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The Omnivore's Dilemma
- A Natural History of Four Meals
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
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Publisher's summary
The best-selling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the 21st century.
"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another, this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't, which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance.
The cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time we're realizing that our food choices also have profound implications for the health of our environment. The Omnivore's Dilemma is best-selling author Michael Pollan's brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.
We are indeed what we eat, and what we eat remakes the world. A society of voracious and increasingly confused omnivores, we are just beginning to recognize the profound consequences of the simplest everyday food choices, both for ourselves and for the natural world. The Omnivore's Dilemma is a long-overdue book and one that will become known for bringing a completely fresh perspective to a question as ordinary and yet momentous as "What shall we have for dinner?"
Critic reviews
Gold Medal in Nonfiction for the California Book Award • Winner of the 2007 Bay Area Book Award for Nonfiction • Winner of the 2007 James Beard Book Award/Writing on Food Category • Finalist for the 2007 Orion Book Award • Finalist for the 2007 NBCC Award
"Thoughtful, engrossing . . . You're not likely to get a better explanation of exactly where your food comes from."—The New York Times Book Review
"An eater's manifesto . . . [Pollan's] cause is just, his thinking is clear, and his writing is compelling. Be careful of your dinner!"—The Washington Post
"Outstanding . . . a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our eating habits."—The New Yorker
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Many people will remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a fruitless fall, a time with no pollination and no fruit. The fruitless fall nearly became a reality when, in 2007, beekeepers watched 30 billion bees mysteriously die. And they continue to disappear. The remaining pollinators, essential to the cultivation of a third of American crops, are now trucked across the country and flown around the world, pushing them ever closer to collapse.
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Compulsory Reading - Share with Everyone!
- By Charles Koenen on 04-12-20
By: Rowan Jacobsen
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Steak
- One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Beef
- By: Mark Schatzker
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
"Of all the meats, only one merits its own structure. There is no such place as a lamb house or a pork house, but even a small town can have a steak house." So begins Mark Schatzker's ultimate carnivorous quest. Fed up with one too many mediocre steaks, the intrepid journalist set out to track down, define, and eat the perfect specimen.
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Journey into a deeper appreciation for beef
- By John Madany on 10-08-20
By: Mark Schatzker
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The Soil Will Save Us
- How Scientists, Farmers, and Ranchers Are Tending the Soil to Reverse Global Warming
- By: Kristin Ohlson
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.
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Rambling, mile wide, inch deep treatment of a subject
- By Charles Phillips on 10-17-18
By: Kristin Ohlson
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Farmacology
- Total Health from the Ground Up
- By: Daphne Miller MD
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Can urban farms reduce neighborhood crime? These may not sound like typical questions for a family physician to consider, but in Farmacology, Daphne Miller, MD, ventures out of her medical office and travels to seven innovative family farms around the country on a quest to discover the hidden connections between how we care for our bodies and how we grow our food. Miller also seeks out the perspectives of noted biomedical scientists and artfully weaves in their research, along with stories from her own practice. Farmacology offers a profound new approach to healing.
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Crystals and all - great book
- By Topherwayne on 02-22-20
By: Daphne Miller MD
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Lentil Underground
- Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America
- By: Liz Carlisle
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The story of the "Lentil Underground" begins on a 280-acre homestead rooted in America's Great Plains: the Oien family farm. Forty years ago, corporate agribusiness told small farmers like the Oiens to "get big or get out." But 27-year-old David Oien decided to take a stand, becoming the first in his conservative Montana county to plant a radically different crop: organic lentils. Unlike the chemically dependent grains American farmers had been told to grow, lentils make their own fertilizer and tolerate variable climates, so their farmers aren't beholden to industrial methods.
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Fingers on the pulse of sustainable ag
- By shakinfist on 06-30-20
By: Liz Carlisle
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The Fruit Hunters
- A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession
- By: Adam Leith Gollner
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Tasty, lethal, hallucinogenic, and medicinal - fruits have led nations into wars, fueled dictatorships, and even lured us into new worlds. Adam Leith Gollner weaves business, science, and travel into a riveting narrative about one of the earth's most desired foods.
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Interesting world...
