Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

This review has been a long time in the coming, as, in a most unaccustomed fashion, it took me a while to read this book. I found this was not the book to read right before bed, at 10:00 at night, as I could only manage a page or two before my lights went out. I don't know why it took me so long, because this was an amazing book. Pollan takes the reader on a food adventure that is thought provoking, disturbing while quietly challenging they way we all look at the meal in front of us - all without being obnoxious or righteous.

The book begins simply enough in an Iowa cornfield as Pollan breaks down the history of corn and the future of this simple grain. He deftly weaves this into how we eat this product and what it’s doing to us and agriculture as a whole. From Iowa we travel with him as he visits his steer (#534) in the Colorado grassfields and again in the feedlot in Kansas.

The middle portion of the books moves into sustainable agriculture at its finest as he spends a week at Polyface farm. Polyface sounds like an amazing place. Pollen starts the week on his stomach in a field examining the soil at the behest of Joe Saladin, and over the course of the week helps to move the cows from pasture to pasture, he assists in moving the chicken pens and describes they symbiotic relationship between the chickens and the cows. He talks about the rabbit and chicken house and the symbiotic relationship that exists there, he describes the cow barn in the spring and how the pigs turn 3 feet of cow muck, hay and fermented corn into black compost. And to Pollans credit, he participates in the chicken slaughter. During it all, Pollan contrasts and compares “conventional farming” with this picture of “sustainable farming” with the help of Joe.

In the third segement, Pollan has moved to California and examines what it means morally and ethically to be vegetarian while giving up meat for a month. He has also decided to make a meal completely from those items he has grown, foraged and hunted himself. We follow the author as he learns how to shoot a rifle and goes on his first hunt. I found this section not as strong as the other two, but still interesting.

This book is presented in such a down to earth matter that the reader can’t help but start to question how their food arrived on the table, and, more importantly, where it arrived from. Pollan doesn’t pontificate. He doesn’t raise his fist and pump it toward the sky and tell us we are all Bad People for Eating Meat. He doesn’t bombard us with anthropormophisism or silly sentiment. He took himself on a quest, told us what he found, and I appreciated that more than anything.

Has this changed how I look at my food? You bet it has. Even more surprising, it changed the Husband's outlook as well.