Front cover image for The omnivore's dilemma a natural history of four meals

The omnivore's dilemma a natural history of four meals

What should we have for dinner? When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods might shorten your life. Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from a national eating disorder. As the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous landscape, what's at stake becomes not only our own and our children's health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth. Pollan follows each of the food chains--industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves--from the source to the final meal, always emphasizing our coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. The surprising answers Pollan offers have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us.--From publisher description
Print Book, English, 2006
Penguin Press, New York, 2006
1 v. (450 p.) ; 24 cm
9781594200823, 9780143038580, 9781606861677, 1594200823, 0143038583, 1606861670
492492664
Our national eating disorder
I. Industrial : corn. The plant : corn's conquest
The farm
The grain elevator
The feedlot : making meat
The processing plant : making complex foods
The consumer : a republic of fat
The meal : fast food
II. Pastora l: grass. All flesh is grass
Big organic
Grass : 13 ways of looking at a pasture
The animals : practicing complexity
Slaughter : in a glass abattoir
The market : "greetings from the non-barcode people"
The meal : grass-fed
III. Personal : the forest. The forager
The omnivore's dilemma
The ethics of eating animals
Hunting : the meat
Gathering : the fungi
The perfect meal