Revisiting The Omnivore's Dilemma

Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" has been on the New York Times bestseller list for three years. "The Omnivore's Dilemma" is a compelling and important book that deserves its blockbuster status, but the tome has also become relevant in new ways.

Above all, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" is a great, enlightening read. Pollan is a Berkeley professor of science and environmental journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a tireless researcher who knows how to turn a phrase and he can make detailed science accessible and even entertaining. The other joy of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" is Pollan's fresh perspective. The book is really about the culture of food rather than more typical food science or nutrition.

He would come to tearing apart the "rules" and concepts of modern nutrition in his next book, "In Defense of Food." Before he gets there, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" explores the human relationship with food and the elaborate journey each sunbeam takes from the soil to our mouths.

The book's full title, "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" hints at the outline. He opens with a question: "What should we have for dinner?" and spends 464 pages answering the question. He never explicitly answers the question in some junk science equation like 80 percent protein, 20 percent carbohydrates. Instead, he offers the nature and background of four complex and broad food lifestyles.

He begins by tracing the roots of a McDonalds meal. The long section is largely a treatise on corn and the convergence of policy, science and economics that makes corn products the bulk of the average diet. Three years ago, this first section of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" offered new mantras for organic food advocates as they were becoming mainstream and starting to widely publicize their concerns about corn syrup seeping into nearly all industrial food.

The same organic purists are less keen on the next section of "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Pollan draws an uncomfortably fuzzy line between industrial fast-food burgers and industrial Whole Foods granola.

In the second half of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Pollan goes back to the land and "meets" all his food, first at an organic farm where he works and writes for a week. Then he tries to create a foraged and hunted wild meal

Pollan's excitement is infectious, and we learn along with him about gathering mushrooms and raising chickens. These chapters of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" were initially interesting in the abstract, but most readers didn't tear up their lawns.

The second half of the book has become remarkably relevant and prescient. Seed companies represent one of the only growing industries in the current economy. First Lady Michelle Obama and millions of other Americans are trying to grow their first vegetable gardens this year.

Economic, health and energy concerns are driving Americans back to homegrown food - and to "The Omnivore's Dilemma."