--- product_id: 199706 title: "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" price: "₪82" currency: ILS in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.co.il/products/199706-the-omnivores-dilemma-a-natural-history-of-four-meals store_origin: IL region: Israel --- # Explores organic & sustainable food systems Deep-dive into 4 distinct meals Unbiased, fact-driven investigative narrative The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals **Price:** ₪82 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Summary > 🌍 Unlock the hidden truths behind every bite — don’t just eat, understand! ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - **How much does it cost?** ₪82 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.co.il](https://www.desertcart.co.il/products/199706-the-omnivores-dilemma-a-natural-history-of-four-meals) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **Unmasking 'Organic':** Reveals how industrial forces shape and dilute organic food standards. - • **Award-Worthy Insight:** Ranked top 10 in Gastronomy History with 4.6-star acclaim from 5,400+ readers. - • **Masterful Storytelling:** Harvard-taught author delivers complex food history with gripping clarity. - • **Ethical Consumerism Decoded:** Empowers readers to rethink food origins, nutrition, and sustainability. - • **Four Meals, Four Perspectives:** Dissects the US food system through fast food, organic, family farm, and foraged meals. ## Overview Michael Pollan’s 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' is a meticulously researched exploration of America’s food system, using four meals as case studies to reveal the complex origins, politics, and ethics behind what we eat. Combining rigorous facts with compelling storytelling, it challenges readers to rethink food production, sustainability, and consumer responsibility in a way that’s both accessible and transformative. ## Description "Outstanding . . . a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our eating habits." — The New Yorker One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year and Winner of the James Beard Award Author of This is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind and the #1 New York Times Bestseller In Defense of Food and Food Rules What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species. In the years since, Pollan’s revolutionary examination has changed the way Americans think about food. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world. Ten years later, The Omnivore’s Dilemma continues to transform the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating. Review: An important story told by a great storyteller - I listened to this book on audio after it was recommended by a friend, and I'm glad I did. I hope you will purchase it and read it, too! The first thing to know is that the author is such a good storyteller that he teaches writing at Harvard. To dissect and tell the very complex story of the USA food system, he uses four case studies (consisting of four meals) as a framework to examine the overall system in the United States through which food is produced, regulated, subsidized, packaged, distributed, marketed, and sold in the USA. The four meals he uses to dissect and analyze this system bring it down to earth in a practical way that enables one to understand it. The four meals consist of (1) a fast food meal consumed by his family, (2) an "organic," "natural " meal using the ingredients purchased from a high-end retail grocery chain, (3) a meal produced by a farm family that grows virtually everything they eat, and (4) a meal in which he attempted to mirror the type of food a hunter gather might have been able to obtain by foraging and hunting their own food. For each of these meals, he examines each ingredient used and traces that ingredient back to its ultimate origins. When I say ultimate origins, I mean for example not just the cow in the slaughter lot for the McDonald's hamburger, but the corn that fed that cow, the systems by which the corn farmer produced the grain, the USDA agricultural subsidies that resulted in the production of that corn, the transportation and delivery systems ... you get the drift. He uses this example to examine an extremely complex system and a way that makes it understandable and digestible. Best of all, it's not ever boring. He tells the story In such a way that you feel like you get to know the people involved and their stories, why they do what they do, what their challenges are, and what rewards are. And then for each meal, he describes what it was like to eat it, which is kind of fun too. For the fast food meal, he and his family drove while they ate it, since it was supposed to be "fast" and "on the go" (my words). For the second meal, the organic meal, he discusses the initial movement for sustainability and how that got co-opted by big business and the USDA, so that the term "organic" got to be controlled by industry and now no longer means what a lot of people think it does. Instead, the requirements for being called "organic," are so complex that small farms are shut out, and the huge operations that have grown to meet the demand for "organic " are just about as industrialized as the industrial agriculture described in the fast food restaurant meal. The third meal, originating from a sustainable family farm that grows all its own food and produces all its own fertilizer, is the most intriguing for me personally. It discusses the challenges faced by that small family farm and ways they have Ingeniously worked around outrageously cumbersome USDA agricultural regulations that are designed to control excesses of industrial farms but which are also applied to the tiniest of family farms without regard for differences in scale or farming methods. For the last meal, he reveals his credentials as an amazing home cook, when he describes the feast he prepared for his guests after he participated in a hunt to kill a wild boar and roast it. I hope my description hasn't included