Book Review: Like to Eat? The Omnivore’s Dilemma a ‘must read’

I’m reading three books at the same time, four if I count the one I peek at during TV commercials that concerns Bob Dylan’s big song, Like a Rolling Stone, and though The Little Green Handbook by R. Neilsen is loaded with amazing facts, figures and charts [U.S. military budget is 42 % of gov’t spending and rising, education is less than 7%] I spend most of my time with my nose in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

I’m on page 219, slightly over halfway through the very readable text, and getting an alarming and long-overdue education about our continent’s over-reliance on corn and industrial-sized, fossil-fuel-driven farming practices that debase humans, animals and our ecological surroundings. [And it’s true. If factory farms had glass walls many of us would never eat beef, pork or chicken again.]

But I’m also learning about how farming can be a very innovative, rewarding and environmentally friendly vocation or life.


For example, author Michael Pollan spends time on a family farm that cultivates grasses, mainly dependent on free sunlight, that in turn support the healthy growth of a wide variety of animals and by-products.

Chickens team up with cows to manage the grass and replenish the soil, chickens and rabbits team up to provide a unique cash crop, turkeys keep grape vines in tip-top shape, pigs turn cow patties and grass into free, rich compost, and together with a farmer who knows more about plants and animals than 20 factory farmers put together forms an enterprise that rewards the land rather than kills it.

Read the following quote and tell me where the author was at the time - a factory farm or grass farm.

“Unfolding here before us, I realized, was a most impressive form of alchemy: cow patties in the process of being transformed into exceptionally tasty eggs.”

I recommend the book highly to anyone who wants to eat healthy food and leave the air, water and land in good condition for future generations.

[Check Recommended Reading in the right hand panel for a link to an even better book review and go to Motorcycle Miles to read a bit about my next adventure.]