The Omnivore's Dilemma: Young Readers Edition by Michael Pollan (English) Paperb

Description: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Richie Chevat "Includes 12 important food rules"--Jacket. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description This acclaimed bestseller and modern classic has changed Americas relationship with food. Its essential reading for kids who care about the environment and climate change.This acclaimedbestseller and modern classic has changed Americas relationship with food. Its essential reading for kids who care about the environment and climate change."Whats for dinner?" seemed like a simple question-until journalist and supermarket detective Michael Pollan delved behind the scenes. From fast food and big organic to small farms and old-fashioned hunting and gathering, this young readers adaptation of Pollans famous food-chain exploration encourages kids to consider the personal and global implications of their food choices.With plenty of photos, graphs, and visuals, The Omnivores Dilemma serves up a bold message to the generation most impacted by climate change- Its time to take charge of our national eating habits-and it starts with you. Author Biography Michael Pollan is the author of five books- Second Nature, A Place of My Own, The Botany of Desire, which received the Borders Original Voices Award for the best nonfiction work of 2001 and was recognized as a best book of the year by the American Booksellers Association and Amazon, and the national bestellers, The Omnivores Dilemma, and In Defense of Food.A longtime contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, Pollan is also the Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley. His writing on food and agriculture has won numerous awards, including the Reuters/World Conservation Union Global Award in Environmental Journalism, the James Beard Award, and the Genesis Award from the American Humane Association. Excerpt from Book INTRODUCTION Before I began working on this book, I never gave much thought to where my food came from. I didnt spend much time worrying about what I should and shouldnt eat. Food came from the supermarket and as long as it tasted good, I ate it. Until, that is, I had the chance to peer behind the curtain of the modern American food chain. This came in 1998. I was working on an article about genetically modified food--food created by changing plant DNA in the laboratory. My reporting took me to the Magic Valley in Idaho, where most of the french fries youve ever eaten begin their life as Russet Burbank potatoes. There I visited a farm like no farm Id ever seen or imagined. It was fifteen thousand acres, divided into 135-acre crop circles. Each circle resembled the green face of a tremendous clock with a slowly rotating second hand. That sweeping second hand was the irrigation machine, a pipe more than a thousand feet long that delivered a steady rain of water, fertilizer, and pesticide to the potato plants. The whole farm was managed from a bank of computer monitors in a control room. Sitting in that room, the farmer could, at the flick of a switch, douse his crops with water or whatever chemical he thought they needed. One of these chemicals was a pesticide called Monitor, used to control bugs. The chemical is so toxic to the nervous system that no one is allowed in the field for five days after it is sprayed. Even if the irrigation machine breaks during that time, farmers wont send a worker out to fix it because the chemical is so dangerous. Theyd rather let that whole 135-acres crop of potatoes dry up and die. That wasnt all. During the growing season, some pesticides get inside the potato plant so that they will kill any bug that takes a bite. But these pesticides mean people cant eat the potatoes while theyre growing, either. After the harvest, the potatoes are stored for six months in a gigantic shed. Here the chemicals gradually fade until the potatoes are safe to eat. Only then can they be turned into french fries. Thats how we grow potatoes? I had no idea. A BURGER WITH YOUR FRIES? A few years later, while working on another story, I found myself driving down Interstate 5, the big highway that runs between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I was on my way to visit a farmer in Californias Central Valley. It was one of those gorgeous autumn days when the hills of California are gold. Out of nowhere, a really nasty smell assaulted my nostrils--the stench of a gas station restroom sorely in need of attention. But I could see nothing that might explain the smell--all around me were the same blue skies and golden hills. And then, very suddenly, the golden hills turned jet-black on both sides of the highway: black with tens of thousands of cattle crowded onto a carpet of manure that stretched as far as the eye could see. I was driving through a feedlot, with tens of thousands of animals bellying up to a concrete trough that ran along the side of the highway for what seemed like miles. Behind them rose two vast pyramids, one yellow, the other black: a pile of corn and a pile of manure. The cattle, I realized, were spending their days transforming the stuff of one pile into the stuff of the other. This is where our meat comes from? I had no idea. Suddenly that "happy meal" of hamburger and fries looked a lot less happy. Between the feedlot and the potato farm, I realized just how little I knew about the way our food is produced. The picture in my head, of small family farms with white picket fences and red barns and happy animals on green pastures, was seriously out of date. THE OMNIVORES DILEMMA Now I had a big problem. I went from never thinking about where my food came from to thinking about it all the time. I started worrying about what I should and shouldnt eat. Just because food was in the supermarket, did that mean it was good to eat? The more I studied and read about food the more I realized I was suffering from a form of the omnivores dilemma. This is a big name for a very old problem. Human beings are omnivores. That means