too many spoilers, because the information in the book is extremely worthwhile and worth your read and your time and your consideration as you think about the sources of your food, the nutritional value of food, how to become a more ethical consumer of food, and importantly, to be aware of our overall food system and ways that it really needs to be completely restructured , including especially restructuring of USDA agricultural policy, if the US food system is to be come responsive to human nutritional needs and sustainable for the future. Review: One of the most important books in decades - I have to say, this is one fantastic book. Amazing. One of those rare books that forces your eyes wide open to an issue that you'd only dimly been aware of. It's one of those books everyone in the country should read, one that should be of cataclysmic proportions and Change Everything. I won't destroy the effect of the book by trying to re-state the information in the book and doing a bad job. Let's just say that everyone who eats food should read it. As a rationalist, I've always been sympathetic to the "Organic foods" movement but uncomfortable with all the pseudo-mystical thinking that's often associated with it. It made sense to me in principle that growing food the way evolution intended made sense, but I found the arguments I often encountered to often be mostly feel-good, unspecific talk about Cycles of Nature and Gaia and Earth Mother and so on. They weren't fact-y enough for me. This book definitely is. It doesn't have one pseudoscientific vibe to it. Conservatives can read it just as comfortably as the most crunchy-granola hippie. Pollan should have won a Pulitzer Prize for this book. It's magnificently researched and written. It has plenty of hard fact, but instead of being boring, his clear, simple writing brings them to life and gives them meaning. He makes his cases carefully, using evidence and fact, and gradually builds to conclusions that I'm forced to admit are inescapable. It's one of those few fantastic books that takes a subject that's usually dull and dry and makes it not just interesting but, at least for me, *gripping*. It not only educated me about a whole hell of a lot of things I didn't know, but it walked me though, step by logical step, the reasons why the way our current food production system is seriously broken and horrible for us the consumers, for the farmers, for the plants and animals involved, and for the planet. I had heard this time and time again from various people, but I always took it with a big grain of salt because the people saying these things also often said ridiculous things about other topics, and I thought their virulence might be largely fed by generic anti-capitalist bias. While I was never exactly an opponent of natural foods or a fan of factory farming, my feelings were nonspecific because I hadn't really looked into it very much, and I had a real skepticism of all the wild accusations made by the more radical people in some movements. But now, I'm convinced. Michael Pollan has presented me with actual objective facts, presented clearly and logically, in an unbiased way, and convinced me through the sheer power of his reasoning. My mind wasn't changed 180 degrees, but it was definitely changed 90 degrees. In some cases the logic is so clear it had me practically slapping my forehead in shock at how stupid people can be. It's been quite a long time since I've been so captivated by the crystal clear beauty of the elegant logic in a perfectly crafted argument. One thing I like best is that Pollan is largely unbiased himself. Yes, the book does come to conclusions that are very much against some practices and for very much for others, but he makes the arguments so clear and strong that you can only end up agreeing with him. He doesn't, for example, come out with a glowing, uncritical, credulous affirmation of "organic" food, as I had expected. While generally positive, he acknowledges serious problems with the system. I can't recommend this book any more strongly. If it's completely ignored by government and industry - and I'm sure it will be - it's a crime. This may be the most important book in decades. ## Features - Food ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #26,366 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #12 in Gastronomy History (Books) #57 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences #155 in Sociology Reference | | Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 5,456 Reviews | ## Images ![The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81harH8SHoL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ An important story told by a great storyteller *by A***X on July 6, 2024* I listened to this book on audio after it was recommended by a friend, and I'm glad I did. I hope you will purchase it and read it, too! The first thing to know is that the author is such a good storyteller that he teaches writing at Harvard. To dissect and tell the very complex story of the USA food system, he uses four case studies (consisting of four meals) as a framework to examine the overall system in the United States through which food is produced, regulated, subsidized, packaged, distributed, marketed, and sold in the USA. The four meals he uses to dissect and analyze this system bring it down to earth in a practical way that enables one to understand it. The four meals consist of (1) a fast food meal consumed by his family, (2) an "organic," "natural " meal using the ingredients purchased from a high-end retail grocery chain, (3) a meal produced by a farm family that grows virtually everything they eat, and (4) a meal in which he attempted to mirror the type of food a hunter gather might have been able to obtain by foraging and hunting their own food. For each of these meals, he examines each ingredient used and traces that ingredient back to its ultimate origins. When I say ultimate origins, I mean for example not just the cow in the slaughter lot for the McDonald's hamburger, but