- By Henry Scalfo on 07-16-08
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The Beekeeper's Lament
- How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America
- By: Hannah Nordhaus
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the remarkable story of John Miller, one of America's foremost migratory beekeepers, and the myriad and mysterious epidemics threatening American honeybee populations.
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From a beekeeper
- By Argos on 06-14-17
By: Hannah Nordhaus
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Hippie Food
- How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat
- By: Jonathan Kauffman
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Food writer Jonathan Kauffman journeys back more than half a century - to the 1960s and 1970s - to tell the story of how a coterie of unusual men and women embraced an alternative lifestyle that would ultimately change how modern Americans eat. Impeccably researched, Hippie Food chronicles how the longhairs, revolutionaries, and back-to-the-landers rejected the square establishment of President Richard Nixon's America and turned to a more idealistic and wholesome communal way of life and food.
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If you grew up eating health food you'll love it
- By Susie Wyshak on 05-09-18
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Organic Manifesto
- How Organic Food Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe
- By: Maria Rodale, Eric Scholsser - foreword
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Drawing on findings from leading health researchers as well as conversations with both chemical and organic farmers from coast to coast, Maria Rodale irrefutably outlines the unacceptably high cost of chemical farming on our health and our environment. She traces the genesis of chemical farming and the rise of the immense companies that profit from it, bringing to light the government's role in allowing such practices to flourish.
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those in power must read and work upon it.
- By Jaktip on 12-20-17
By: Maria Rodale, and others
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Uncultivated
- Wild Apples, Real Cider, and the Complicated Art of Making a Living
- By: Andy Brennan
- Narrated by: Brett Barry
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Long before the advent of conventional farming methods - which have focused on constant growth, human intervention, and genetic homogeneity - the apple had already grown to become the ubiquitous all-American symbol it is today. Known for their hardiness, ability to adapt to new environments, natural diversity, and plentiful bounty, wildly grown apples were once known as “America’s fruit” throughout the trading world.
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Really good narrator
- By Landon & Sarah on 03-28-24
By: Andy Brennan
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Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?
- The Epic Saga of the Bird That Powers Civilization
- By: Andrew Lawler
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From ancient empires to modern economics, veteran journalist Andrew Lawler delivers a sweeping history of the animal that has been most crucial to the spread of civilization across the globe: the chicken. Queen Victoria was obsessed with it. Socrates' last words were about it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using it. Catholic popes, African shamans, Chinese philosophers, and Muslim mystics praised it.
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Never imagined the volume of bird trivia
- By Neuron on 11-04-18
By: Andrew Lawler
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Unprocessed
- My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food
- By: Megan Kimble
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In January of 2012, Megan Kimble was a 26-year-old living in a small apartment without even a garden plot to her name. But she cared about where food came from, how it was made, and what it did to her body: so she decided to go an entire year without eating processed foods. Unprocessed is the narrative of Megan's extraordinary year, in which she milled wheat, extracted salt from the sea, milked a goat, slaughtered a sheep, and more - all while earning an income that fell well below the federal poverty line.
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Very insightful
- By Anonymous User on 01-10-21
By: Megan Kimble
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Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman
- Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland
- By: Miriam Horn
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Many of the men and women doing today's most consequential environmental work - restoring America's grasslands, wildlife, soil, rivers, wetlands, and oceans - would not call themselves environmentalists; they would be too uneasy with the connotations of that word. What drives them is their deep love of the land - the iconic terrain where explorers and cowboys, pioneers, and riverboat captains forged the American identity. They feel a moral responsibility to preserve this heritage and natural wealth.
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great stories
- By GMMT on 05-15-18
By: Miriam Horn
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A delightful trip
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I don't think I'm the intended market for the book
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Uncritical alarmist rant
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An Edible History of Humanity
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Flawed, but worthwhile
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From farmer Joel Salatin's point of view, life in the 21st century just ain't normal. In Folks, This Ain't Normal, he discusses how far removed we are from the simple, sustainable joy that comes from living close to the land and the people we love.
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Awakened me from my ingnorance
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Brilliant Green
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Are plants intelligent? Can they solve problems, communicate, and navigate their surroundings? Or are they passive, incapable of independent action or social behavior? Philosophers and scientists have pondered these questions since ancient Greece, most often concluding that plants are unthinking and inert: they are too silent, too sedentary - just too different from us. Yet discoveries over the past 50 years have challenged these ideas, shedding new light on the extraordinary capabilities and complex interior lives of plants.
