Jenny (Reading Envy)'s Reviews > The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

I can't remember the last time I read a book I learned so much from. This is highly recommended for anyone who wonders about food, obesity, organic, local, vegetarian, etc. Quotes if you're interested (but I could have quoted the entire book!). I know I will never look at corn the same way, nor will I ever buy the "cheap eggs."


(On obesity)"Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest."

"Nature never puts all her eggs in one basket."

"One day Frank Purdue and Don Tyson are going to wake up and find that their world has changed. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen, just as it did for those Catholic priests who came to church one Sunday morning only to find that, my goodness, there aren't as many people in the pews today. Where in the world has everybody gone?"

(About his temporary trial of vegetarianism)"What troubles me most about my vegetarianism is the subtle way it alienates me from other people."

(About mushroom hunting, just because it made me laugh) "I found myself, idiotically, taunting the morels whenever a bunch of them suddenly popper out. 'Gotcha!' I would cry, as if this were a game we were playing, the mushrooms and I, and I'd just won a round. This is not something I can ever imagine saying to an apple in the garden; there, it just wouldn't be news."