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

by Michael Pollan Narrated by MacLeod Andrews

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

SEPTEMBER 2015 - AudioFile

MacLeod Andrews offers such an enthusiastically engaging narration that it almost doesn’t matter that the subject of this audiobook is fascinating and compelling in its own right. It explores where exactly our food comes from and what its ecological, economic, political, and social implications are. In this Young Readers Edition, the editors have toned down some of the more technical discussions and rephrased some sections (“voting with your fork,” for example). But overall, the content and impact are left in force. Andrews varies his tone and pacing nicely. When the author seeks to be ironic, he adds the appropriate inflection. When the author is surprised, so are the narrator—and the listener. Adults should enjoy this production as well as younger listeners. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

As an adult title, Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma became a nationwide bestseller and notched a place on the New York Times list of the five best nonfiction books of 2006. This young readers' edition widens the potential audience of this classic about the personal and global implications of our food choices. In addition to being reshaped for readers ages 9-12, The Omnivore's Dilemma for Kids contains new and updated material.

Publishers Weekly

This youth-friendly version of Pollan's bestseller, with updated facts, assorted visuals and a new introduction and afterword, is as enlightening as it is accessible. The adaptation uses the same “four meal” format of the original book, as Pollan describes the impact of humans' heavy corn consumption, explores the organic food industry, takes part in the system of farming practiced at Polyface Farm and hunts mushrooms and wild pigs. Much of the appeal lies in Pollan's hands-on methods and sensitive articulations as he assists readers in navigating the complexities of the production and consumption of food. Conscientious readers will grasp the important lessons. Ages 10–up. (Oct.)

Horn Book

[T]his book uses a recipe of science, history, and humor to create an edifying yet entertaining story.

School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up—Based on Pollan's best-selling adult book of the same title, this (slightly) shortened version will appeal to thoughtful, socially responsible teens. The book is divided into four sections: "The Industrial Meal" (exemplified by the fact that only two companies, Cargill and ADM, buy nearly a third of all the corn grown in the U.S.); "The Industrial Organic Meal" (covering most of what's found in stores like Whole Foods); "Local Sustainable" (small farms typically based on grass, not corn); and what he calls the "Do-It-Yourself Meal" (where he hunts a wild pig and gathers wild mushrooms). Pollan has done an amazing amount of research, both of the typical kind (there are 16 pages of footnotes) and the more personal kind. His own research includes slaughtering a chicken himself and eating a fast-food meal in a moving car with his family. He explains complicated issues clearly, offers compelling evidence of the environmental damage done by what he calls the industrial meal, and urges readers not to look away from animal-welfare issues: "We can only decide if we know the truth." An afterword, "Vote with Your Fork," recommends simple actions that will improve the health of our bodies, our society, and our planet.—Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL

Kirkus Reviews

Not every volume will change a reader's life, but this one just might. The dilemma is this: Human beings are omnivores; we can eat just about anything, but how do we know what's best to eat? Adopting the role of food detective, the author "peers behind the curtain" of the modern food industry and finds that the industrial approach to the food chain imperils our health and planet. The four sections of the volume describe differing types of meals: industrial; industrial organic; local sustainable; and hunted, gathered and found. Clear organization and lively writing rooted in fascinating examples make this accessible and interesting. The source notes and bibliography are thorough. Though some readers may find more about certain topics than they care to know-corn, for example-motivated kids will learn much about where their food comes from and what to do about it, and they may want to seek out the follow-up volume for adults, In Defense of Food (2008). (index, not seen) (Nonfiction. 11 & up)

Booklist

Just as powerful as the adult edition but perfectly tuned to a young audience, this title is essential food for thought.

From the Publisher

Gold Medal in Nonfiction for the California Book Award • Winner of the 2007 Bay Area Book Award for Nonfiction • Winner of the 2007 James Beard Book Award/Writing on Food Category • Finalist for the 2007 Orion Book Award • Finalist for the 2007 NBCC Award

"Thoughtful, engrossing . . . You're not likely to get a better explanation of exactly where your food comes from." —The New York Times Book Review

"An eater's manifesto . . . [Pollan's] cause is just, his thinking is clear, and his writing is compelling. Be careful of your dinner!" —The Washington Post

"Outstanding . . . a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our eating habits." —The New Yorker

