Category: Food politics

While Michael Pollan is a celebrated figure in the modern food movement, not everyone agrees with his prescriptive approach to eating. His simplified rules have drawn criticism for oversimplifying complex food systems and for being impractical for many people.

In 2002, a period of heightened dietary confusion in America, Michael Pollan embarked on an investigation into the food system, which ultimately framed the main themes of *The Omnivore's Dilemma*. The book's central preoccupation is the problem of making dietary choices in a world of overwhelming options and obscured origins.

In 2024, the film *Food, Inc. 2* further highlighted the issues Michael Pollan's book originally exposed nearly two decades prior, revealing a food system that has become even more consolidated and opaque. In *The Omnivore's Dilemma*, Pollan reveals that the industrial food chain is fundamentally unnatural, unsustainable, and largely based on a single crop: corn.