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The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World

Book by Michael Pollan · 3 quotes · Way, Corn, Eating

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The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World Quotes

“Corn is the hero of its own story, and though we humans played a crucial supporting role in its rise to world domination, it would be wrong to suggest we have been calling the shots, or acting always in our own best interests. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that corn has succeeded in domesticating us.”

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Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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“Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature's ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast mono-cultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead. A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature's complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain.”

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Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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“Originally, the atoms of carbon from which we're made were floating in the air, part of a carbon dioxide molecule. The only way to recruit these carbon atoms for the molecules necessary to support life-the carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, and lipids-is by means of photosynthesis. Using sunlight as a catalyst the green cells of plants combine carbon atoms taken from the air with water and elements drawn from the soil to form the simple organic compounds that stand at the base of every food chain. It is more than a figure of speech to say that plants create life out of thin air.”

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Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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