offering a prescriptive diet, but by looking at the "food chains that sustain us today: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer." These chains connect us to the origins of our food and also provide what is usually our deepest engagement with the natural world. He quotes Wendell Berry's observation that eating is an agricultural act and says that it is an ecological and political act, too, having enormous consequences not just for our own health but also for "the use we make of the world—and what is to become of it."

We humans are omnivores, adapted to eat almost anything: fish, meat, grains, grass, fruit, vegetables, seaweed, even pine cones. This has been a great survival mechanism, but now, in a world of industrialized and organic food abundance, how do we decide what is best to eat? We can eat almost anything we want, all the time, but how do we know what is the best—or better—choice?

Pollan tries to find a way out of this dilemma of too much choice by exploring different kinds of foods. He moves from industrial food (produced as efficiently and cheaply as possible) to organic food (produced, at least in theory, with as little possible chemical or industrial interference). He also tries to hunt and forage for food. All three methods come up far short for Pollan, who lands instead on what he calls locavorism, or buying from local small farms.

Pollan also advocates for cooking as much as possible in the home. He understands the limitations to this but nevertheless argues that it gets us closer to real food and healthy eating.

The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, is about the evolution of food culture and how the history and biology of humans has come to shape the way we eat today. One of the main themes of the book is a focus on taste- Pollan describes humans as "generalists" when it comes to food. Some species of animals, including our closest primate relatives, are "specialists," eating only a limited number of foods. Humans, on the other hand, eat a wide variety of both plant and animal foods- even some things which can have negative effects on our bodies! For example, many people like to eat spicy food, even though it makes their mouth burn. The endorphin rush of eating spicy food creates a sense of pleasure, and some people may see eating spicy foods like chili peppers as a challenge to be overcome proudly. 

So, when humans consider such a wide variety of foods to be edible, how do we decide what to eat? This is the dilemma, or problem, Pollan is referring to. One way to answer this question is by the fact that many foods are eliminated from a person's diet by a lack of access. If a person lives in an area where certain foods cannot be grown or transported before spoiling, this food is not typically considered when it comes time to decide what to eat. Pollan argues that we primarily decide what to eat based on taste. Our taste buds are evolutionarily hardwired to prefer certain kinds of foods- namely sugar and fat. Sugars and fats are great sources of energy, and the pleasure of taste encourages us to eat more of these foods. 

Pollan talks about the human taste preference for sweet and fatty foods in relation to the global obesity epidemic. Many commercially produced food products, and especially fast foods, are "designed" to exploit the taste preferences humans have evolved through a long struggle between nature and nutrition. Such intentional creation of foods can create an addiction to these powerful sources of flavor, with some sacrifice of actual nutritional value. Whereas the human preference for sugar developed in response to eating fruits (which have a high vitamin content,) this taste preference is exploited by drinking soda-pop or other sugary beverages. Soda-pop offers a sweet taste and a rush of pleasure for the drinker, but very little nutritional content beyond calories. This presents the second dilemma: are humans really able to choose what to eat when many of the foods we love have been specifically designed to exploit our taste preferences?