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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
This is a very comprehensive, thought-provoking book that educates the reader about the complexities of our food supply. I would recommend this as a must-read for those interested in thoughtful consumption. I would have rated it a 5 had the author not referred to proponents of humane animal treatment as "animal people". Although the rest of his writing was very balanced, I found that term dismissive and inarticulate.
"The Omnivore's DIlemma" is an eye opening, fascinating and horrifying tour of the America food chain. Despite the wealth of statistics and science, this book is very readable, almost to the point of requiring midnight oil.
One of Pollan's key points is that we can only eat as we do because we are willfully ignorant about the contents and preparation of our food, and its life before it reaches our plate. Exactly for the reason, I skipped the chapters discussing the slaughter of meat and poultry. Even so, reading this book has had a profound impact on my view toward what I eat. I am angry and disgusted by what our collective desire for cheap food, ease of preparation, and the growth of corporate profits is doing to our national well being - and our planet. And I am sad to know that buying organic is not the easy solution I had previously thought. Time to find another CSA and eat local, small farm, seasonal. And no more pork, certainly any that is produced industrially.
One of Pollan's key points is that we can only eat as we do because we are willfully ignorant about the contents and preparation of our food, and its life before it reaches our plate. Exactly for the reason, I skipped the chapters discussing the slaughter of meat and poultry. Even so, reading this book has had a profound impact on my view toward what I eat. I am angry and disgusted by what our collective desire for cheap food, ease of preparation, and the growth of corporate profits is doing to our national well being - and our planet. And I am sad to know that buying organic is not the easy solution I had previously thought. Time to find another CSA and eat local, small farm, seasonal. And no more pork, certainly any that is produced industrially.
i really enjoyed this - though it has brought me no closer to knowing what i think i should be eating. it did reinforce the idea that i really should be avoiding all the processed foods.
A very excellent book that opened my eyes to where my food comes from. Barbara Kingsolver has made me more conscious of eating what's in season, but Michael Pollan has made me even more conscious of what I buy at the grocery store. I buy all my meat from the co-op thanks to the Compassionate Carnivore. This just further emphasizes the need to buy local. I wish all farms would be like Joel Salatin's.
"On the industrial farm, it takes about ten calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy. That means the industrial farm is using up more energy than it is producing. This is the opposite of what happened before chemical fertilizers...The factory farm produces more food much faster than the old solar-based farm. But the system only works as long as the fossil fuel energy is cheap."
--
"The problem is that the government policies don't really give us cheap food. It only gives us the kinds of cheap food made from corn and soy. Your soft drink or hamburger may be cheaper, but that's because taxpayers have already paid for part of it. And that corn is only cheap if you don't count all the hidden costs..."
--
"Breakfast cereal is a great example of why companies love to make processed foods. A box of cereal contains four cents worth of corn (or some other grain). Yet that box of cereal will sell for close to four dollars. Cereals generate higher profits for General Mills than any other food. In the same way, McDonald's makes much more by selling you a chicken nugget than a piece of recognizable chicken. The farmer, on the other hand, makes more money from whole foods than processed foods...But for every dollar a consumer spends on HFCS, say in a soft drink, farmers get only four cents."
--
"Unlike many other products... there's a natural limit to how much food we each can consume without exploding...This leaves food companies like General Mills with two choices. They can figure out how to get people to spend more money for the same amount of food. Or they can get us to eat more food than we need...Processing food allow companies to charge more for it."
--
"The government helped pay for your soft drink or cookies, but it won't help pay for green vegetables."
--
"Yet most of the fuel burned by the food industry isn't used to grow food. Almost 80 percent of the fuel burned is used to process food and move it around. This is just as true for an organic bag of lettuce as a non-organic bag."
--
"Imagine if we could eat every meal knowing these few simple things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what it really cost...Every meal would be like saying grace."
--
"The problem is that the government policies don't really give us cheap food. It only gives us the kinds of cheap food made from corn and soy. Your soft drink or hamburger may be cheaper, but that's because taxpayers have already paid for part of it. And that corn is only cheap if you don't count all the hidden costs..."
--
"Breakfast cereal is a great example of why companies love to make processed foods. A box of cereal contains four cents worth of corn (or some other grain). Yet that box of cereal will sell for close to four dollars. Cereals generate higher profits for General Mills than any other food. In the same way, McDonald's makes much more by selling you a chicken nugget than a piece of recognizable chicken. The farmer, on the other hand, makes more money from whole foods than processed foods...But for every dollar a consumer spends on HFCS, say in a soft drink, farmers get only four cents."
--
"Unlike many other products... there's a natural limit to how much food we each can consume without exploding...This leaves food companies like General Mills with two choices. They can figure out how to get people to spend more money for the same amount of food. Or they can get us to eat more food than we need...Processing food allow companies to charge more for it."
--
"The government helped pay for your soft drink or cookies, but it won't help pay for green vegetables."
--
"Yet most of the fuel burned by the food industry isn't used to grow food. Almost 80 percent of the fuel burned is used to process food and move it around. This is just as true for an organic bag of lettuce as a non-organic bag."
--
"Imagine if we could eat every meal knowing these few simple things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what it really cost...Every meal would be like saying grace."
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
I loved this book - it's got me rethinking how and what I choose to it. He focuses it around four meals - tracing all four back to where they originated - a McDonald's meal, an industrial organic meal (think Whole Foods), local organic, and then one he foraged/hunted himself. Fascinating history and description of how corn has become such an enormous part of our diet. Being a vegetarian it was interesting reading how he struggled with the meat eating part, and it certainly reinforced my decision to stick with it.