Michael Pollan’s new book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, examines where our food comes from, how it’s raised and how much it costs, not just financially but in terms of damages to the earth and our health. It takes a close look at the origins of four meals: a fast food lunch, a meal prepared from ingredients grown on a small, organic farm, another organic meal made from ingredients from the Whole Foods grocery chain, and a dinner Pollan put together from meat and other ingredients he hunted or harvested himself. The result is a 415-page journey through cornfields, feed lots, grocery stores and hunting grounds that explores the economics, morals, politics and history behind what we eat.

In this thoughtful non-fiction adventure, Pollan, a noted journalist and author of The Botany of Desire, paints Virginia farmer Joe Salatin as the clear hero, embodying what food production should be: sustainable, humane and community-minded. At the opposite end of the spectrum is what Pollan calls industrial food—the Cheez Whiz, coffee creamer, TV dinners and fast food concocted largely from corn in all its manifestations. For Pollan, the corn industry is a heavily subsidized, all-consuming operation that sucks up farmland, draining our economy and creating nutritionless meals. And of course there are the big organic corporations that keep the petrochemical fertilizers out of the soil—but consume tons of oil nonetheless to transport their produce to the local high-end grocer.

The first and best section of the book focuses on corn. Pollan’s research really shines as he examines how our economy has evolved to reward farmers for growing a crop that doesn’t pay the rent and corn’s uses in feedlots, where beef cattle are biologically adapted to eat a grass diet, and must take in antibiotics to digest their corn-based feed. The trip ends at a McDonald’s in Marin, Calif., where Pollan discovers corn is the basis for the meal, feeding not only the cows and chickens that end up as burgers and McNuggets; it also sweetens the sodas, thickens the shakes and even flavors the salad dressing.

While Pollan clearly advocates buying local foods grown organically, he never preaches or blames the average American consumer for buying Twinkies and sodas. Instead he blames the subsidized industrial food system that’s so strongly connected to our economy. In his opinion, it’s up to us, the consumers, to change the system so that locally-grown foods are more easily available.

This review originally appeared in the September/October 2006 issue of World Ark, the magazine of Heifer International. Reviewed by Austin Gelder, Heifer Staff Writer. Used with permission.