In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan does for corn what Rachel Carson did for DDT in Silent Spring ; that is to say, he totally demonizes it. After you read this book, the words "corn-fed" will sound more like a barnyard epithet than an evocation of rustic wholesomeness.

The book documents four very different meals from start to finish, seeking an answer to the eternal question "What should we have for dinner?" Pollan's odyssey takes him from fast food outlet to farm to forest, and the trip is both amusing and appalling.

Much has been written about the so-called "French paradox," that baffling phenomenon that permits the French to eat, drink, and be merry with little or no adverse consequences; Pollan sets out to explore "the American paradox-that is, a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily."

Always curious, often ambivalent, Pollan gets down and dirty-and bloody, too. He bales hay, guts chickens, forages for wild mushrooms, hunts wild boar, and searches for subtext in the aisles of Whole Foods in his quest for insights into why we eat the way we do, and just what it is that we're eating, anyway.

Pollan connects the dots as no one else can, and the Big Picture he draws is an ugly portrait of a food system that's wreaking havoc with our souls and our soil. He finds disturbing links between our food chain and the military-industrial complex, and portrays a nation shackled by a vicious cycle of fossil fuels and surplus subsidized corn.

"Many of the problems of health and nutrition we face today trace back to things that happen on the farm, and behind those things stand specific government policies few of us know anything about," Pollan writes.

According to Pollan, more than a fourth of the roughly forty-five thousand items sold in the average American supermarket now contain corn in one of its many incarnations, including modified or unmodified starch, glucose syrup, maltodextrin, crystalline fructose, ascorbic acid, lecithin, dextrose, lactic acid, maltose, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, polylols, caramel color, and xanthan gum.

Those of us who look to Whole Foods to deliver us from this cornucopia of fabricated foods may be somewhat discomfited by Pollan's conclusions about Whole Food's stunning success at marketing what he calls "Supermarket Pastoral."

He delves into the complex question of whether "organic" is inherently better for us, or our environment, and finds, ironically, that while there are clearly advantages to growing and eating organic food, it's becoming a victim of its own success, "And so, today, the organic food industry finds itself in a most unexpected, uncomfortable, and, yes, unsustainable position: floating on a sinking sea of petroleum."

But Pollan is optimistic about the "beyond organic" movement, an unofficial coalition of farmers who practice sustainable agriculture but opt not to be certified USDA organic, because the organic standards permit all kinds of practices that defy the intent of "organic," while precluding other practices that just seem like common sense from a sustainable farmer's perspective.

Pollan spent a week immersing himself in the daily life of a biodiversified farm run by Joel Salatin, a self-described "Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer." Salatin is fond of quoting an old agricultural manual, published in 1941, which declares "Farming is not adapted to large-scale operations because of the following reasons: Farming is concerned with plants and animals that live, grow, and die."

But can the Joel Salatins of the world ever really chip away at our monolithic agribusiness-based monoculture? I don't know, but I like to think of the way another kind of monoculture, the inner city housing project, fell out of favor with urban planners. If a wrecking ball could demolish Cabrini-Green, who's to say some of the CAFO's couldn't someday meet a similar fate?

Pollan's book also recounts his attempts to assemble a fully foraged meal relying on his own hunting and gathering skills. An excerpt from this portion of the book, an account of his wild boar-hunting adventures, ran in the New York Times Magazine several weeks ago, and elicited the following letter from a reader in Arizona:

"The article was just so much pretentious, angst-filled, blue-state nonsense. In the red states, hunters simply go out and hunt, kill, clean, drink beer, and eat."

Ah yes, the reflexive anti-reflectiveness of the red staters. To paraphrase Socrates, "The unexamined meal is not worth eating." And, to hear Michael Pollan tell it, it doesn't taste very good, either.

The Omnivore's Dilemma makes a persuasive case for the benefits of relying on a more localized food chain. In this era of ever growing globalization, small scale farming may be our best hope for reclaiming our food supply from an industry geared solely towards profits, and whose dominion over our dinner tables has done tremendous harm both to us, and the planet. "Vote with your food!" says Pollan; here's hoping his rallying cry will be heeded.

Cost: $18 - $25

Where to buy: Amazon