Polly grinding out 22 OHS mid-WOD on Day 2 of the 2009 Norcal Qualifier

No Dilemma Here: Read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

I must confess, I'm not much of a nonfiction kind of guy.  As a student of literature and then theatre, I always found more truth in the imaginary stories than in the real ones.  Every now and then, though, I go fishing in the writings of the real world, and occasionally get a bite of something extraordinary.  The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, is such a book.  I think it's fair to say that this book has changed not just the way I think about food, but the way I think about my place in, and interaction with, the world around me.

It's not a very new book (2006), nor very obscure.  It's been recommended to me many times, most often by meat-eaters looking to convert me from my (former) vegetarianism.  I must confess, it was for this reason that it took so long for me to actually sit down and read it - I felt defensive enough about my choices without actively seeking out arguments against them.  I needn't have worried - the book is far from a meat-eater's manifesto, and I would have enjoyed it just as much in my veggie days.

In the book, Pollan sets out to trace the ultimate source of four meals, all the way back to their (literal) roots:  a McDonald's meal, a purely organic dinner from Whole Foods, a meal made from the resources of Polyface farm in New Hampshire, and a meal obtained entirely by hunting and gathering.  For everything we eat comes from somewhere, but most of us have only the vaguest idea of where that actually is, or what we're actually eating:  "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly."

In each meal, Pollan delves deep into the history of where that food comes from, and it never failed to bring astonished gasps of delight to my lips. Even if what he finds is horrifying, it's still fascinating. His recounting of the history of America's relationship to corn (and where we've wound up because of it), for example, causes me to shake my head in disbelief every time I consider it, but he manages to paint this picture without judging the portraits he paints, which saves the book from feeling shrill. It's not all horror, though - although I found the section on organic production to be somewhat disheartening, the section on sustainable farming techniques (such as those used at Polyface) is a total delight, and did much to restore my hope in a decent future.

It's not all perfection, of course. Pollan relies on the same rhetorical structures for his arguments a bit too frequently, and he's prone to shoring up his case in some of the grayer areas with philosophy, rather than science - although he usually admits to it when he does so. His brief chapter on analyzing the reasons for and against vegetarianism is interesting and well-written, but is more of a quest for a justification to eat meat than a truly balanced analysis (he basically cops out of that one).

Overall, however, it is the most cogent, eye-opening book I've ever read about food (admittedly a small subgenre in my experience), and one of the most interesting works of nonfiction I've experienced. I highly recommend it to everyone, but particularly those who want a deeper understanding of their relationship to the larger world around them - eating is such a primal instinct that it forms the foundation of a great portion of our civilization, and when you know what you're eating, you have a much clearer idea of where (and who) you are. Read it!