My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a fascinating look at how we eat in the US, and what is wrong- and right- about it. The book basically follows Pollan’s journey through four meals that he prepares from start to finish. And by that I mean he does everything he can to follow the food he uses and eats from farm or forest or field to table. He goes to a beef ranch, farms, slaughterhouses (as much as he is allowed to see there), forages for mushrooms, hunts wild hogs, and more to see exactly how the food we find at our groceries and food vendors gets there. What he discovers is very enlightening.
Because this book is not just a diary of four meals. It also shines a spotlight on how big agricultural businesses, with their emphasis on high turnaround and profit, have hurt not only the nation’s farms and farmers, but our health and nutrition also. The biggest culprit? Corn. Between government subsidies and the hybridization of GMO seed, corn is the only crop that farmers, especially in the Midwest where most of our food crops used to be grown, can grow and stay in business. And grow it, they do. Farms that used to produce most of the food we buy and consume are now growing corn. More corn than can be used as animal feed- so cows, who wouldn’t eat corn if left to their choice, are forced to eat it in feed lots. Farm-raised fish are fed corn products. High-fructose corn syrup has become the sweetener of choice in many foods we buy. And there is still corn left over. It becomes a vicious circle.
There’s a lot more in this book that should concern consumers in the US. Small farms are being driven out of business and large farms are forced to grow only certain crops, using certain seeds, and with industrialized fertilizer and growing practices.
It’s not all bad, though. Foraging for mushrooms is a natural way to bring food to the table and still keep the environment stable. Hunting wild hogs for meat means the hogs forage and eat the food they are supposed to eat, and gives us the meat to put on the table. By tracing his meals from start to finish, Pollan shows the good, the bad, and the ugly in our consumer and profit driven food industries. It’s an eye-opening book.
View all my reviews
My latest book is a collection of very short stories, half science fiction and half fantasy, called “Crossed Wires and Other Very Short Stories”. I have also written a few other short pieces, another collection, two novels, and an urban fantasy series. You can find most of them at Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and wherever e-books are sold. A few are also available from Amazon in paperback. My novel, “Circle Unbroken” is also on Kindle Unlimited, if that’s your reading preference. You can find out about all of them here.
There are also some stories you can read here on my site, mostly the yearly Halloween short I write, but there are a few others. You can read them from here
And So On... 