The Omnivore's Dilemma

This is a book written by Michael Pollan, an interesting book where the author try to follow the food chain of 4 meals of American society on how the food end up on their dinner plate.

What should we have for dinner? The book start by asking this fairly simply question. Maybe this question did not strike at you at all, but have you ever think of where your food come from? This book recorded the journey of the author exploring into 3 principle food chain that sustain us today: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. All the food chain start from plants, photosynthesizing calories in the sun until the end of the food chain on our dinner plate.

Industrial food chain. You will find some shocking answer how corn had monopolize the agriculture in America, and how this single plant end up in almost all the processed food selling in supermarket.

Organic food chain. In this section, you will discover that the "organic" term has various definition. And organic can be industrial too. So the author ended up tracing two food chain in this category where one is the industrial organic and another origin from a single polyculture of grasses growing farm.

The last section, hunter-gatherer food chain. In order to prepare a meal from ingredients exclusively from the nature, the author had to learn how to do some unfamiliar things including hunting in the wild, and foraging for wild mushroom.

This is a very resourceful book. You will find answers to questions that you take it for granted or you will never ask. And also some interesting knowledge about the biological fact that affect the choice of food and the cycle of food chain. Although I'm not going to change my eating habit dramatically, I start taking notice on what I put inside my mouth.

I will recommend this book. For your quest about the perfect meal.