The Omnivore's Dilemma - book review

Somehow, the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan reminds me of some essays I have written that cover lots of ground but have little or no unifying thread. The subtitle of this book is "A Natural History of Four Meals" but the book is divided into three sections. I can't even remember how he came up with 4 meals.

The three sections are Corn, Grass, and the Forest. In the first Pollan talks about the great prevalence of corn in the American's diet and the industrialization of this crop which has changed the face of the land from the Mississippi to the Rockies. The meal most representative of this section was the fast food meal. Pollan shows that virtually every item in a fast food menu will have some element of corn. He also goes to great length to explain how the industrialization has removed all the taste and goodness of this food staple.

The second section, Grass, seemed to be devoted to showing how much better it was to eat organically grown, free-range items. Or not. The author shows how the label "organically grown" has been compromised by the USDA and stripped of any meaningful value for labeling food. Pollan describes a farm that is almost completely self-contained so that no unnatural chemicals are needed for ferilization or elimination of bacterial and pests. As such, this farm is a leader in "organically growth" vegetables and meat but can't use that phrase because of possible USDA sanctions. The farm even has difficulty getting their food to market.

The last section bounced back and forth between the value of "hunter gathering" and dangers of purely natural foods. Woven into this essay is one about the conflict of hunting, killing, and then eating another animal, one likely to have as much concept of its existence as a young baby or a senile man. Do we have the right to shoot deer so that we can have meat during the winter?

The book makes some great points. However, the author writes like he's being paid per word. You could probably make a book of the first two sentences in each paragraph without losing a great deal of meaning of the book. Otherwise I enjoyed the book immensely.