IOL Strength and Conditioning

In Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan tracks our food sources from the ground, through its processing, sales and preparation in search of the perfect meal. In his research, he takes the reader through the industrial food chain wrapped tightly around kernels of corn, through the organic system, down the path of the small local farmers working the grass, and farther out through the individual hunters and gatherers.

It’s becoming rare for a journalist to invest such time — such perseverance — into a project like this. Pollan is a good investigator, the type who keeps pulling on the yarn, not just to find the other end, but continuing until it’s wrapped back up in a tight ball.

Although many friends recommended In Defense of Food, Pollan’s later work that I’d purchases it a couple of years ago, it was a conversation with Gray Cook that settled me in for the read. His challenge to me: In the reading, replace the idea of our western food supply with the concept of western movement. You don’t actually have to read the book to get the idea, but perhaps it will get you going on the read, as it did me.

I liked Omnivore quite a bit better than In Defense. It has a lot more depth, but then again, that may have been because I already knew much of the content of In Defense. Still, these two books are likely to be bundled in a discount that will get one nearly free if you buy from Amazon, so you may as well have the set. To round out the trio, Rood Rules, An Eater’s Manual, is his 139-page pocket size compendium of 64 very brief tips on better eating, a paragraph or two distillation of the two earlier books’ material. Very handy, easy to read and understand… and cheap.

There is one distracting oddity: Pollan is a journalism instructor. He’s a good writer who draws the reader into what could easily be a dry, hard-to-finish documentary. Yet most pages contain parenthetical remarks that could easily be melded into the text with a pair of commas, or just as easily have been left out entirely. There are a number of incomplete sentences and an issue of missing commas, many of which are a question of style, not editorial skill, but some that make this clear text a fraction more confusing. We don’t usually think of a college writing professor as someone who might need an editor — chalk this up as a indicator that EVERY writer will benefit from outside editing.

Closing the book on Omnivore, or whatever we’re supposed to call it when we finish reading a book on an iPad, I was happy with how things turned out. Opening the book took some consideration — vegetarianism was certainly a possible outcome. I’ve gone that route a couple of times before, but those were younger days when good nutrition was not as important. I’m not sure I’m up for the efforts necessary for healthy vegetarian eating.

Instead, the book left me with a desire to eat more local food. We’re blessed here in central California with family-owned grocery stores where local produce falls out of baskets, a cornucopia of invitation. That’s given me the excuse to move a step farther from the farmer’s market where my friend Crista sells her fish each Saturday morning. At the stores, with their displays looking even nicer than the tented market, I can shop whenever I choose, convenience winning out over the quality of produce picked the day before. Omnivore’s Dilemma redirected me a little closer to the farmer.

I’m glad to have invested my time into reading this book, and it has already brought me back in line with a fairly short-lived experiment a few years ago involving grass-fed beef. Whether Omnivore is a fair investigation of the industrial food chain, I couldn’t being to guess, although it feels right to me as an outsider. I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in food growing and processing, and how our buying choices might affect our nutrition.

In the end, you may even end up taking more pleasure in your cooking and food preparation, too.