Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 26-30 of 569
 First-person folksy... August 23, 2009
B. McKann (Austin, Texas)
I really think first-person folksy should be confined to Ya-Ya Sisterhood-type books and not something as serious as human nutrition. Pollan flatters himself by thinking that everyone wants to see this topic through his sensitive yuppie eyes. I would have loved, for instance, to see a graphic illustrating his attempt to explain the layout of Joel Salatin's pastures. Is that too much to ask? No effort was made in this book to even use graphic illustration (and there were dozens of opportunities in the middle of rambling, wordy sections screaming for a picture or diagram), let alone to communicate in a scientific (horrors) manner so as to be understood as objective, interesting, or credible. I find it obvious that Mr. Pollan, being a journalism teacher and not a food scientist, found it mandatory, in writing a book about food science, to use the storyteller approach since he is not qualified to speak on this topic otherwise.
Then, there was the necessity for going back and reareading the many sentences that either were un-punctuated or that contained typos, double words, grammatical errors, or out-and-out illiterate usage. So, I'm mystified by the many laudatory comments on the author's writing. Maybe his classes at Berkeley are self-paced sessions in which no one is graded or otherwise rewarded for using the language well...
 disturbing & important book that everyone should read August 23, 2009
Sheryl Canter (New York, NY)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I wish I could give this book 10 stars. Everyone should read this book.
Do you ever wonder where your food comes from - I mean, before the grocery store or restaurant? No? You should. We all should. Our food dollars support agricultural practices that are largely invisible to us, and much of the industrial food machine is horrifying - morally, ecologically, and nutritionally.
This book is divided into three sections, one for each principle food chain:
1. Industrial (foods made largely from processed corn products)
2. Pastoral (foods that come from the energy of grass - organic)
3. Forest (foods hunted and gathered in the forest)
I got so upset reading about how beeves, pigs, chickens, and farmed salmon were treated in the standard Concentrated Animal Feeing Operation (CAFO) that I had to put down the book for a while. I also stopped eating animals that were tortured from birth to death, as most animals we eat in this country are.
Eventually my horror subsided enough that I was able to finish the book. There is so much good information: the downside of Big Organic, the beauty of a truly sustainable farm like Polyface (which I had the opportunity to visit last year), and Pollan's firsthand insights into the hunting and gathering experience.
This book is packed with fascinating facts and thought-provoking insights. That's enough reason to buy it. But it's also beautifully written - vivid, witty, and poetic. Pollan gained his knowledge by doing - working on farms, slaughtering chickens, learning to fire a gun and hunt. You laugh along with him as he describes his experiences (it's very funny in places), and his skill with language is such that you gain from his insights as if you were there.
This is an important book. Everybody should know where their food comes from. As Pollan says in the introduction, "...if we could see what lies on the far side of the increasingly high walls of our industrial agriculture, we would surely change the way we eat."
Sheryl Canter
Author of "Normal Eating for Normal Weight"
A great read and an important book August 16, 2009
Rucksackfranzose
Even better than "Botany of desire"!
An important book to read and a real eye-opener about what we eat. You will be stunned to learn WHAT you actually consume, which way it was produced and how it came to be that way.
But be advised: this knowledge is not going to make your life easier when you are standing in the supermarket. However, if you use it wisely, it might help you to improve the healthiness as well as the taste of what you put on your table every single day!
Required reading! August 12, 2009
samantha fields (los angeles, CA United States)
I had already read Fast Food Nation, and have been off fast food and soda for over 9 years, so at first, I thought this book wouldn't have anything new for me. I was WRONG! Pollan puts his money where his mouth is (literally!) and tracks his food down to its origins. I already knew about HFCS invading our food, but this book details how it came to pass. The writing is engaging, informative, witty, and extraordinarily well researched. It's no wonder Pollan has become as popular as he is, his fame is well deserved and rightly earned. So, if you are already on the local/organic/anti-processed bandwagon, this book is still a great read that offers lots of nuanced research into the food chain. If you are still tossing down McDonalds, then this is REQUIRED reading! If you have come so far as to read these reviews, then you should just go all the way: buy this book, it will change your life for the better.
Important, insightful, and entertaining August 6, 2009
Diana H. Faust (Huntsville area AL USA)
This book was recommended to me, - I was interested in some other things at the time - I kept hearing references to it on NPR, it was a top-10 choice by the NY Times Book Review, so I eventually gave in and read it. Now I am on the bandwagon and I recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma to everyone! It is insightful, well-researched, interesting and entertaining - and packed full of information that I didn't know about the foods in my world. I never knew so much about corn! And the feedlot business! Honestly, I think most people are like me and don't like to think too much about where our food comes from before it arrives in the pretty package in the store.
I liked that Pollan isn't a preachy, hard-hitting ideologue, but presents the facts and our choices as dilemmas. The food industry makes our choices easy, both in fast food and in stores: "cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing." There are better but harder choices we can make. And just looking for the word "organic" doesn't do it - Pollan makes a distinction that your average mom who buys at Whole Foods or The Fresh Market doesn't make: that industrial organic food is more industrial than organic, more philosophy than science.
This is an important book that will forever be with me now, and I am better for having read it. Two of my favorite quotes:
"While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest. "
"So that's us: processed corn, walking."
Showing reviews 26-30 of 569
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