The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

It could be that Joel even finds a certain beauty in that compost pile, or at least in its redemptive promise. He

the typical item of food on an American’s plate travels some fifteen hundred miles to get there,

“Don’t you find it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food?”

the market’s become totally out of sync with nature.

Local food, as opposed to organic, implies a new economy as well as a new agriculture—new social and economic relationships as well as new ecological ones.

That’s because farms produce a lot more than food; they also produce a kind of landscape and a kind of community.

“eating is an agricultural act.”

the limits of our knowledge of nutrition have obscured what the industrialization of the food chain is doing to our health.

food must be “not only good to eat, but also good to think.”