The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World (reissued)

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In the course of his journey, he discovers that the cook occupies a special place in the world, standing squarely between nature and culture. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Since we cannot directly inhale and use the energy of the sun, we rely on other organisms to process the sun’s energy and convert it into the nutrients that we can process. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science.

Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Whereas most humans think we are Darwin's most accomplished species, Pollan convincingly argues that plants — even our own front lawns — have evolved to use us as much as we use them. Pollan began writing about gardening and agriculture after exploring it as a hobby, and has since become one of America’s most prominent voices on issues relating to the modern food system.The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Pollan shows that many of the ingredients in his family’s fast-food feast originally came from corn, and he illustrates just how many resources have gone into this meal that, although cheap for the consumer, carries enormous costs, all of which are spread through the industrial food chain spanning the entire country.

Pollan eats his McDonald’s meal in the car with his wife Judith and son Isaac, and the meal evokes its removal from nature—a removal that he witnessed in tracing the origins of its ingredients.

Salatin sneers at “Big Organic,” which he considers to be just as bad as the industrial food system. Nature, left to its own devices, will produce the plants and animals that humans use for food, but human intervention has inalterably changed these processes, from the agricultural development and cultivation of land and the domestication of animals to the scientific engineering of highly processed foods. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Polyface operates as a nearly self-sufficient and closed system, one that relies on the natural functions of its organisms and ecosystems.