Michael Pollan is a contributing writer for the NYT Magazine who also teaches writing in the Graduate School for Journalism at UC Berkeley. His writings received numerous awards. In 2002 his The Botany of Desire (book 164) was a national bestseller. (For his books I've read, click on his name.)

His 11-pp Introduction says the book is “a long and fairly involved answer to the seemingly simple question: ‘What should we have for dinner?’ – the best way to answer the question was to go back to the very beginning, to follow the food chain that sustains us, all the way from the earth to the plate – to a small number of actual meals.” The book’s three parts discuss the three principle food chains that sustain us today: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer.” Each of the three parts follows “one principle food chain from beginning to end: from a plant, or group of plants, photosynthesizing calories in the sun, all the way to a meal at the dinner end of that food chain.”

Part I: Industrial (the biggest, longest chain) focuses on corn – “the keystone species” that is the hallmark of the industrial food chain. Corn products of agri-business (such as sweeteners) dominate this “factory system.” Monocultures (with many fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides) and feedlots (with many antibiotics) are unnatural treatment of both land and animals. Details of feedlots that force animals to eat unnatural “foodstuffs” – you’ll be appalled at what these consist of – don’t produce very healthy products but maximize profits – the main goal of agribusiness. Political clout results in strong biases for agribusiness over farmers’ needs. Part II: Pastoral (grass) – describes alternatives to the “factory system” that can be organic, local, or biological – he describes what each means. In contrast to the factory approach, he describes a remarkable advanced pastoral approach of frequent rotations between cow pastures, with each animal followed by a different kind that makes best use of what the previous animals left behind – labor intensive, but coordinated chemical-free and effective use of natural processes. In Part III: Personal he learns to grow food and be a hunter-gather. All parts end in a typical meal – but you’ll know what’s in it and how it came to be – like it or not. Although many details are not for the faint of heart, I recommend this book by Michael Pollan to all – omnivores or not.