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    The Omnivore's Dilemma (Young Readers Edition): The Secrets Behind What You Eat
    Unavailable
    The Omnivore's Dilemma (Young Readers Edition): The Secrets Behind What You Eat
    Unavailable
    The Omnivore's Dilemma (Young Readers Edition): The Secrets Behind What You Eat
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Omnivore's Dilemma (Young Readers Edition): The Secrets Behind What You Eat

    Written by Michael Pollan

    Narrated by MacLeod Andrews

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The New York Times bestseller that's changing America's diet is now perfect for younger readers

    "What's for dinner?" seemed like a simple question—until journalist and supermarket detective Michael Pollan delved behind the scenes. From fast food and big organic to small farms and old-fashioned hunting and gathering, this young readers' adaptation of Pollan's famous food-chain exploration encourages kids to consider the personal and global health implications of their food choices.

    In a smart, compelling format with updated facts as well as a new afterword, The Omnivore's Dilemma serves up a bold message to the generation that needs it most: It's time to take charge of our national eating habits—and it starts with you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 18, 2015
    ISBN9781101925379
    Unavailable
    The Omnivore's Dilemma (Young Readers Edition): The Secrets Behind What You Eat
    Author

    Michael Pollan

    Michael Pollan is the author of The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, all New York Times bestsellers. A longtime contributor to The New York Times Magazine, he is also the Knight Professor of Journalism at Berkeley.

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    Reviews for The Omnivore's Dilemma (Young Readers Edition)

    4/5

    3,313 ratings199 reviews

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    • 4/5
      very good book about healty eating
    • 3/5
      Well done. An honest study of food and where it comes from. While he doesn't hide his views, I appreciate that Michael Pollan doesn't preach about the evils of food corporations, or condemn all eaters who differ with his ideals, as would be so easy to do in a book such as this. Rather he simply takes us on his journey about discovering where our food comes from (you all know this, right?) and how it arrives at our tables.
    • 4/5
      This was a fun, quick, interesting read. Basically, Michael Pollan takes you through his own investigation into four types of food chains: the big industrial food chain, through which most of us get our food; the big organic food chain, which in some ways has significantly less negative impact on the environment (no runoff from chemical pesticides, for example) but in other ways is also troubling (planting only one crop to maximize efficiency isn't as good for the soil; shipping nationwide consumes fossil fuels far out of proportion to the energy provided by the food itself); the local food chain (farmers' markets, etc.); and hunting/gathering. The last two were the most fun to read about; he spends some time on a small farm in Virginia that provided a lot of insight into the concept of sustainability, and the "hunting" part of exploring the hunter/gatherer chain was pretty amusing.

      Am I going to change my eating habits after reading this book? Probably not dramatically. I don't feel any compulsion toward becoming vegetarian, for example. But I did absorb some of his arguments about why it's really worthwhile to pay the higher prices for organic eggs and such -- because the cheap price of supermarket eggs doesn't include the cost of cleaning up the pollution it causes, and involves some seriously inhumane treatment of the chickens that provide the eggs. So will I rationalize buying organic a little more frequently? I hope so. I'll probably also pay more attention to the presence of high fructose corn syrup in my food, and try to avoid it when I can. Those may be small changes, but it means this book had an impact, and for that reason alone is worth passing along.
    • 5/5
      This book changed the way I think about food. Although I'm vegetarian, I imagine that anyone could enjoy this book because of Pollen's careful approach to the subject. He leaves you feeling informed, not guilty, which I think can inspire real change in the way people purchase, prepare and eat their food.
    • 5/5
      Little lengthy, but really good conclusions. Makes you think!
    • 4/5
      Pollan traces our food from source to plate by examining the food chain of four different meals through the food industrial, the organic food movement and those who forage food for themselves. It used to be our food dilemmas influenced our culture and our culture then influenced our food choices, but industrialization and "industry farms" have turned all that at its head. Pollen takes the reader from our modern food industry back to our historic beginnings as hunters and gatherers, from our fast-food dinner scarfed down in minutes while driving the car to a slow-meal enjoyed with friends and family. Pollen gets to experience our various "food chains" in a way few of us ever do. "What's for dinner?" is such a deceptively simply question.
    • 5/5
      This book is incredible. It is an entertaining and intelligently written analysis and medititation on food in America from industrial corn and feed lots to big organic and Whole Foods, and finally to our human roots as hunter-gatherers. I learned things about corn I never knew before, and things about mass-produced meat that turned my stomach. The Omnivore's Dilemma has me looking up mushroom hunting in my area.If you are interested in cooking, eating, chemistry, history, culture, sustainability or are curious about how your food is made, this will be an interesting read for you.
    • 3/5
      Interesting and detailed look into mass production of food.
      Romantic look at how to produce food in a better way.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant.
    • 5/5
      This book changed the way I shop, cook and eat. Others have since I read Pollan, but that first discussion of where, say, beef comes from hit me like a ton of bricks. I don't hunt my own boar, but I do forage for mushrooms from time to time, and pick berries every summer. Thank you, Michael Pollan!
    • 3/5
      Overall, this book is quite informative and at times engaging to read--however, the middle section on corn ran extremely long, and I found myself less than enthusiastic by the time I reached the "scavenging" section on mushrooms, as interesting as it ended up being. In the end I felt like I'd spent way more time slogging through this than it warranted, though I did come away with some new insights.
    • 3/5
      The Omnivore's Dilemma is book that will make you think about the food you eat, and along the way provide an informative journey into the modern food industry and its ills.The followup to this book ’The Eater's Manifesto’ will then help you to make intelligent food choices.
    • 4/5
      I first read Pollan's Second Nature in a college class on environmental history. It wasn't my favorite book from the class, as Pollan tends toward the conversational and not the scientific and/or historic. The tone is perfect for his NYTimes Magazine articles, and it turns out perfect for this book, too. His intensely personal, and often totally inexpert, musings make the book seem like a long dinner party conversation, which he encourages by centering the story around four meals. At face value the book isn't terribly subtle (industrial farming bad, Joel Salatin good!), but the personal scale allows for some leeway, in the stories of the Iowa corn farmer, and of the fast food meals enjoyed.The Omnivore's Dilemma didn't contain any ah ha moments for me - I already knew about industrial farming and meat operations, and I knew about foraging, growing up next to the ocean. It was just a fun read, and strengthened my household's preference for food of whose origins we have some inkling.An excellent fiction companion read for this book is Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer.
    • 4/5
      Extremely vivid detail and very well written.
    • 4/5
      Thought the first half of the book (evil corn! evil agribusiness! evil mcdonalds! semi-evil whole foods!) was a little wordy and overbearing, but maybe that's because I'd already read a fair amount of it in the NYT and who knows where else. I liked the second half of the book more; his rhapsodic description of the farm in Virginia and his experiences putting his own food on the table, including hunting. He is a very good writer.
    • 4/5
      Good book - very inspiring. I like the practical, realistic approach.
    • 3/5
      Non-fiction. Made me obsessed with corn/corn products for a while (nearly everything we eat contains corn in some form or other). Loads of interesting information about our food processing chains. A worthwhile read, even if it took me several months to actually get through it.
    • 5/5
      Pollan's writing is wonderful, he opens up this subject like sucessive leaves on a head of lettuce, peeling back leaf after leaf and exposing more and more of what's inside. I first read his treatise in the New York Times that appears in the beginning of the book back in 2001, and didn't realize that it was the same author.