the corn that fed that cow, the systems by which the corn farmer produced the grain, the USDA agricultural subsidies that resulted in the production of that corn, the transportation and delivery systems ... you get the drift. He uses this example to examine an extremely complex system and a way that makes it understandable and digestible. Best of all, it's not ever boring. He tells the story In such a way that you feel like you get to know the people involved and their stories, why they do what they do, what their challenges are, and what rewards are. And then for each meal, he describes what it was like to eat it, which is kind of fun too. For the fast food meal, he and his family drove while they ate it, since it was supposed to be "fast" and "on the go" (my words). For the second meal, the organic meal, he discusses the initial movement for sustainability and how that got co-opted by big business and the USDA, so that the term "organic" got to be controlled by industry and now no longer means what a lot of people think it does. Instead, the requirements for being called "organic," are so complex that small farms are shut out, and the huge operations that have grown to meet the demand for "organic " are just about as industrialized as the industrial agriculture described in the fast food restaurant meal. The third meal, originating from a sustainable family farm that grows all its own food and produces all its own fertilizer, is the most intriguing for me personally. It discusses the challenges faced by that small family farm and ways they have Ingeniously worked around outrageously cumbersome USDA agricultural regulations that are designed to control excesses of industrial farms but which are also applied to the tiniest of family farms without regard for differences in scale or farming methods. For the last meal, he reveals his credentials as an amazing home cook, when he describes the feast he prepared for his guests after he participated in a hunt to kill a wild boar and roast it. I hope my description hasn't included too many spoilers, because the information in the book is extremely worthwhile and worth your read and your time and your consideration as you think about the sources of your food, the nutritional value of food, how to become a more ethical consumer of food, and importantly, to be aware of our overall food system and ways that it really needs to be completely restructured , including especially restructuring of USDA agricultural policy, if the US food system is to be come responsive to human nutritional needs and sustainable for the future. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ One of the most important books in decades *by H***N on April 26, 2007* I have to say, this is one fantastic book. Amazing. One of those rare books that forces your eyes wide open to an issue that you'd only dimly been aware of. It's one of those books everyone in the country should read, one that should be of cataclysmic proportions and Change Everything. I won't destroy the effect of the book by trying to re-state the information in the book and doing a bad job. Let's just say that everyone who eats food should read it. As a rationalist, I've always been sympathetic to the "Organic foods" movement but uncomfortable with all the pseudo-mystical thinking that's often associated with it. It made sense to me in principle that growing food the way evolution intended made sense, but I found the arguments I often encountered to often be mostly feel-good, unspecific talk about Cycles of Nature and Gaia and Earth Mother and so on. They weren't fact-y enough for me. This book definitely is. It doesn't have one pseudoscientific vibe to it. Conservatives can read it just as comfortably as the most crunchy-granola hippie. Pollan should have won a Pulitzer Prize for this book. It's magnificently researched and written. It has plenty of hard fact, but instead of being boring, his clear, simple writing brings them to life and gives them meaning. He makes his cases carefully, using evidence and fact, and gradually builds to conclusions that I'm forced to admit are inescapable. It's one of those few fantastic books that takes a subject that's usually dull and dry and makes it not just interesting but, at least for me, *gripping*. It not only educated me about a whole hell of a lot of things I didn't know, but it walked me though, step by logical step, the reasons why the way our current food production system is seriously broken and horrible for us the consumers, for the farmers, for the plants and animals involved, and for the planet. I had heard this time and time again from various people, but I always took it with a big grain of salt because the people saying these things also often said ridiculous things about other topics, and I thought their virulence might be largely fed by generic anti-capitalist bias. While I was never exactly an opponent of natural foods or a fan of factory farming, my feelings were nonspecific because I hadn't really looked into it very much, and I had a real skepticism of all the wild accusations made by the more radical people in some movements. But now, I'm convinced. Michael Pollan has presented me with actual objective facts, presented clearly and logically, in an unbiased way, and convinced me through the sheer power of his reasoning. My mind wasn't changed 180 degrees, but it was definitely changed 90 degrees. In some cases the logic is so clear it had me practically slapping my forehead in shock at how stupid people can be. It's been quite a long time since I've been so captivated by the crystal clear beauty of the elegant logic in a perfectly crafted argument. One thing I like best is that Pollan is largely unbiased himself. Yes, the book does come to conclusions that are very much against some practices and for very much for others, but he makes the arguments so clear and strong that you can only end up agreeing with him. He doesn't, for example, come out with a glowing, uncritical, credulous affirmation of "organic" food, as I had expected. While generally positive, he acknowledges serious problems with the system. I can't recommend this book any more strongly. If it's completely ignored by government and industry - and I'm sure it will be - it's a crime. This may be the most important book in decades. