The Omnivore's Dilemma

Because I know you are all so interested in my mediocre book reviews, I'ma do another one, but much shorter than my previous post, because if anyone even bothered to read the whole thing, I'm sure they hated the book by the end of it just because blog posts are not supposed to be long, duh.

But anyways, shortly after finishing In Defense of Food, I dove into The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is actually a prequel, but because I'm nonconformist I does everything howz I wants to. I will say a few things - it's an easier, more engaging read than IDOF. It also makes you feel a lot better about eating anything.

I also appreciated this book because it's written by someone who loves meat. He loves meat even after assisting in the slaughter of said meat. The trend of late has been, if you care about the environment, you'll stop eating meat, and cheese, and eggs, and honey, and ice cream, and everything else that tastes good. Dry oats and grass-flavored hummus for everybody! Instead, Pollan encourages his readers to educate themselves about the meat that they eat - where it comes from, how the animals were raised, how they were slaughtered and butchered, etc, and then to make personal decisions based on that information. In fact, in the third section of the book he actually goes out and hunts for, kills, and assists in the butchering of a wild boar he prepares for a meal. He makes the implication that it may actually be most socially and environmentally responsible to eat wild game that you have hunted, although he is quick to admit that this is not realistic or even possible for everyone in the US to start doing.

Also interesting is his exploration of what he calls "Big Organic"; companies that, while remaining technically 'organic', have fallen into all of the same bad habits as the big corporate farms and packing plants over which they're claiming superiority. So while we may get warm fuzzies from shopping at Whole Foods, in reality the products may bear almost the same carbon footprint while costing twice or three times as much. So, y'know, business corrupts, big business corrupts absolutely. And all that jazz.

I hope this is shorter. Still, probably only two people will read this. And those two people may have already read the book. Or at least seen Food Inc. But I don't write for attention and comments!

Ok, maybe I do. :) Love you guys!