This was my first non-fiction book of the new year and, as luck would have it, a special YA/teen edition of a previously published adult non-fic title, thus enabling me to tick off no. 15 of the Read Harder Challenge 2024.
On first impressions, The Omnivore’s Dilemma could come across as another book encouraging readers to become vegetarian. Meat eaters can relax however as this is not the intention of the book. Instead, it takes a close look at America’s food industry and the harm it’s doing to the planet, animals, and the health of its citizens. Michael Pollen addresses the question of, how can we be sure that the food we are consuming is actually good for us? He discusses how the heavily subsidised corn industry is engulfing the farmlands of the US and proportionately makes up a huge amount of Americans’ diets (without them consciously consuming one grain of corn as we would recognise it). He visits industrial farms and manufacturing plants and compares their methods to the few self-sufficient organic farms across the country. He also looks at the chemicals and hormones that are making their way through US citizens as a result of crop spraying and the antibiotics given to diseased cattle, hogs and chicken. The book concludes with Pollan challenging himself to make a meal with as small a food chain as possible, i.e. only eating things he has personally killed or grown.

Pollan’s recommendations for eating food that is good for us include

Never to eat anything that your great grandmother would not recognise as food

Do not eat anything with ingredients you can’t pronounce

I will certainly make more conscious decisions when it comes to purchasing food from now on, buying local produce where possible and eating less processed and fast foods. However, my biggest takeaway from this book was an overwhelming relief that I don’t live in the US.