Being in the business of helping to change the human diet, I figured Michael Pollan’s book was a must read. I have to say I was not disappointed.

Pollan takes a journalistic adventure into reviewing the source of four different meals; a traditional trip to McDonalds, a meal made from Whole Foods, a meal built from a new/traditional pastoral farm and a hunter/gatherer experience.

The McDonalds meal tracks back to our industrial corn complex that asserts a vision of high efficiency and productivity at the cost of the long term impacts of soil fertility, real costs of nutrition, health and pollution. To read this section, will have almost any reader questioning whether they should continue to eat any industrial product again…which unfortunately is most of the food on the shelf. Anyone who has not explored the source of the food they eat, should at the very least read this section of the book.

Looking at the organic and alternative food systems, Pollan addresses some of the issues of sustainability and complexity to whether we really get ahead with the alternatives. The food tastes better and is probably better for you but what is the real cost. Industrial organics may only be one step better and have their own detractors such as energy cost and dependence on industrial culture.

A look at an alternative farm in the east, Michael spends time learning how one farmer blends all the aspects of building food on healthy grass and making it sustainable through innovation and careful care of the land. A great idea, but probably not very reproducible due to the high degree of complexity to run the operation. And it still begs the question of the ethics of eating animals.

The last meal, perhaps his most satisfying is one that he gathers and hunts for himself.

Michael Pollan raises very important questions about our ever changing and evolving food system in our culture and points to the anxiety raised trying to understand what to eat and how to eat. By his own admission, this is a book more about the pleasures of eating and not the solutions to feeding a hungry world. But it is a great start for the curious human who wants to venture into understanding more about where their food comes from.

 But Pollan's over all conclusion is: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Great advise for our planet today.

If you want to skip reading the book. Watch the movie "Food, Inc." It is pretty much the same message.

Available here: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

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