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

by Michael Pollan

What this means for the food industry is that its natural rate of growth is somewhere around 1 percent per year—1 percent being the annual growth rate of the American population. The problem is that Wall Street won’t tolerate such an anemic rate of growth.

Since the birds are slaughtered at seven weeks, free range turns out to be not so much a lifestyle for these chickens as a two-week vacation option.

As in the case of our imperfect knowledge of soil, the limits of our knowledge of nutrition have obscured what the industrialization of the food chain is doing to our health. But changes in the composition of fats in our diet may account for many of the diseases of civilization—cardiac, diabetes, obesity, etc.—

Food marketing in particular thrives on dietary instability and so tends to exacerbate it.

“animals feel a need to exercise, stretch their limbs or wings, groom themselves and turn around, whether or not they have ever lived in conditions that permit this.” The proper measure of their suffering, in other words, is not their prior experiences but the unremitting daily frustration of their instincts.