      I'll be thinking about this book, its ideas and revelations, for a long, long time.

      Thanks to Glen for the recommendation.
    • 4/5
      No pun intended, but I need time to digest this book. Not time to digest what the author conveys, but what this means to me personally. On another hand, yeah, I wanted in on that dinner the author prepares at the end of the book ...
    • 5/5
      This is one of the most important books that I think I’ve ever read. It really opened my eyes to some things and made me think about changes that I want to make moving forward. EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ IT.
    • 5/5
      This will not turn you into a vegetarian, but it may turn you into a locavore. It inspires a thoughtful consciousness to what we eat that is enriching. Eventually, it returns us to the meaning of grace.
    • 5/5
      I learned so much from this book and I want everyone to read it.
    • 3/5
      This book was long and at times difficult to read. I found myself rereading passages because I didn't quite understand what was just said but in the end, the book was eye-opening more than anything. I had never put much thought into exactly where my food comes from. After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I think about it every time I drive past a corn field or cow pasture. I'm definitely going to be reading more Pollan in my future.
    • 5/5
      Everyone who eats in the United States needs to read this book.
    • 4/5
      This was a great book in that it really did its best to discuss food in a lot of different lights. I don't think it gave Whole Foods a fair shake -- and some of the conversations about this on LT were what got me interested in the book in the first place. The last meal and discussions of hunting were not as intersting to me as the discussion of industrial (McDonalds) and organic (at Polyface farm) farming/meals -- perhaps because it was less relevant to my own life.
    • 5/5
      Funny that I should read this book right after giving up vegetarianism.
    • 4/5
      If you care about "eating healthy" or even "eating well," you NEED to read this book, the content is invaluable. The book itself is well-written, but a little long-winded (could have been 350 as opposed to 410 pgs.) and at least the hardcover had a surprising amount of copy errors.
    • 4/5
      Pollan looks at the origins of our food and finds oil, corn and an industrial food system that is locking us into an unsustainable system. He also looks at alternative systems, such as Joel Salatin's pasturing base. The last section on foraging seemed a bit out of place. Overall, very informative.
    • 4/5
      Really enjoyed this book. Disclaimer: The subject really interests me so he's writing to the choir.

      There wasn't a whole lot in this book that was new to me (which is why I only gave it 4 stars and not 5 stars) but he does a fantastic job of putting everything together in a logical way AND keeps it riveting at the same time.

      Love Polyface farms! Wish it was closer.

      Sometimes even if you know something it still is good to read it again if for no other reason then to make it really stick in your mind - that's what this book did for me. Glad I read it & would recommend it.
    • 4/5
      A book that changed my opinion on what I should be eating but also made me depressed that corporations and the government control so much of what we eat, even if it is to the detriment of the animals, the environment, and our health. Pollan demonstrated how every bite we take is a political statement. In this election year where so many voters feel disillusioned and doubt the merits of either candidate, it is powerful to know that we can likely cause more political change simply by our eating choices. Although I appreciated this novel's critical scope, I found Pollan's writing to be self-indulgent at times. In particular, the final section on hunting and gathering was too focused on Pollan's personal struggles in shooting a boar or finding mushrooms or cooking a meal. I was tempted to skim at times because it was just so uninteresting and irrelevant to the purpose of the novel.