Rating:  -
The top two reviews have done an admirable job reviewing this book. I want to focus simply on the vegetarian section, indicating something I think he missed, and pointing out a couple things he writes that I think miss the mark.
The thing I think he missed in this section is that a major reason to be a vegetarian, aside from animal rights, the suffering they feel, whether or not they have a face--all of which is covered well in the section--is to be a pacifist. For me this was the major reason to become a vegetarian. I was convinced by another book about 15 years ago - "Diet for a New America". Robbins, the author of that book, chronicled a host of reasons to ge veg (environment, vegetarian athletes, health), but for me the strongest argument was to consider the way that eating animals could be viewed as a "gateway behavior" to accepting violence in other realms of life. I believe that acceptance of eating animals gives us all an edge such that, if there is a balance in question, where an argument could almost go either way--to punish or not, to kill or not, to invade or not--our daily diet will push us in the direction of bloodlust.
While I agree that being a vegetarian separates us from our relatives and even tradition itself, I think there are many things a thousand years from now that no one will be sorry are lost traditions, and that our current method of meat eating is one of those things (let's keep it open for discussion that there might be some form of test-tube meat that everyone will find acceptable in the future).
Further, I think Pollan misses the beat on a couple things in this section. First, the proposal that "Under the pressure of the hunt, anthropologists tell us, the human brain grew in size and complexity...." Well, that is one theory. And it surely has merit. But aren't there a number of other possibilities? Aren't there theories that we evolved more as scavengers than hunters, that our bigger brains had more to do with the mind-bending task of socializing in larger groups. I am no authority. I dabble in this. It seems to me that this point could have used more research and that Pollan was all too willing to accept hunting as the reason for big brains.
Second, Pollan then goes on to suggest that "much will be lost" by shedding our carnivorous habits. Isn't this a vagueness we can be spared. He is waxing nostalgic about our lost hunter ways, and not adding to his prior argument about lost traditions, either.
Third, he points out the irony that "animal rights...asks us to acknowledge all we share with animals, and then to act toward them in a most unanimalistic way." I hope the reader will agree with me that "we" do not "act" toward animals. Pollan labors extensively elsewhere in the book to show how removed we are from what we are eating. We "act" toward the animal that produced the steak on our plate about as much as we acted upon the broccoli plant that produced the side dish.
Fourth and finally, did he really need to mention sex? He asks us not to trivialize the desire to eat meat, likening it to the absurd result of trivializing sex on the basis that we can reproduce without it. This is too much. Yes, we can eat alternative veggie meats. Yes we can reproduce without the act of sex. Such reproduction is hugely expensive though. It's unreasonabe to argue that sex is only for reproduction. Maybe that was another reason to have a big brain, to help us in the long-term relationships we need to raise children beyond the days, weeks, months or rarely few years of our animal cousins. So I make his point on sex, but that doesn't argue for the comparison to the desire to eat animals. Sex is part of our social fabric, and not too likely to be replaced in the near future. But veggie meat alternatives are here, and it doesn't seem as if it would tear a society apart to divorce themselves from that bad habit. It hasn't hurt India.
Rating: -
I love this book. It changed the way I see my food and taught me about industrial farming. I think anyone who is interested in nutrition should read this.
Rating:  -
Omnivore's Dilemma equips an eater who can eat just about everything with the knowledge to better pick and choose. To get us eaters from here to there, Omnivore's Dilemma takes what I found to be a unique approach: it focuses not so much on our food per se but instead focuses on the four production and distribution systems that create our food. Investigating the practices and effects of each system, Pollan, the author, writes mostly from first hand experience, which tends to place the reader in the midst of the corn field, feed lot, pasture, or other venue the author finds himself in. At times, because Pollan is writing from his first hand account, he tends to be sensationalistic. At others, he can wander in an academic ether, such as the chapter regarding the ethics of eating animals, that detracts from the book's message. Overall, though, the information Pollan conveys is so compelling you readily excuse these indulgences. Leaving you appreciating the book for telling you what is behind the labels on the food we buy as compared to what the marketing department is telling us.
Rating:  -
I needed this book for my class which it is a required book for the class, I ordered it on the 22nd of Sept. and my other books not only came on time but early! I sent several emails to seller and no response. The book is sold out at my school's bookstore so this has cause me a extreme hardship! When I bought my book the sellers reviews were on ther higher end but in the last 30days there has been a huge drop, since the seller is having so many problems with keeping up on there end then maybe they shouldn't be allowed to sell anymore!
Rating:  -
At first, I was excited by The Omnivore's Dilemma, although aware that it was sparse on numbers and analysis. That's journalism for you. The reporting is a quick and easy read that held my interest while bashing things I didn't like and holding out hope for a better food system that would still give us access to tastey meats and fresh veggies.
However, as I read through to the end of the book, my annoyance with Pollan--writing from the perspective of a rationalist and ecologist--over his off-hand but serious references to notions like "karmic debt" combined with his inconsistent prose left me thinking I should give the book no more than 3 stars. And after reading some of the other Amazon reviews, I feel the book deserves something more like 1 or 2 stars. While I accept that journalism is intellectually thin, I expect reported "facts" to be accurate. If you read through some of these reviews, however, you will find a multidude of relevant criticisms.
In Pollan's defense, many of the negative reviews are people who weren't interested in reading about Pollan's personal experiences, and these experiences were part of the point of the book. It is a personal account, and such an approach fits perfectly with Pollan's view of ethics and aesthetics. While all of his hand-wringing over hunting, for example, is laughable for those not confined by his class biases, everyone is confined by biases and Pollan's attempt to report his own experience is acceptable.
Other negative reviews criticize Pollan for lacking depth in addressing problems or not addressing questions that interested the reviewer, such as whether or not it would be easy for corn farmers to switch to something else. But this depth in narrow analysis is not what the book aimed to do. It aimed to give unknowedgeable readers an introduction to a variety of topics related to food by way of first-person investigation. If you are already well versed in economic and ecologic problems of our food supply chain, this book wasn't written for you. If you aren't, it may be a fascinating read.
But it's the fact that the book is aimed at the general reader that makes factual problems so gross. If it were a work of fiction, Omnivore's Dilemma would be absolutely worthless since it relies on revelation for literary impact. It is only as non-fiction that it has value. So, for example, if it is true, as one reviewer claims, that he did the math and that a bushel of corn does not, in fact, contain fewer calories than the petroleum that went into producing it (as Pollan claims), that's a serious problem for the book. Pollan should have stuck to reporting what he saw rather than quoting analysis, which isn't what the book is, or could be, about.
Would I recommend this book? I guess, yes, but only because I share some of the biases that Pollan does. For example, I think it would be okay if Americans spent a larger proportion of their income on their food, but that's a personal choice. Like Pollan, my real problem with the beef industry is that I want better beef. In Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan tries to put moral spin on our joint preferences, but I can't entirely buy it.
In the end, I would have to say that Omnivore's Dilemma is something like food snob porn. If your reservations about fast food are primarily economic or medical and not gustatory, you're not going to care about this book. On the other hand, if you're willing to spend your leisure time and expendable cash to improve the quality of your diet, you may find--as I did--a wealth of small revelations that make the book a page-turner despite its drawbacks.
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