This book is an entrancing treatise on what we eat and why we eat the way we do. Pollan writes with clarity and wit, but also carefully and thoughtfully; this is not a jeremiad, even if one is left with the feeling that - as someone mouthed to me from across a room when she saw that I had pulled out my copy of this book - corn is evil. As is apparent in cross-cultural comparisons to fat-rich French diets or oil-rich Meditteranean diets, diets are more influenced by history, tradition, and culture than food pyramids. It is curious that in (broadly speaking) American culture, food is so closely linked to public health with innumerable fads, diets, vitamin-augmented products, etc., and yet the food that we consume is largely produced with such disdain for public health principles and with such severe public health consequences.

Pollan explores this very paradox, finding psychological, cultural, scientific, evolutionary and, prominently, economic and political explanations for this situation. Processed cheese and diet colas made almost entirely from corn-products are the result of genetic engineering, incredible technologies, but also impoverished families - and farmers - whose meals are subsidized by the money that the government pumps into petroleum and corn subsidies. It is a book that very much situates public health in a broader context; it is also a book that, like the meals he describes, is a pleasure to indulge.