The Omnivore's Dilemma

[Mango04]

I'm not quite half way through the book, but I can't put it down. I think everyone (especially those of us in the US) should read it!

Has anyone else read The Omnivore's Dilemma? What did you think?

[kenlove]

I've been on the library waiting list for a number of months. Pollan's other book is a great one too.The Botany of Desire

Ken

I'm not quite half way through the book, but I can't put it down. I think everyone (especially those of us in the US) should read it!

Has anyone else read The Omnivore's Dilemma? What did you think?

[Mango04]

C'mon...nobody here (on this board about food choices) has read this book?????

[spunky]

You've got my curiosity up...

...can you give us a little book review? Maybe this is something I would like to read!

[blueeyedmanda]

Mango- could you let me know along the lines what the book is about. I read all sorts of things. Right now it is about Centralia PA, the mine town with the fire underneath.

[kbtoyssni]

I've never heard of it, but it sounds interesting. Amazon has a couple of editorial reviews of the book: Open Original Shared Link

Looks like the theme of the book is "where does your food come from?"

[Mango04]

Here's a review from amazon. I think you all would really like the book.

Pollan examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world."

All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly.

"Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.Later,

Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I'm not convinced I'd want to go hunting with Pollan, but I'm sure I'd enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota. (Apr.)Pamela Kaufman is executive editor at Food & Wine magazine.

Right now it is about Centralia PA, the mine town with the fire underneath.

I just read a little blurb about that place in a book by Bill Bryson. He said a little boy was in his backyard and the groud literally opened up beneath him, forcing the boy to hang from a tree to survive (so he wouldn't fall through the ground) until he could be rescued. Okay maybe that wasn't the story exactly, but it was something like that. Scary place!

[blueeyedmanda]

Mango

You heard the story right. The boy did cling to a tree to survive. Since I live in coal country it interested me.

Your book sounds very interesting. I will have to look into it.

[Gentleheart]

I read the book and enjoyed it very much. It represents an amazing amount of investigative effort and really makes a person think. I learned much and recommend it highly.

Having said that, as a christian however, I was disappointed once again with yet another nutrition author ASSUMING evolution as an undisputable fact all the way through the entire book. If a person happened to believe in a literal creation by a creator as described in the Bible as well as other vast amounts of valuable diet-related Biblical information, several of the questions the author raised could have been answered. But because he refused to even remotely consider creationism as a viable possibility, he eliminated those potential answers to our 'dilemma'.

It would just be refreshing for a change to see a book as intellectually well done as this one, at least include other opinions concerning our nutritional dilemmas besides cold hard evolution.

Good book.