"If you ever thought 'what's for dinner?' was a simple question, you'll change your mind after reading Pollan's searing indictment of today's food industry-and his glimpse of some inspiring alternatives . . . I just loved this book so much I didn't want it to end." —The Seattle Times

“Michael Pollan has perfected a tone—one of gleeful irony and barely suppressed outrage—and a way of inserting himself into a narrative so that a subject comes alive through what he’s feeling and thinking. He is a master at drawing back to reveal the greater issues.” —Los Angeles Times

“Michael Pollan convincingly demonstrates that the oddest meal can be found right around the corner at your local McDonald’s . . . He brilliantly anatomizes the corn-based diet that has emerged in the postwar era.” —The New York Times

“[Pollan] wants us at least to know what it is we are eating, where it came from and how it got to our table. He also wants us to be aware of the choices we make and to take responsibility for them. It’s an admirable goal, well met in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” —The Wall Street Journal

“A gripping delight . . . This is a brilliant, revolutionary book with huge implications for our future and a must-read for everyone. And I do mean everyone.” —The Austin Chronicle

“As lyrical as What to Eat is hard-hitting, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals…may be the best single book I read this year. This magisterial work, whose subject is nothing less than our own omnivorous (i.e., eating everything) humanity, is organized around two plants and one ecosystem. Pollan has a love-hate relationship with ‘Corn,’ the wildly successful plant that has found its way into meat (as feed), corn syrup and virtually every other type of processed food. American agribusiness’ monoculture of corn has shoved aside the old pastoral ideal of ‘Grass,’ and the self-sustaining, diversified farm based on the grass-eating livestock. In ‘The Forest,’ Pollan ponders the earliest forms of obtaining food: hunting and gathering. If you eat, you should read this book.” —Newsday

“Smart, insightful, funny and often profound.” —USA Today

“The Omnivore’s Dilemma is an ambitious and thoroughly enjoyable, if sometimes unsettling, attempt to peer over these walls, to bring us closer to a true understanding of what we eat—and, by extension, what we should eat . . . It is interested not only in how the consumed affects the consumer, but in how we consumers affect what we consume as well . . . Entertaining and memorable. Readers of this intelligent and admirable book will almost certainly find their capacity to delight in food augmented rather than diminished.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“On the long trip from the soil to our mouths, a trip of 1,500 miles on average, the food we eat often passes through places most of us will never see. Michael Pollan has spent much of the last five years visiting these places on our behalf.” —Salon.com

“The author of Second Nature and The Botany of Desire, Pollan is willing to go to some lengths to reconnect with what he eats, even if that means putting in a hard week on an organic farm and slitting the throats of chickens. He’s not Paris Hilton on The Simple Life.” —Time

“A pleasure to read.” —The Baltimore Sun

“A fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You’ll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again . . . Pollan isn’t preachy; he’s too thoughtful a writer and too dogged a researcher to let ideology take over. He’s also funny and adventurous.” —Publishers Weekly

“[Pollan] does everything from buying his own cow to helping with the open-air slaughter of pasture-raised chickens to hunting morels in Northern California. This is not a man who’s afraid of getting his hands dirty in the quest for better understanding. Along with wonderfully descriptive writing and truly engaging stories and characters, there is a full helping of serious information on the way modern food is produced.” —BookPage

“The Omnivore’s Dilemma is about something that affects everyone.” —The Sacramento Bee

“Lively and thought-provoking.” —East Bay Express

“Michael Pollan makes tracking your dinner back through the food chain that produced it a rare adventure.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“A master wordsmith…Pollan brings to the table lucid and rich prose, an enthusiasm for his topic, interesting anecdotes, a journalist’s passion for research, an ability to poke fun at himself, and an appreciation for historical context . . . This is journalism at its best.” —Christianity Today

“First-rate . . . [A] passionate journey of the heart…Pollan is . . . an uncommonly graceful explainer of natural science; this is the book he was born to write.” —Newsweek

“[Pollan’s] stirring new book . . . is a feast, illuminating the ethical, social and environmental impacts of how and what we choose to eat.” —The Courier-Journal

“From fast food to ‘big’ organic to locally sourced to foraging for dinner with rifle in hand, Pollan captures the perils and the promise of how we eat today.” —The Arizona Daily Star

“A multivalent, highly introspective examination of the human diet, from capitalism to consumption.” —The Hudson Review