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Very enlightening
- By Larry on 02-05-24
By: Stefano Mancuso, and others
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Lesser Beasts
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As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the same reasons they are so valuable as a source of food: they are intelligent, self-sufficient, and omnivorous. What's more, he argues, we ignore our historic partnership with these astonishing animals at our peril.
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Virtuous Carnivors?
- By David on 04-14-16
By: Mark Essig
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Catching Fire
- How Cooking Made Us Human
- By: Richard Wrangham
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution.
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Fascinating book about early human development...
- By KevinH on 12-10-09
By: Richard Wrangham
What listeners say about The Omnivore's Dilemma
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Lily
- 11-02-08
Great book; didn't love the reading
While raving to a friend about Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", she recommended this book, so it was my next purchase. Early on I began to wonder if ANYTHING was really healthy and ethical to eat, unless you can produce all your own food! But it turned out to have some fascinating and valuable information about the way our food is grown, processed and transported, so it was well worth reading.
As for the narration... I've listened to several other books narrated by Scott Brick, and he's never been a favorite, but this was just baaaaddd. This book did NOT require a dramatic reading, but that's what it got! And I wish someone would give narrators a list of uncommon words in advance so he or she can be prepared! Mr. Brick really butchered a few words, and based on sentence context, I think he may have mis-read a few words altogether! I kept telling myself it's not a big deal - I got the point - but it's just so distracting!
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Overall
- chris
- 07-16-07
Engrossing and enlightening
When the book opened, I thought it was going to become some PETA fueled anti-meat rant, and then I thought it was going to become some anti-GM food hippy organic food rant, but I was wrong on both counts. It touches those subjects and many more. In fact, the book moves seamlessly between many subjects.
The author loves meat, and food, but he wants to know exactly where it comes from. He starts by homing in on corn, which is by far the most important component of our diet, being in almost everything we eat in one form or another (interesting, eh?). He then looks closer: how did corn come to dominate our diet, and why do farmers get paid less for their corn than it costs to grow it, and what is the real cost of all that cheap corn?
He then looks at the organic movement, and shows that organic is far from the pastoral ideal we imagine it to be. It is better than over-tilled and fertilized fields and manure filled feedlots, at least. I know a lot of farmers and I have seen some of this first-hand.
Then the author focuses on a truly sustainable farm, and the genius farmers who not only make it work, but make it work well. They can also tell you precisely why it works.
And that's only the first half of the book. The author keeps moving, filling the pages with startling facts and truly excellent writing. The author is apparently a journalist, and it shows in his extensive research and persuasive arguments.
I enjoyed this far more than I expected to. It helps, I suppose, that I was receptive to it. Still, I couldn't put it down, and I can recommend it to anyone who eats.
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- MCRedding
- 02-07-09
Great presentation of a moral dilemma
Pollan's examination of the cultural, moral and socioeconomic tradeoffs we make when eating food is a deep and exhaustive consideration of the consequences of seeming simple choices. By structuring the work around 4 meals, he presents four alternative relationships to nature and the world, and lays bare the personal consequences of each. I found that the detail was, at times unnecessarily fastidious, as when Pollan agonizes over the authenticity of hunting, but not killing, the wild boar in his hunter and gatherer meal, and then taking us through the process again, just so he can personally pull the trigger. I would have rather he had just lied, and took credit for the first kill.
The mix of science, economics and gastronomy was what I would like the Food Network to really be about. The personal perspective of the book sometimes got in the way, but gave it a visceral feel that kept my interest.
What did I learn from the book? That sorting out the food chains involved in what I eat daily is way too complicated to really address it in real life. I would have liked to see an epilogue that explained the way Pollan has worked it out. He hints at this at the end, but doesn't ever present a cogent agenda for how making responsible choices about food fits into the real world of budgets and schedules that we have developed since making the evolutionary choice to not spent most of our waking hours feeding ourselves.
I learned how mushrooms are gathered and the physiology of corn. I learned more than I would ever really want to about the beef industry, and the ecology of grasses. Overall, it was an enjoyable read that will stick with me longer than the meal of boar and mushrooms Pollan serves to his friends at the end of the book.
