The Omnivore's Dilemma: a natural history of four meals

I recently finished reading Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, after hearing about it from so many people. The premise of the book seems simple. Pollan attempts to answer the question, What's for dinner? The evolution of our food system in the last fifty years or so has made answering this question much more difficult because there is so much to consider: the moral implications of what we eat, the vast year-round diversity at the supermarket, how cheap it costs (our wallet, our bodies, and our environment), how fast can it be prepared, organic vs. conventional, and the fat/sugar/carb content. Pollan considers these aspects to be part of our national eating disorder.

To attempt to figure out how this came to be, Pollan follows the food chain for four specific meals, which each represent a category of a meal. The four meals are:

1. A fast food meal. Pollan specifically looks at a McDonald's meal eaten with his family in their car.
2. An organic industrial meal. An assortment of organic fresh produce and processed food from Whole Foods.
3. A pastoral grass-fed meal. Pollan spends a week at a Virginia farm called Polyface operated by Joel Salatin.
4. A foraged and hunted meal. Including a wild boar and foraged mushrooms.

Pollan thoroughly dissects every aspect of each meal, offering valuable information to help answer the questions, What am I eating, and how did it get to my table?

I could continue to describe the book in more detail, but hopefully at this point you want to read it for yourself. I highly recommend it. It will change the way you look at food. Even for those people who feel annoyed at the organic and vegetarian movements, Pollan is very reasonable and doesn't offer a simple solution to food issues. More than anything, this book will make you better aware of the food system that so often keeps us uninformed.