The Omnivore’s Dilemma Young Reader Edition: A book report by Michael

Completely unedited by me.

The Omnivores Dilemma

Young Readers Edition
By Michael Pollan

Adapted By Richie Chevat

Book Report

By Michael Frontz

The Omnivore’s Dilemma was one of the few non-fiction
books I read apart from the textbooks that I have to use for
school. I at first thought that this book would be the same
as the rest of the books my mom assigns me for school. But
this was interesting for me.
The book is divided into six different parts. An introduction,
a section on the industrial meal, a section on the Industrial
Organic meal, a section on the Local Sustainable meal, a
section on the Do-It-Yourself meal, and an Afterword. In
each section he tells about a meal from that section. For
example, in the industrial meal section he tells about his
meal from McDonalds.
The two stunners were the industrial section and the
industrial organic section. The things that I learned from the
Industrial section were mainly about corn. You may think that
this sounds dull but when you are done with this section you
may never look at a chicken nugget again. In a Twinkie there
are no less then 7 ingredients in corn and three of them don’t
even sound like they would have any amount of corn in them
at all. And I won’t even get started on that chicken nugget.
Also Organic doesn’t necessarily mean Organic. The

USDA made a set of rules and because of those rules so
called “Organic” foods can contain synthetic additives and
preservatives. Also there are no restrictions on use of other
labeling claims such as “no drugs or growth hormones
used,” “free range” or “sustainably harvested.”
But the last two meals are different. In the Local
Sustainable section he visits PolyFace farms where all the
animals are treated according to the balance of nature. The
cows are fed grass instead of animal feed, and the chickens
are completely free range. No pesticides are used, and he
enjoys a totally organic meal.
In the final section, he hunts and gathers all the food.
He eats a wild boar that he shot himself, and mushrooms
gathered in the woods. He calls it the perfect meal.
I can’t say that I was changed by reading this book, and I
probably won’t become a vegetarian, but it was interesting to
learn The secrets behind what I eat.