 THIRD
THURSDAY BOOK CLUB
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16 at
7:30 pm
This month we are reading,
The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, with books furnished
courtesy of the SB Public Library. This is part of their brilliant
new bookclub in a bag program. No more hassles finding the book--Polly
has them now to hand out to people who sign up for October.
You may have read Pollan's
book, The Botany of Desire, or attended his lecture at UCSB not
long ago. In this more recent book, Pollan carefully considers the
unique aspect of American preoccupation with food, the prevalence of obesity
and diet-related diseases in the United States, and the unhealthful, even
dysfunctional, patterns of American eating, dieting, and food obsession.
To get at the core of the matter, Pollan looks at the characteristics of
four different meals. He analyzes a fast-food meal from McDonald's;
an organic meal consisting of ingredients bought from high-end retailer
Whole Foods; a chicken dinner originating on a self-sustaining farm in
Virginia that uses no pesticides on its produce, antibiotics in its livestock,
or synthetic fertilizers on its crops; and a Paleolithic-type meal consisting
of a wild pig that Pollan hunted and of other ingredients that he gathered
for himself. In the course of his investigation, Pollan makes some
startling discoveries about American agricultural and industrialized food
production. Pollan lays the blame for the American obesity epidemic
on this overuse of corn, particularly the ubiquitous sweetener high-fructose
corn syrup. Surprises for consumers lurk elsewhere in his narrative.
Those who shop for the label organic, for example, might not be helping
the world as much as they think, and may in fact be doing no more than
responding to a carefully crafted marketing message.
"Through it all, Pollan isn't
preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to
let ideology take over," noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer.
"He's also funny and adventurous." "Pollan's supermeticulous reporting
is the book's strength you re not likely to get a better explanation of
exactly where your food comes from," observed David Kamp in the New
York Times Book Review. "Pollan is a gardener, a cook and an
uncommonly graceful explainer of natural science; this is the book he was
born to write," commented Dorothy Kalins in Newsweek.
WHEN: Thursday,
October 16 at 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: Polly Clement's COST: $3 (wine, cheese,
coffee and dessert will be served)
RSVP: to Polly We are limited to no more than
10 people this month. |