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Philosophical, Informative, and with Field Trips too *by T***N on May 30, 2012* The Omnivore's Dilemma (a review) Probably, if you were going to read it you have already, but if you haven't ... you might want to pick it up. It was the #1 New York Times Bestseller in 2006 and it's still quite relevant today -- maybe more so, who knows. Normally we may think of evolution as a drive toward complexity, but bacteria has gone the other direction, it's evolved downward into simplicity and into very niche environments. This is an excellent survival strategy - what will survive any catastrophe you can imagine? Somewhere, bacteria, probably. But most animals have opted for complexity and flexibility instead. They are able to move about and adapt to new environments. But here's the rub: since they choose to be flexible, they have to be flexible. There is a direct analogy in the gastronomic world, it turns out. Some creatures have taken the simple approach by consuming a limited range of things. They can afford to do this because they have evolved elaborate intestines with which to work food over thoroughly and in which to harbor bacteria which converts one sort of input into all the various nutrients their bodies need. These are the herbivores and carnivores, and genetic code alone, which we call instinct, is sufficient to get them fed. On the other hand, omnivores have taken the high road; their innards are leaner and less elaborate so they must gather the right mix of inputs themselves. And in doing so, they must avoid the dangerous ones. This requires a lot of care, and thought, and therefore ... big brains. It's a tradeoff of a simple lifestyle and an elaborate belly, or a complicated lifestyle, and a lean interior. So the omnivore's dilemma is gathering how to gather the right foods and not take in the harmful kind. That in itself is a dilemma, but Pollan points out there are plenty of moral quandries as well. The book is as entertaining as The Botany of Desire (2001), in which he looked at the story of apples, potatos, tulips, and marijuana from the plants' perspective. Here he takes on corn, grass, meat, and fungus, and once again we benefit from his careful research and introspection (the latter, occasionally laid on a little thick, for my taste). He also does a great deal of field observation, visiting the food factories and farms, talking to many different kinds of people, gathering mushrooms, and even slitting some chicken necks himself, and shooting a wild boar. He describes much of this so well I felt I had done it too. His best field trips included a large sustainable farm in Virginia where production is high, costs are relatively low, waste is almost nil, and the animals are mostly content. It's most impressive in the cleverness with which it all works, and the owner explains that in detail. It's a stark contrast to some of the more corporate operations - like a standard corn-fed feedlot, a poultry farm, even an organic farm that turned out to be pretty much like the others. In these chapters the moral dilemmas come into the sharpest focus. Food -- if you haven't noticed -- has become a new moral battleground, and when Pollan disparaged the new methods, and the lower quality of food they sometimes produce at times I felt he didn't fully appreciate the countervailing moral implications of the much larger quantities turned out now. All that food is a good thing, too. When he marveled that corn production increased from 75 bu/acre in 1950 to 180 in 2006 (140% increase, and often to the detriment of small time farmers), he didn't mention that world population increased by 172% in the same period. Sometimes I though it was a little one-sided because the older methods could not easily produce the food we need now. Hybrid vigor, that gives us pumped up ears of corn, is itself infertile. That's not a Monsanto conspiracy -- as he intimates -- it is a fact of nature. Vigorous hybrids, like mules, are often -- oddly -- infertile. In the end it appears he was sometimes just exploring some of the more extreme views of his interviewees, as his own conclusions seemed balanced and reasonable, in my opinion. As a reader I felt I had been treated fairly. First, it's corn's dizzying ascendency as a food source, with the field trip to a chemical plant that rips the kernal pulp apart, sending it out in a tangle of different spigots -- some headed for the gas tank, others to the various mixers of myriad foodstuffs, others to make non-edibles. There's a good discussion of the political and economic forces driving the corn industry too. In the second section, on "grass," he works on a the sustainable Virginia farm, among other things. When it comes to meat, he compares the sustainable approach to that in a large organic poultry operation, a feedlot, and commercial slaughterhouse, and more. And all through the book he comments on underlying philosophical issues. And the section of fungus (mushrooms) is interesting from a botanical perspective, mostly. It could have been in The Botany of Desire. In the end he pulls the story together by describing his "perfect meal" made up of perfect ingredients, served to perfect guests. That just seemed unnecessary, to me but by that time I'd had a good enough intellectual and philosophical material to chew on - enough food for thought, you might say - to forgive him a little retrospective self-indulgence. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.co.il/products/199706-the-omnivores-dilemma-a-natural-history-of-four-meals](https://www.desertcart.co.il/products/199706-the-omnivores-dilemma-a-natural-history-of-four-meals) --- *Product available on Desertcart Israel* *Store origin: IL* *Last updated: 2026-05-30*