I can say without hesitation that this is a life-changing book. It's elegantly written and unflinching. Pollan is honest about his own cognitive dissonance about being an omnivore, which means he never sounds self-righteous (an impressive feat for the genre). And I love the widespread anthropomorphism of the book, the mysticism that Pollan is willing to embrace as he cites scientific sources.

That said... Halfway through the book I was so depressed that I went home and ate graham crackers dipped in a can of chocolate frosting. All I could think was, so there's no choice! I am going to eat chemicals and toxins and animal byproducts unwittingly every day of my life, and they are going to kill me in the end! By the end of the book, though, I felt like I had a real sense of small measures that I can take to eat in a healthier and more environmentally responsible way. So I went to the farmstand and bought a big old pile of locally-grown buttercup squash, peaches, chard and zucchini. Better than synthetic frosting, right?

I think there are a lot of different conclusions that people can draw from this book, and I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who wants to be more mindful about what they eat. For me, it validated my penchant for vegetarianism (and my habitual eschewing of McDonalds), but you might get something slightly different from it. (Pollan is not a vegetarian.) Honestly, I don't think I'll ever look at my plate in quite the same way again, and I feel grateful for that.