Book on CD: The Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan, narrated by Scott Brick.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals looks at how food has changed over the years, much of it due to large-scale industrial farming and US government policy towards agriculture. He believes our changing relationship to food has led to “our national eating disorder” which includes the steep increase in obesity. The book traces four meals back to their origins, which is not an easy task. The first meal is a McDonald’s lunch, which he eats with his family in the car (1 of every 5 meals in the US are eaten in cars!). Did you know that there are 38 ingredients in Chicken McNuggets? The second is a meal made with ingredients purchased from Whole Foods. The third is a meal made from ingredients harvested from a small sustainable farm in Virginia. And lastly, a meal made with ingredients he foraged in the wild. Pollan has a very engaging writing style that never allows the book to get bogged down in details. Narrated by Scott Brick, who is an entertaining reader, the book was in turns disturbing, amusing, enlightening, but never boring.