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The cover of The Omnivore's Dilemma

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Michael Pollan, 2006

Michael Pollan traces four meals to their sources, from cheap industrial corn and big organic to a grass farm and a dinner he hunted and gathered himself.

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21 parts, about 36 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Follows four meals back to their sources to show how cheap corn, fossil fuel and farm policy shape what Americans eat
  • Leaves you able to read a supermarket label, an organic claim or a fast food meal for what it really costs
  • The author reports by doing: he buys a steer, works on a grass farm, hunts a pig and forages mushrooms

Who it is for

  • Shoppers confused by organic, grass fed and local labels
  • Cooks who want to know where their ingredients come from
  • Meat eaters wrestling with the ethics of eating animals

What the summary covers

  1. Introduction: Our National Eating Disorder2 min
  2. The Plant: Corn's Conquest2 min
  3. The Farm3 min
  4. The Elevator1 min
  5. The Feedlot: Making Meat2 min
  6. The Processing Plant: Making Complex Foods1 min
  7. The Consumer: A Republic of Fat2 min
  8. The Meal: Fast Food2 min
  9. All Flesh Is Grass2 min
  10. Big Organic3 min
  11. Grass: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pasture2 min
  12. The Animals: Practicing Complexity1 min
  13. Slaughter: In a Glass Abattoir1 min
  14. The Market: "Greetings from the Non Barcode People"2 min
  15. The Meal: Grass Fed1 min
  16. The Forager1 min
  17. The Omnivore's Dilemma2 min
  18. The Ethics of Eating Animals2 min
  19. Hunting: The Meat2 min
  20. Gathering: The Fungi1 min
  21. The Perfect Meal1 min

Recommended by

  • Alice WatersOwner of Chez Panisse restaurant
    Michael Pollan is a voice of reason, a journalist/philosopher who forages in the overgrowth of our schizophrenic food culture.
  • Ruth ReichlAuthor of Garlic and Sapphires
  • Eric SchlosserAuthor of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness
    What should you eat? Michael Pollan addresses that fundamental question with great wit and intelligence, looking at the social, ethical, and environmental impact of four different meals.

About the author

  • Michael PollanAmerican journalist writing on food and the mind, and professor at Harvard University
    • Born in 1955 and raised on Long Island, he studied at Bennington College, Oxford University and Columbia University, where he took a Master's in English.
    • He has been a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine since 1987.
    • In 2003 he became the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and director of its Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism.
    • In 2017 he was appointed Professor of the Practice of Nonfiction at Harvard and the university's first Lewis Chan Lecturer in the Arts.
    • The New York Times and the Washington Post each named The Omnivore's Dilemma one of the ten best books of 2006.
    • He appeared in the Oscar nominated 2008 documentary Food, Inc., which was partly based on The Omnivore's Dilemma.
    • For many years he served as executive editor of Harper's.
    • In 2010 Time magazine chose him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

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