“What should you eat? Michael Pollan addresses that fundamental question with great wit and intelligence, looking at the social, ethical, and environmental impact of four different meals. Eating well, he finds, can be a pleasurable way to change the world.” —Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness

“Widely and rightly praised…The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals [is] a book that—I kid you not—may change your life.” —Austin American-Statesman

“With the skill of a professional detective, Michael Pollan explores the worlds of industrial farming, organic and sustainable agriculture, and even hunting and gathering to determine the links of food chains: how food gets from its sources in nature to our plates. The findings he reports in this this book are often unexpected, disturbing, even horrifying, but they are facts every eater should know. This is an engaging book, full of information that is most relevant to conscious living.” —Dr. Andrew Weil, author of Spontaneous Healing and Healthy Aging

“Michael Pollan is a voice of reason, a journalist/philosopher who forages in the overgrowth of our schizophrenic food culture. He’s the kind of teacher we probably all wish we had: one who triggers the little explosions of insight that change the way we eat and the way we live.” —Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse restaurant

“Michael Pollan is such a thoroughly delightful writer—his luscious sentences deliver so much pleasure and humor and surprise as they carry one from dinner table to cornfield to feedlot to forest floor, and then back again—that the happy reader could almost miss the profound truth half hidden at the heart of this beautiful book: that the reality of our politics is to be found not in what Americans do in the voting booth every four years but in what we do in the supermarket every day. Embodied in this irresistible, picaresque journey through America’s food world is a profound treatise on the hidden politics of our everyday life.” —Mark Danner, author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror

“Every time you go into a grocery store you are voting with your dollars, and what goes into your cart has real repercussions on the future of the earth. But although we have choices, few of us are aware of exactly what they are. Michael Pollan’s beautifully written book could change that. He tears down the walls that separate us from what we eat, and forces us to be more responsible eaters. Reading this book is a wonderful, life-changing experience.” —Ruth Reichl, editor in chief of Gourmet magazine and author of Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise

SEPTEMBER 2015 - AudioFile

MacLeod Andrews offers such an enthusiastically engaging narration that it almost doesn’t matter that the subject of this audiobook is fascinating and compelling in its own right. It explores where exactly our food comes from and what its ecological, economic, political, and social implications are. In this Young Readers Edition, the editors have toned down some of the more technical discussions and rephrased some sections (“voting with your fork,” for example). But overall, the content and impact are left in force. Andrews varies his tone and pacing nicely. When the author seeks to be ironic, he adds the appropriate inflection. When the author is surprised, so are the narrator—and the listener. Adults should enjoy this production as well as younger listeners. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169467178
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/18/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	957,578
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

Before I began working on this book, I never gave much thought to where my food came from. I didn’t spend much time worrying about what I should and shouldn’t eat. Food came from the supermarket and as long as it tasted good, I ate it.

Until, that is, I had the chance to peer behind the curtain of the modern American food chain. This came in 1998. I was working on an article about genetically modified food—food created by changing plant DNA in the laboratory. My reporting took me to the Magic Valley in Idaho, where most of the french fries you’ve ever eaten begin their life as Russet Burbank potatoes. There I visited a farm like no farm I’d ever seen or imagined.

It was fifteen thousand acres, divided into 135-acre crop circles. Each circle resembled the green face of a tremendous clock with a slowly rotating second hand. That sweeping second hand was the irrigation machine, a pipe more than a thousand feet long that delivered a steady rain of water, fertilizer, and pesticide to the potato plants. The whole farm was managed from a bank of computer monitors in a control room. Sitting in that room, the farmer could, at the flick of a switch, douse his crops with water or whatever chemical he thought they needed.

One of these chemicals was a pesticide called Monitor, used to control bugs. The chemical is so toxic to the nervous system that no one is allowed in the field for five days after it is sprayed. Even if the irrigation machine breaks during that time, farmers won’t send a worker out to fix it because the chemical is so dangerous. They’d rather let that whole 135-acres crop of potatoes dry up and die.

That wasn’t all. During the growing season, some pesticides get inside the potato plant so that they will kill any bug that takes a bite. But these pesticides mean people can’t eat the potatoes while they’re growing, either. After the harvest, the potatoes are stored for six months in a gigantic shed. Here the chemicals gradually fade until the potatoes are safe to eat. Only then can they be turned into french fries.

That’s how we grow potatoes?

I had no idea.

A BURGER WITH YOUR FRIES?

