Omnivore's Dilemma Book Review

1038 Words5 Pages
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The plant, farm, and elevator Published in 2006, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan is a non-fiction book that attempts to answer the author’s own question, what should we have for dinner? Pollan starts by analyzing how modern food preservation and transportation technologies have created a dilemma for omnivores by providing too many food options and distorted the relationship between food, society and culture. Pollan follows the omnivore’s three main food chains providing a history and critique of the way Americans eat. Pollan walks the reader through the industrial food chain, the pastoral food chain, and the personal food chain to illustrate how our food is taken from its origins to our plates. I will review the first three chapters of part one, Industrial: corn, of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In the review I will discuss three key points from the chapters, three common expectations of a non-fiction book and how the book succeeded or failed in meeting those expectations. A non-fiction book should be thought-provoking, without jargon, and have a connection to common knowledge and/or ideologies. Part one of The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a thought-provoking section that provides information and connections to common knowledge regarding the industrial food chain. Part one, Industrial: corn, is about the evolution of the industrial food chain and how corn is the driving force of it all. There are three key aspects to take away from this section. The first aspect is that all food in the supermarket, sometimes including other produce, can be traced back to a particular plant, corn. Corn is feed to steers, pigs, chickens and other animals that provide the meat in our diet in addition to cattle that produces most of the dairy we consume from the supermarket. Corn is in everything from the meats at the butcher
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