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- A reader
- 05-05-06
Somewhat preachy, almost always fascinating
Well-written, well-researched, and full of interesting facts and stories about our food supply, I had two issues that bugged me about this book that held me back from unreserved praise, though other listeners may feel differently. First, and probably less important, is that the narrator over EMOTES every OTHER word making DRAMATIC use of pauses and SUCH to the point of annoyance, though this only started to bother me after a few hours. Secondly, though the book feels evenhanded at first, as it goes on, there are more and more digressions against tampering with nature, and the evil people (grain companies, government policy people) who back the bad guy of the book -- corn. While it does not overwhelm the audiobook, it does start to grate a bit, especially as the author regularly misuses economic arguments, and ignores perspectives other than those of the wealthy westerner to whom the tenfold increase in food production per acre is a problem, not a benefit. That said, however, the issues are discussed in a really interesting manner, with well-told stories (following the history of an ear of corn, tracing the debate about organic food standards through the hippies who started it, working at a farm, hunting a boar), and based on what we learn about the industrialized food supply, the biases he brings to the table, as it were, are both understandable and relatively subdued. It may or may not transform the way you think about food, but it will certainly raise questions, while keeping you surprisingly entertained.
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- Nancy
- 06-13-07
Good Content, Difficult Narration
I really enjoyed Michael Pallin's last book and this one is very good too. The section on local agriculture was very interesting. Bu the narrator was overly dramatic to the point of being difficult to listen to. I'm a dedicated listener, and I liked the book, but I nearly turned it off a few times due to the narration.
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- Ian
- 05-06-06
Instant Classic Nonfiction
First, as the reviewer who actually heard author Pollan speak live notes, I agree that Scott Brick's reading of this book is *outstanding*--Brick has the talent of reading long sentences--many of which might be arcane or esoteric if simply read om page, and emphasize the important phrases--like reader Grover Gardner, the reading is brilliant.
I inhererited my Uncle Larry's book addiction---so I've read all that are on the list now (6 May 2006)--and the list is as streong as ever. This is a shockingly fantastic book.
The presentation is: Obective, Socially responsible, Overwhelmingly well-researched with proof in detail.
One reviewer wrote that Scott's delivery was "snobby" and "overread." So it is not for everyone, I know. This material is fact intensive, politically charged, and impeccably researched-the Sample is indicative of this long book--I listened and I thought: "Audible's first instant *classic*"---especially when you consider the price of the book-- If you are interested in this type of material: anthropology, politics, human nature, I could not recommend this more highly.
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- Robert
- 08-29-11
A must read
I don't think most people welcome the knowledge contained in this selection. What's the expression?... more information than I wanted to know. But it's not more information than we need to know. The book is long. As a biologist and geek, it was not too long for me. While most of what I have listened to by Scott Brick has been fiction and I have not always appreciated him as a reader, I believe he was perfect for this book. My only concern is that because of its length, some readers might be turned off and this is not a subject that should be turned off or not listened and paid attention to.
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- M.
- 12-15-10
Five Star Substance - One Star Narration
Add this to the long list of "Bricked" books appearing on Audible. Scott Brick's narrative style is a distraction from the actual substance of the book. I enjoyed the substance of the book, but had a very difficult time reaching it through the unnecessarily dramatic reading. Mr. Brick has narrated many other books I would like to listen to, and I have suffered through a couple of others, but will not make the mistake of purchasing another book read by him.
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- Dave Staats
- 08-12-11
Great for anyone. Should be required in school.
This is a fascinating soup to nuts description of the food chain particularly in America. It felt like Mr. Pollan did a great job of presenting all sides of many questions in a way that leaves the reader free to make the best of some rather difficult choices. Right now, many people don't even realize there ARE choices. One great point of this book is that we don't really know what we are putting in ourselves. Scott Brick wasn't as hammy as usual since it was non-fiction.
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- Joao
- 11-01-09
You owe yourself to listen to this book
This book is big, and the reason it's big is because there's a lot to say about this subject. You may decide to not change anything in your habits, but at least you'll be making a conscious decision. This book talks about how a lot of other people make decisions for us on what we eat in a journalistic way that is not radical. Tells it like it is, backed up with research. I thank the writer for getting this book out there and the reader/producers for making it possible for me to get its contents during my commute.
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