we eat plants, meat, mushrooms--just about anything. But because we are omnivores we have very little built-in instinct that tells us which foods are good for us and which arent. Thats the dilemma--we can eat anything, but how do we know what to eat? The omnivores dilemma has been around a long time. But today we have a very modern form of this dilemma. We have a thousand choices of food in our supermarkets, but we dont really know where our food comes from. As I discovered, just finding out how our potatoes are grown might scare you off french fries for the rest of your life. In the past, people knew about food because they grew it or hunted it themselves. They learned about food from their parents and grandparents. They cooked and ate the same foods people in their part of the world had always eaten. Modern Americans dont have strong food traditions. Instead we have dozens of different "experts" who give us lots of different advice about what to eat and what not to eat. Its one thing to be crazy about food because you like to eat. But I found I was going crazy from worrying about food. So I set out to try to solve the modern omnivores dilemma. I decided to become a food detective, to find out where our food comes from and what exactly it is we are eating. My detective work became the book you now hold in your hands. FOUR MEALS As a food detective, I had to go back to the beginning, to the farms and fields where our food is grown. Then I followed it each step of the way, and watched what happened to our food on its way to our stomachs. Each step was another link in a chain--a food chain. A food chain is a system for growing, making, and delivering food. In this book, I follow four different food chains. Each one has its own section. They are: Industrial This is where most of our food comes from today. This chain starts in a giant field, usually in the Midwest, where a single crop is grown--corn, or perhaps soybeans--and ends up in a supermarket or fast-food restaurant. Industrial Organic This food is grown on large industrial farms, but with only natural fertilizers, and natural bug and weed control. It is sold in the same way as industrial food. Local Sustainable This is food grown on small farms that raise lots of different kinds of crops and animals. The food from the farm doesnt need to be processed, and it travels a short distance--to a farmers market, for example--before it reaches your table. Hunter-Gatherer This is the oldest type of food chain there is. Its hardly a chain at all, really. It is made up simply of you, hunting, growing, or finding your food. All these food chains end the same way--with a meal. And so I thought it important to end each section of the book with a meal, whether it was a fast-food hamburger eaten in a speeding car, or a meal I made myself from start to finish. THE PLEASURES OF EATING When I was ten years old, I started my own "farm" in a patch of our backyard. From that age until now, I have always had a vegetable garden, even if only a small one. The feeling of being connected to food is very important to me. Its an experience that I think most of us are missing today. Were so confused about food that weve forgotten what food really is--the bounty of the earth and the power of the sun captured by plants and animals. There were parts of this book that were difficult to write, because the facts were so unpleasant. Some of those facts might make you lose your appetite. But the point of this book is not to scare you or make you afraid of food. I think we enjoy food much more if we take a little time to know what it is were putting in our mouths. Then we can really appreciate the truly wonderful gifts that plants and animals have given us. To me, thats the point of this book, to help you rediscover the pleasures of food and learn to enjoy your meals in a new way. The Omnivores Solution: Some Tips for Eating Ill bet I know your last burning question: "What now?" Now that you know all that you know about the food chains we depend on, how exactly should you fill up your plate? Most of my readers have the same question, so Ive developed a handful of everyday rules to guide you through the newfound challenges (and possibilities!) of mealtime. (You can find more of them in the book I wrote after The Omnivores Dilemma , called In Defense of Food .) My advice comes in three parts: EAT REAL FOOD. That sounds pretty simple, but you now know its not so easy to do. There are many things disguised as food in our supermarkets and fast-food restaurants; I call them "edible food-like substances" (EFLS for short) and suggest you avoid them. But how do you tell the difference between real food and EFLS? Here are a few rules of thumb: Dont eat anything your great-grandmother wouldnt recognize as food. Imagine shes by your side when youre picking up something to eat. Does she have any idea what that Go-GURT portable yogurt tube is or how youre supposed to eat it? (She might think its toothpaste.) The same goes for that Honey-Nut Cheerios, cereal bar, the one with the layer of fake milk running through the middle, or the (even weirder) cereal "straw." Dont eat anything with more than five ingredients, or with ingredients you dont recognize or cant pronounce. As with the Twinkie, that long ingredient list means youre looking at a highly processed product--an edible Details ISBN1101993839 Author Richie Chevat Pages 400 Language English ISBN-10 1101993839 ISBN-13 9781101993835 Media Book Format Paperback Residence CT, US Short Title OMNIVORES DILEMMA Illustrations Yes Subtitle Young Readers Edition Place of Publication New York, NY Country of Publication United States Imprint Penguin USA UK Release Date 2015-08-04 Year 2015 Publication Date 2015-08-04 US Release Date 2015-08-04 Audience Age 10 Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc Replaces 9780803735002 DEWEY 338.10973 Audience Children / Juvenile NZ Release Date 2017-01-14 AU Release Date 2017-01-14 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:94848348;

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