A few years later, while working on another story, I found myself driving down Interstate 5, the big highway that runs between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I was on my way to visit a farmer in California’s Central Valley. It was one of those gorgeous autumn days when the hills of California are gold. Out of nowhere, a really nasty smell assaulted my nostrils—the stench of a gas station restroom sorely in need of attention. But I could see nothing that might explain the smell—all around me were the same blue skies and golden hills.

And then, very suddenly, the golden hills turned jet-black on both sides of the highway: black with tens of thousands of cattle crowded onto a carpet of manure that stretched as far as the eye could see. I was driving through a feedlot, with tens of thousands of animals bellying up to a concrete trough that ran along the side of the highway for what seemed like miles. Behind them rose two vast pyramids, one yellow, the other black: a pile of corn and a pile of manure. The cattle, I realized, were spending their days transforming the stuff of one pile into the stuff of the other.

This is where our meat comes from?

I had no idea.

Suddenly that “happy meal” of hamburger and fries looked a lot less happy. Between the feedlot and the potato farm, I realized just how little I knew about the way our food is produced. The picture in my head, of small family farms with white picket fences and red barns and happy animals on green pastures, was seriously out of date.

THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA

Now I had a big problem. I went from never thinking about where my food came from to thinking about it all the time. I started worrying about what I should and shouldn’t eat. Just because food was in the supermarket, did that mean it was good to eat?

The more I studied and read about food the more I realized I was suffering from a form of the omnivore’s dilemma. This is a big name for a very old problem. Human beings are omnivores. That means we eat plants, meat, mushrooms—just about anything. But because we are omnivores we have very little built-in instinct that tells us which foods are good for us and which aren’t. That’s the dilemma—we can eat anything, but how do we know what to eat?

The omnivore’s dilemma has been around a long time. But today we have a very modern form of this dilemma. We have a thousand choices of food in our supermarkets, but we don’t really know where our food comes from. As I discovered, just finding out how our potatoes are grown might scare you off french fries for the rest of your life.

In the past, people knew about food because they grew it or hunted it themselves. They learned about food from their parents and grandparents. They cooked and ate the same foods people in their part of the world had always eaten. Modern Americans don’t have strong food traditions. Instead we have dozens of different “experts” who give us lots of different advice about what to eat and what not to eat.

It’s one thing to be crazy about food because you like to eat. But I found I was going crazy from worrying about food. So I set out to try to solve the modern omnivore’s dilemma. I decided to become a food detective, to find out where our food comes from and what exactly it is we are eating. My detective work became the book you now hold in your hands.

FOUR MEALS

As a food detective, I had to go back to the beginning, to the farms and fields where our food is grown. Then I followed it each step of the way, and watched what happened to our food on its way to our stomachs. Each step was another link in a chain—a food chain.

A food chain is a system for growing, making, and delivering food. In this book, I follow four different food chains. Each one has its own section. They are:

Industrial

This is where most of our food comes from today. This chain starts in a giant field, usually in the Midwest, where a single crop is grown—corn, or perhaps soybeans—and ends up in a supermarket or fast-food restaurant.

Industrial Organic

This food is grown on large industrial farms, but with only natural fertilizers, and natural bug and weed control. It is sold in the same way as industrial food.

Local Sustainable

This is food grown on small farms that raise lots of different kinds of crops and animals. The food from the farm doesn’t need to be processed, and it travels a short distance—to a farmer’s market, for example—before it reaches your table.

Hunter-Gatherer

This is the oldest type of food chain there is. It’s hardly a chain at all, really. It is made up simply of you, hunting, growing, or finding your food.

All these food chains end the same way—with a meal. And so I thought it important to end each section of the book with a meal, whether it was a fast-food hamburger eaten in a speeding car, or a meal I made myself from start to finish.

THE PLEASURES OF EATING

When I was ten years old, I started my own “farm” in a patch of our backyard. From that age until now, I have always had a vegetable garden, even if only a small one. The feeling of being connected to food is very important to me. It’s an experience that I think most of us are missing today. We’re so confused about food that we’ve forgotten what food really is—the bounty of the earth and the power of the sun captured by plants and animals.

There were parts of this book that were difficult to write, because the facts were so unpleasant. Some of those facts might make you lose your appetite. But the point of this book is not to scare you or make you afraid of food. I think we enjoy food much more if we take a little time to know what it is we’re putting in our mouths. Then we can really appreciate the truly wonderful gifts that plants and animals have given us. To me, that’s the point of this book, to help you rediscover the pleasures of food and learn to enjoy your meals in a new way.

