I finished the Omnivore's Dilemma last week and thought I would write a nice little review. By the title of this post you can tell that I highly recommend this book. It is definitely something that I believe you will enjoy and a book that should be required reading in schools. I am not going to summarize 
the book here, but instead list some of the things that this book taught me.
- Industrial Organic food can contain many hidden costs, such as the cost of oil to ship it. But Industrial Organic surely is better for health and the environment than non-organic industrial food.
- There are many hidden costs with the production of corn. Such as the large amount of patroleum used to produce it and the government subsidies paid to farmers just to keep them earning a living wage.
- It is still possible to make a meal by hunting and gathering all of the ingredients.
- There are self sustainable farms that produce grass fed meat and humanely slaughter animals, one of them is Polyface farms.
- It is better for the economy and the environment to buy or gather local food (everyone should know this)
- The argument for being vegetarian that Peter Singer puts forth in Animal Liberation is hard to completely swallow when animal happiness is maximized on farms like Polyface. Of course, you would need to make sure that your meat came from a place like this. Additionally, this same argument works for meat that is hunted, as the animal was able to live free and happily. Basically non-industrial farmers and hunters rock.
- Some commercial mushroom hunters travel up and down the west coast and sometimes sleep in their vehicles.
- You can make your own yeast for cooking.
- All about how animals are kept and fed in industrial and organic farms
I learned a lot more than the above, but these are the larger points. One other thing that I got from this book was the reminder of how exciting it is to mushroom hunt. Therefore, I picked up another book simply called Morel's. I am almost done reading it, so I will put up another book review soon.