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Reviews tagging 'Animal death'
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
13 reviews
sbgage's review against another edition
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty and Animal death
alixgb's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
This book was fascinating - very dense, but moved more quickly in the second half. It's definitely a book that is helping motivate me to change the way I eat and feed my family.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death and Animal cruelty
klapaucius's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Violence
atuin's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
3.5
A very interesting discussion on the ethics and safety issues of the American food system, with some solutions on how to fix them. I do find it a missed opportunity to not discuss how wealth inequality impacts peoples food options, and the goal of only eating local is sometimes worse for the environment than shipping it from elsewhere depending on the type of farm. Overall most of the info is accurate and it’s written in an engaging way!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death and Animal cruelty
deerlordxx's review
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death
kilonshele's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death
sonjaelisee's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death
shelby1994's review
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
4.0
“You have to give up the macho idea that you can grow anything you want anywhere you want to.”
Whole Foods v. Farmers’ Markets? Non-pasturized v. Nutrient-fortified? Grass-Fed v. Corn-Fed? Locally Sourced v. Organic?
Americans like nothing more than to have options, but much like the decision fatigue many of us feel with dating apps, choosing what to eat for dinner can feel like navigating a mine-field, where any mis-step can derail our health. Pollan tries to get us to take a deep breath and investigate why walking into a grocery store stresses us out, and how we can regain control over out kitchens and our bodies.
Unfortunately, as he tracks corn, grass, meat, and fungi back to their roots in the American agricultural system, the answer is that we SHOULD be stressed about what agri-business is trying to sell us. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing, and by us being so disconnected from where our food actually comes from, we simply are not capable of making informed choices.
I was recently in Italy, in a region that was the start of the “slow food” movement in the 1980s - a call to eat local, eat in-season, and to keep your money and time invested in your community. I ate decadently while there, but never once did I feel the churning heartburn or food-hangover that similar meals in the US gave me. But while it’s great to imagine that we can all radically shift our buying habits to support local farms, the truth is that much more complicated than that. Many people can’t afford to, and even if they could, our culture, and government subsidies, have hammered home the idea that we NEED to have meat and dairy every day, and that depriving our children of any of those in the slightest will harm them. Pollan tries to acknowledge the economic and cultural legacy of this rhetoric, but I would still say the advice in this book is best taken with a grain of white, upper-middle class salt.
Read If:
You went through a Libertarian phase in college
You want to eat more ethically, but don’t want to give up meat
Your Instagram algorithm sends you a lot of “foraging” videos
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death
sasquatch_3's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death and Blood
markanthemum's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
The first part of this book enraptured me, but as there was a section where ableism became a center point in the presented argument, my enjoyment and reading pace of this book stalled
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism
Minor: Animal death