Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. Will it be fast food tonight,or something organic? Or perhaps something we grew ourselves? The question of what to have for dinner has confronted us since man discovered fire. But as Michael Pollan explains in this revolutionary book, how we answer it now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may determine our survival as a species.Packed with profound surprises, The Omnivore's Dilemma is changing the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating.

The bestselling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century

"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't-which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance. The cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time we're realizing that our food choices also have profound implications for the health of our environment. The Omnivore's Dilemma is bestselling author Michael Pollan's brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.

Pollan has divided The Omnivore's Dilemma into three parts, one for each of the food chains that sustain us: industrialized food, alternative or "organic" food, and food people obtain by dint of their own hunting, gathering, or gardening. Pollan follows each food chain literally from the ground up to the table, emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the species we depend on. He concludes each section by sitting down to a meal--at McDonald's, at home with his family sharing a dinner from Whole Foods, and in a revolutionary "beyond organic" farm in Virginia. For each meal he traces the provenance of everything consumed, revealing the hidden components we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods reflects our environmental and biological inheritance.

We are indeed what we eat-and what we eat remakes the world. A society of voracious and increasingly confused omnivores, we are just beginning to recognize the profound consequences of the simplest everyday food choices, both for ourselves and for the natural world. The Omnivore's Dilemma is a long-overdue book and one that will become known for bringing a completely fresh perspective to a question as ordinary and yet momentous as What shall we have for dinner?

INTRODUCTION Our National Eating Disorder

I INDUSTRIAL CORN

ONE The Plant: Corn's Conquest

Two The Farm

THREE The Elevator

FOUR The Feedlot: Making Meat

FIVE The Processing Plant: Making Complex Foods

SIX The Consumer: A Republic of Fat

SEVEN The Meal: Fast Food

  II PASTORAL GRASS

EIGHT All Flesh Is Grass

NINE Big Organic

TEN Grass: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pasture

ELEVEN The Animals: Practicing Complexity

TWELVE Slaughter: In a Glass Abattoir

THIRTEEN The Market: "Greetings from the Non-Barcode People"

FOURTEEN The Meal: Grass Fed

III THE FOREST TEEN The Forager

SIXTEEN The Omnivore's Dilemma

SEVENTeeN The Ethics of Eating Animals

EIGHTEEN Hunting: The Meat

NINETEEN Gathering:The Fungi

TWENTY The Perfect Meal

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

SOURCES

INDEX