The Omnivore’s Solution: Some Tips for Eating

I’ll bet I know your last burning question: “What now?” Now that you know all that you know about the food chains we depend on, how exactly should you fill up your plate? Most of my readers have the same question, so I’ve developed a handful of everyday rules to guide you through the newfound challenges (and possibilities!) of mealtime. (You can find more of them in the book I wrote after The Omnivore’s Dilemma, called In Defense of Food.)

My advice comes in three parts:

EAT REAL FOOD.

That sounds pretty simple, but you now know it’s not so easy to do. There are many things disguised as food in our supermarkets and fast-food restaurants; I call them “edible food-like substances” (EFLS for short) and suggest you avoid them. But how do you tell the difference between real food and EFLS? Here are a few rules of thumb:

1. Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. Imagine she’s by your side when you’re picking up something to eat. Does she have any idea what that Go-GURT portable yogurt tube is or how you’re supposed to eat it? (She might think it’s toothpaste.) The same goes for that Honey-Nut Cheerios, cereal bar, the one with the layer of fake milk running through the middle, or the (even weirder) cereal “straw.”
2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or with ingredients you don’t recognize or can’t pronounce. As with the Twinkie, that long ingredient list means you’re looking at a highly processed product—an edible food-like substance likely to contain more sugar, salt, and fat than your body needs, and very few real nutrients.
3. Don’t eat anything containing high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Think about it: only corporations ever “cook” with the stuff. Avoid it and you will automatically avoid many of the worst kinds of EFLS, including soda.

BUY REAL FOOD.

To make sure you’re buying real food:

1. Get your food from the outside perimeter of the supermarket and try to avoid the middle aisles. In the cafeteria, go for the salad bar or the fruit basket. These places are where you still find fresh plant and animal foods that have only been been minimally processed. In the middle aisles of the store—and in the school vending machines—are where most of the EFLS lurk.
2. Don’t buy, or eat, anything that doesn’t eventually rot. A food engineered to live forever is usually full of chemicals. Food should be alive, and that means it should eventually die.
3. Shop at the farmers market, through a CSA, or at a farmstand whenever you can. Get out of the supermarket, the corner deli, and the gas station, and you won’t find those flashy fake foods.
4. Be your own food detective. Pay attention to where your food comes from (were those berries picked in your state or halfway around the world?) and how it is grown (Organic? Grass-fed? Humanely raised?). Read labels and ask questions. What’s the story behind your food? And how do you feel about that story?

EAT REAL MEALS.

How you prepare and eat food is often just as important as what you eat. So:

1. Cook. The best way to take control of your meals is to cook whenever you can. As soon as you start cooking, you begin to learn about ingredients, to care about their quality, and to develop your sense of taste. You’ll find over time that, when you prepare and eat real food, fast food gets boring—more of the same old taste of salt, fat, and sugar in every Chips Ahoy! or microwave pizza. There are so many more interesting tastes to experiment with in the kitchen and to experience at the table.
2. Garden. The freshest, best-tasting food you can eat is freshly picked food from the garden. Nothing is more satisfying than to cook and eat food you grew yourself.
3. Try not to eat alone. When we eat alone we eat without thinking, and we usually eat too much: Just think about how thoughtlessly you can put away a bag of chips or cookies in front of the television or computer, or while doing your homework. Eating should be social; food is more fun when you share it.
4. Eat slowly and stop when you’re full. The food industry makes money by getting you to eat more than you need or even want to. Just because they offer a supersized 64-ounce Big Gulp and 1,250-calorie, 5-cup restaurant plate of spaghetti and meatballs doesn’t mean that’s the amount you should eat. Take back control of your portions (a normal-size serving of spaghetti is about a cup and a half).
5. Eat at the table. I know, it sounds obvious. But we snack more than we dine these days; 19 percent of the meals consumed in America today are eaten in the car. The deepest joys of eating come when we slow down to savor our food and share it with people we love. The real meal—family and friends gathered around a table—is in danger of extinction. For the sake of your family’s health and happiness, and for your own, do what you can to save it. You might be surprised how much enjoyment it can bring.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Omnivore's Dilemma"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Michael Pollan.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Young Readers Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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