The Omnivore's Dilemma

By: Michael Pollan

Food is a big part of our lives, not only is it a necessity but its a luxury as well. For some people its a career. Regardless of what food means to us the thing is not that many people know how the food got to their plate. In this book by Michael Pollan he explains in explicit detail from first hand experience, the processes our food goes through before we eventually eat it.

This book is divided into three sections which are corn, grass and forest and in each of these sections Pollan describes how each of these things play a part in the food web. In the first part Micheal explains how corn is considered the industrial plant. Corn which starts off from growing on a farm ends up in about 90 percent of all the things we eat. In everything Pollan ate he traced its origin, and he came to find that almost everything he ate contained corn. For example, chicken nuggets which Pollan says he eats often, contained 38 ingredients and of those 38, 13 of them were derived from corn. Soda, which contains high fructose corn syrup, french fries, which are fried in corn oil, and chips such as Doritos all contain ingredients that come from corn.

In the second section of the book called grass Pollan explains another way of farming called grass farming. Grass farming was imported from New Zealand by Allan Nation. Grass farming grows animals for meat, eggs, wool and milk. Pollan experienced this first hand by visiting Joel Salatin's farm and visually seeing how the animals get their energy from the grass and then he later sees how that energy is than transferred to us. So basically we make the animals capture the energy for us and then we as omnivores eat the animal. While on the farm Pollan explains how certain foods like eggs, and the chicken we eat get to our plate. The hens eat the cattle's manure which fattens them up because of the high protein and that is what helps make the eggs we eat taste so good. In this section Pollan describes how animals use other animals to their benefit. he also breaks down the food chain; energy from the sun gets transfered to the grass which the cattle eat, the chickens then eats the cattle's manure and then we eat the chicken.

In the third section Pollan gathers his own food through hunting and gathering in an effort to prepare a meal made from the food he planted and got himself. At the end of the book he prepared mushrooms, an a pig that he hunted himself. He also made salad using greens that came from his own garden, he made bread using wild yeast and desert with cherries he got from his neighborhood. "We eat by the grace of nature , not industry, and what we're eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world."(pg 411)

This book relates to science concepts because it has to do with the food-chain and energy transfer. The grass that the cows eat gets its energy through photosynthesis and that relates to biology. Photosynthesis includes all the chemical reactions that allow the plant to make food for itself and to pass it on. Grass farming revolves entirely on photosynthesis, that is where the energy transfer starts. with all these different organisms transfering energy biomagnification can easily happen as well. That's another reason it is important we know where our food comes from. " The simplest way to capture the sun's energy in a form food animals can use is by growing grass: these blades are our photovoltaic panels, Joel says. And the most efficient -if not the simplest-way to grow vast quantities of solar panels is by management-intensive grazing,"(pg 189) Pollan.

This book is definitely affecting society and is also helping people realize the real truth behind their food. Many of us don't think twice about the things we eat but after reading about Pollan's experiences and adventures we can see that everything we eat can be traced back to some farm or another plant and that's usually where it all started. The way some people eat will no longer be the same after reading this. the question that Pollan tries to find the answer to which is, "what should we eat for dinner" finally has a response.

Overall this book was very informative and interesting. Its amazing to see where all our favorite foods come from, and how they are made. its a long and complicated process that every now and then we should take time to look at, and this book was the way to do it.