“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 implications of their food choices.
With plenty of photos, graphs, and visuals, The Omnivore’s Dilemma serves up a bold message to the generation most impacted by climate change: It’s time to take charge of our national eating habits—and it starts with you.
“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 implications of their food choices.
With plenty of photos, graphs, and visuals, The Omnivore’s Dilemma serves up a bold message to the generation most impacted by climate change: It’s time to take charge of our national eating habits—and it starts with you.
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- Young Readers
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ATOS:6.8
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Lexile:930
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Interest Level:MG+
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Text Difficulty:4 - 6
Awards-
- National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
The National Book Critics Circle
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From the book
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...
Reviews-
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February 20, 2006
Reviewed by Pamela Kaufman
Pollan (The Botany of Desire
) examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's 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 approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "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."
Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.
Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.
Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.
This may sound earnest, but 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. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals.
I'm not convinced I'd want to go hunting with Pollan, but I'm sure I'd enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota. (Apr.)
Pamela Kaufman is executive editor at
Food & Wine magazine. -
September 7, 2009
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. -
October 1, 2009
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"Copyright 2009 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from October 15, 2009
Grades 6-10 *Starred Review* Pollans adult edition of The Omnivores Dilemma (2006) was a watershed book. A New York Times bestseller, a James Beard Award winner, and a Booklist Editors Choice selection, its personal, informed, adventurous exploration of the American food chain inspired thousands of readers to learn and care about what they eat. This exemplary young readers edition offers much more than just a simplified, condensed version of the original. Adapted by Richie Chevat, it follows, in Pollans accessible, funny, first-person voice, the same progression as the adult original. Four meals create the framework for Pollans investigation into how food arrives on the table: an industrial dinner (from McDonalds), an industrial organic meal, a dinner made from local sustainable ingredients, and a dinner made mostly from foods that Pollan hunted and gathered. Expertly edited, the book retains the originals provocative anecdotes and questions, while presenting the background information in even more expanded and accessible terms. The open, attractive format includes visuals that are all new here, including diagrams, sidebars, and personal photos of the books characters. Also new is an appended interview with Pollan, as well as a welcome closing chapter, The Omnivores Solution, with tips for conscious eating. Just as powerful as the adult edition but perfectly tuned to a young audience, this title is essential food for thought.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.) -
January 1, 2010
This accessible adaptation of Pollan's adult bestseller The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals provides abridged and/or simplified data. The book uses a recipe of science, history, and humor to create an edifying story; readers may find some of the details and photos to be disturbing. Helpful sidebars and a resources list are included. Ind.(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
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November 1, 2009
Twinkies and McNuggets will never look the same after readers finish this accessible edition of the adult bestseller The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Much of Pollan's extensive scientific and historical research from the original is abridged and/or simplified, making humans' dietary conundrum palatable to a new age group: "We can eat anything, but how do we know what to eat?" Pollan strives to solve the "omnivore's dilemma" by following four different food chains from source to plate: industrial, industrial-scale organic, local and sustainable, and hunter-gatherer. Though at times difficult to read because of disturbing details and photos -- the descriptions of cattle feedlots are enough to convert even devoted meat eaters to vegetarianism -- this book uses a recipe of science, history, and humor to create an edifying yet entertaining story. Pollan charges his audience to read more ingredient labels and to think about the food on their plates: "Ignorance is not bliss, at least not if you're a person who cares about the health of your body and your world." Helpful sidebars, tips for eating, an author question-and-answer section, and a resources list make the book as much about action as it is about information. Also appended are sources and an index.(Copyright 2009 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
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