The Omnivore's Dilemma A Natural History of Four Meals

by Pollan, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780143038580
• ISBN10: 0143038583
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-08-28
• Publisher: PENGUIN

Summary

A New York Timesbestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating, this revolutionary book by award winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly simple question: What should we have for dinner? Tracing from source to table each of the food chains that sustain us—whether industrial or organic, alternative or processed—he develops a portrait of the American way of eating. The result is a sweeping, surprising exploration of the hungers that have shaped our evolution, and of the profound implications our food choices have for the health of our species and the future of our planet.

Author Biography

Michael Pollan is the author of three previous books, including The Botany of Desire, a New York Times bestseller. A longtime contributor to The New York Times, he is also the Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

Table of Contents

The Omnivore's Dilemma Introduction: Our National Eating Disorder

I. Industrial: Corn

One. The Plant: Corn's Conquest
Two. The Farm
Three. The Elevator
Four. The Feedlot: Making Meat
Five. The Processing Plant: Making Complex Foods
Six. The Consumer: A Republic of Fat
Seven. The Meal: Fast Food

II. Pastoral: Grass

Eight. All Flesh Is Grass
Nine. Big Organic
Ten. Grass: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pasture
Eleven. The Animals: Practicing Complexity
Twelve. Slaughter: In a Glass Abattoir
Thirteen. The Market: "Greetings from the Non-Barcode People"
Fourteen. The Meal: Grass Fed

III. Personal: The Forest

Fifteen. The Forager
Sixteen. The Omnivore's Dilemma
Seventeen. The Ethics of Eating Animals
Eighteen. Hunting: The Meat
Nineteen. Gathering: The Fungi
Twenty. The Perfect Meal

Acknowledgments
Sources
Index