As a follow up to the Michael Pollan food as culture post (on his new book Cooked), a reader passed along a link to this video on Pollan’s 2006 classic The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.
The Omnivore’s Dilemma was deservedly called one of the most important food politics books of all time. In the video below, Pollan and other prominent chefs and foodies weigh in on the current state of the American food industry.
The Omnivores’s Dilemma came from Pollan’s realization that Americans didn’t know where their food came from. Pollan wanted to do “a kind of detective story following the food back to the source.” The book explores the state of food in America by examining three different food chains: corn, grass, and the forest.
This book, along with Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, changed my relationship with food.