Summary Of The Omnivore's Dilemma

Eating has profoundly impact and influence on individual life. We can tell where most people are going to end up in life simply based on the choice they made on food. Michael Pollen discusses in his article " The Omnivore’s Dilemma" a true understanding of what we eat and what we should eat. Pollan points out that alternative method of producing food that is being overshadowed by the big, industrial system we have in place to provide consumers with sustenance.

Pollan talks about most of the organic food we consume today is produced from the so-called “industrial organic” farms, which belong firmly to the industrial food chain rather than the ideal organic food chain. First, the reality of “organic food” chain is largely inaccurately reported.
For example, Although supermarket produce and goods may have the label of organic, it has been shipped all around the country in vehicles powered by fossil fuels. Many literary critics focus their reports on some small and non-representative organic farms which follow the “organic ideal”, while making the public believe such is the reality of all the farms producing organic food.Third, the organic food industry is dominated by large companies which are more cost-efficient than small farms. The reason is that large companies operate in industrialized ways such as raising large numbers of livestock or poultry in confined places, just as industrial food producers do. They label their product as organic as long as they meet the vague standards set up by the USDA, but such “industrial organic” food does not resemble what “organic” originally means. Although small farms often come closer to the ideal and are even more productive acre-for-acre than their large-scale counterparts, they cannot keep up with demand for large quantities of a single vegetable that national grocery chains require to stay stocked