Reddit Reddit reviews The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

We found 9 Reddit comments about The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
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9 Reddit comments about The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals:

u/scaliacheese · 24 pointsr/likeus

I don't agree with this kind of all-or-nothing attitude. It's not so easy to become vegetarian, let alone vegan, especially after being a meat-eater for all of your life. Just because you believe animals have agency doesn't necessarily mean that eating animals is tantamount to "condoning the torture of farmed animals." You can be a responsible consumer of meat and try to buy from more ethical farms; you can try to cut back on your meat intake; you can do other things that support animal welfare while you struggle with the omnivore's dilemma.

Expecting people to drastically change their lifestyles is exactly the sort of attitude that causes some people to not even try in the first place. Baby steps are effective. Looking down your nose at the very natural act of eating meat is not.

u/kbrosnan · 8 pointsr/investing

It depends on a lot of things Pollan spends a bit of time talking about it in Omnivore's Dilemma

Most beef in the US is grain fed, often corn. The corn is grown with fertilizers normally derived from natural gas and sometimes other petrochemical compounds.

The energy costs of gathering natural gas, converting it to ammonia, creating fertilizer, transporting fertilizer, growing the corn, transporting corn to the cattle, transporting the cattle to a slaughtering house, transporting the beef to a market greatly exceeds the amount of energy that can be derived from eating the beef.

There are farming techniques that can avoid a bit of this. Pollan talks about this too. A farm that has cattle that eats grass, chickens that eat bugs from the cow pastures, the dried cow droppings are used for fertilizer, etc. The farm tries to stay self contained.

u/Mr_Fitzgibbons · 6 pointsr/todayilearned

If you want to get royally pissed off at our government and the food industry, I highly suggest reading both The Omnivores Dilemma and Food Politics.

The general run down is: You're eating garbage, and you have been for a long time, and when people try to properly educate the masses (including children), you better believe you're going to be greeted with massive opposition from food industry giants and their lobbyists.

u/Cdresden · 4 pointsr/suggestmeabook

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee.

I also like Michael Pollan's writing on the natural history of food, notably The Omnivore's Dilemma.

u/jmk816 · 3 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City is an amazing book. The main point is about Ford trying to create a company town in Brazil in order to grow rubber. But the books gives you a great picture of Ford the man, the company, what the era was like and the larger philosophical and economic ideas behind this project. Honestly, for me it read like fiction- I couldn't put it down.

They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967 looks at the Vietnam war from three different perspectives, from students protesting, to the actual front and then from the government officials. The narrative is amazing and it's so well researched that it was captivating as well, but I think he really captured the feeling of the times as well, which is so great to see in a book.

Michael Pollan is know most for Omnivore's Dilemma (which is a great read) but I really love his first book too, and that doesn't get as much attention, which is still very interesting is The Botany of Desire. He goes through the history of 4 different plants, apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes. Not too interesting on the surface, but he makes the stories fascinating. It's a great in its overarching nature about our relationships with plants.

[Marriage: A History by Stephanie Coontz] (http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-History-How-Love-Conquered/dp/014303667X) is another one I always recommend. It is an expansive work showing that the idea of Marriage has been in flux since the beginning and completely depended on the culture and time period. It's well researched but also a compelling work.

u/badchromosome · 2 pointsr/keto

It's not at all about ketogenic or other carb-restricted diets, but The Omnivore's Dilemma tells the story of Joel Salatin's success in rejuvenating exhausted farmland in the Shenandoah Valley (after generations of sharecropping). The book also delves into the more typical practices of modern American industrial-scale agriculture. Salatin's approach incorporates multiple animal types--cattle, pigs, poultry, etc.--and the careful rotation of animal species through his pastures to support and improve the quality of the soil and the grasses it produces. The turnaround he accomplished on depleted farmland is nothing short of extraordinary. His ultimate goal has been to get to the point of relying only on nature's input of sunshine and rainfall to have a healthy, productive, and sustainable farming method.

u/ifurmothronlyknw · 2 pointsr/pics

Hi there. Thanks for taking the time to write this post. I read every word as I know everyone's time is valuable and gave this the attention it deserved.



My wife and I have already started restricting red meat. Meaning we only have it once in a blue moon. She has given up chicken entirely, which means I have all but given up chicken. My next goal is to give up pork. Pigs are an incredible animal with a degree of intelligence that I once heard is greater than a dog's and akin to a 3 yr old child. They are sweet creatures and I hope I can one day give up the meat they produce.


Needless to say, we are moving in that direction but are taking small steps. Not sure if you are a reader but if you are, and haven't read it already, I suggest you pick up a book called Omnivore's Dilemma. Read the first couple of reviews for a feel of what you'd be in store for if you decide to read it. Basically takes you through the food chain from start to finish. The parts that got to me particular was how "organic" may not necessarily mean organic in how we believe it should be, the industrialization of the food chain and how synthesized corn is used in everything including animal feed (going against evolution meaning animals cannot digest it correctly but its used because it fattens them up fast and cheap), and how "free range" is not free range. Check it out- and thanks again for your post.

u/UnhWut · -1 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

If you're interested in a follow on read, The Omnivore's Dilemma talks about big corn a lot, (and how those subsidies cause most of our food to be corn based), and also other agrabusiness like big organic, (and why it's often misleading to call it as such).

https://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals-ebook/dp/B000SEIDR0/