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lightreadsA book which sets out to discuss (not answer, and thank goodness) that rather thorny question of what we should be eating for dinner. Pollan traces four food chains from, uh, roots to the dinner table: the industrial food chain (beef, corn, and all things processed), the organic industry (Whole Foods), an actual self-sustaining organic operation unaffiliated with the industry, and the shortest food chain of all, local hunting and gathering.
The first three-quarters of this book are really fabulous, well-balanced discourses on what we eat and where it comes from. The writing is candid without insisting on judgments, packed with Pollan’s many personal experiences without being obnoxiously drenched in his personality. (I like him, you understand, but many nonfiction authors make the mistake of assuming they themselves are as interesting as their subjects. They are almost always wrong). The last section really fell apart for me, because the book lost a lot of its narrative focus and informative punch and lapsed back into Pollan’s interesting but still rather aimless philosophical and personal observations, a la The Botanny of Desire. Still, I’m very glad I read it. It’s vastly informative, well-organized, and mostly engaging.
I find myself recommending this book to a lot of people, which I usually don’t do – I tend to select prospective audiences very carefully. But food is a pretty universal topic, and I greatly appreciate the style of this book, which encompasses the same horrifying information as something like Fast Food Nation without bludgeoning the reader to death with an agenda. We’re supposed to draw our own conclusions, which is what we all do each day, every time we choose what to eat, and I really appreciate that.
The first three-quarters of this book are really fabulous, well-balanced discourses on what we eat and where it comes from. The writing is candid without insisting on judgments, packed with Pollan’s many personal experiences without being obnoxiously drenched in his personality. (I like him, you understand, but many nonfiction authors make the mistake of assuming they themselves are as interesting as their subjects. They are almost always wrong). The last section really fell apart for me, because the book lost a lot of its narrative focus and informative punch and lapsed back into Pollan’s interesting but still rather aimless philosophical and personal observations, a la The Botanny of Desire. Still, I’m very glad I read it. It’s vastly informative, well-organized, and mostly engaging.
I find myself recommending this book to a lot of people, which I usually don’t do – I tend to select prospective audiences very carefully. But food is a pretty universal topic, and I greatly appreciate the style of this book, which encompasses the same horrifying information as something like Fast Food Nation without bludgeoning the reader to death with an agenda. We’re supposed to draw our own conclusions, which is what we all do each day, every time we choose what to eat, and I really appreciate that.