I could not give the book a five star review. Contrary to what Pollan says at the beginning of the book, bread and pasta are not two of the most wholesome foods known to man. Try telling that to a carbohyddrate addict or someone with celiac disease and see what they say. Also, saturated isn't bad for you. It's a traditional fat that's been used by healthy cutures for thousands of years. The trans fats, as well as, fats from CAFO animals are the real killer fats. When you feed animals unnatural diets, their ratios of saturated to unsaturated fat changes in a very unhealthy manner. Free range meat has a healthy balnce of various kinds of fats. Also, how could a person who has seen how a CAFO is run say he would ever again eat at a McDonalds. If I were starving and had no other food choices, then and only then would I eat there.
Book Review: Changes the way you look at food!
Summary: 5 Stars
An amazing tour de force of food in the US! Pollan writes with wonderful wisdom and honesty. The book has a wonderful bibliography.
Industrial food is at the heart of all the major health problems in this country. Pollan will open your eyes to the fact and make you wnat to learn about the alternatives.
Highly recommended!
Book Review: Wonderful book, well spoken
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was extremely informative and very interesting. Some parts are a little slow but if you're driving down the road its easy to get lost in the discussion of various foods and how they succeed or fail based on their ingredients, big corporations, and government intervention.
Corn is a substance nearly incapable of growing without human intervention and is being used, regardless of health issues, in just about anything.