Book review: The Omnivore’s Dilemma

There is and always will be a dilemma if you’re a human omnivore! We’re made to eat a variety of animals and plants and that choice will always be there, with more and more available to choose from! We’re spoilt for choice, taste, year round availability and hyper-palatability.

Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma confronts a question we think about daily, but rarely every truly explore: what should we eat? Most animals don’t have to think too hard about this; at the very extreme, you have koalas who are biologically restricted to eating eucalyptus leaves — most animals have relatively restricted diets and instinct and the senses guide them to their meals. But humans (as well as rats) are omnivores: we have the choice to eat virtually anything, and have dedicated enormous resources throughout history to deciding what to eat, employing cultural memory, heavy industry and world-transforming powers, all in the name of a good meal. Pollan decides to explore the processes and history behind three meals which he makes, using corn (industrial), grass (pastoral) and the forest (personal) as his starting points.

Exploring the question of where our food comes from, and how the growth, processing, marketing, and distribution of food affects our health, animal welfare, and the environment, The Omnivore's Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.

That’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma‘s great success: eating’s not a bad way to get to know!