Close your eyes and envision what you ate for your last meal: whether cornflakes for breakfast, a turkey sandwich and chicken soup for lunch, or a juicy cheeseburger for dinner.

Now try to pinpoint the starting locations of each aspect of the food you consumed.

Challenging, isn’t it?

Uncertainty about where our food comes from is a byproduct of the industrial food system.The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals takes the reader through the captivating, sometimes unexpected, journey through this system. Author Michael Pollan takes on the role of investigative journalist, examining several aspects of the industry, from massive farms and feedlots to direct, all-organic markets.

Pollan diagnoses what he calls a “national eating disorder.” He uses this idea to chronicle the story of our food, from soil to the plate. By trying to answer the question of what we should eat for dinner, Pollan attempts to interpret the tricky toss-up between a food system that is good for humanity and the environment, and one that produces the most profitable crop.

He explains the inauguration of new machinery from the industrial revolution and how that has altered farming techniques. Pollan uses this idea to convey to the reader that we have been using all of these tactics not to benefit an already existing system of farming but to create an entirely new one that, in the end, puts family farmers out of business. The world of farming has become a secondhand industrial wasteland, where the food we eat never comes from one place. Even the high-fructose corn syrup in our sodas does not come from one farm; a single drop could contain corn from farms spread out over the entire country.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is impressively well researched. Not only did Pollan include an extensive collection of scientific facts, he searched for personal experiences that could help him to better understand the system and convey his message with a little more oomph.

I was able to genuinely connect with Pollan when he told of his journey through a hunter-gatherer meal, where he described consuming something he himself had taken from the earth — and what a gratifying experience that was. He picked his own greens and killed his own game to produce a meal that he had single-handedly created. Pollan also tells of his experiences following one cow that he had purchased through her life. This was another aspect of his writing that compelled me greatly. Instead of solely stating stats about the rapid decrease in time that it now takes for cattle to become full size, he followed one cow for a truer, firsthand look.

Pollan compares what used to be considered a prospering farm to the industrial farms of today, painting the heartbreaking dilemma between feeding the people and feeding the industry.

This juxtaposition caused me to question what we, as a society, put into our bodies. There has been a shift in what we consider the most consequential and pivotal functions of the food industry. I found it interesting that instead of emphasizing health and proper food, we seem to prioritize efficiency and quantity. This way of thinking has translated into the way Americans eat as a whole. More often than not, families feed their children larger quantities of lesser quality food, rather than smaller quantities of better food. Has society’s focus on productivity and efficiency caused these smaller farms to die out, thus limiting our healthy food options and making it less affordable to take proper care of our bodies?

Pollan points to the government’s domineering relationship with the industrial food industry. Starting during Nixon’s presidential term, the United States government has issued a series of agriculture laws that have shaped the industry into what it is today. All of these government implemented systems, laws, and grading scales have converted the generational passing down of traditional farming into factories and rows of impersonal machines, thus demolishing any strong, personal connection between the producer and the consumer.

I recently had the opportunity to make homemade ravioli, and the experience allowed me to connect with Pollan’s hunter-gatherer meal. I was able to distinguish the differences between eating dishes where you can name the ingredients, and those where you question what, exactly, you are ingesting.

Pollan is unafraid to lay down the dirty truth about what occurs behind the closed doors of the industrial food system, which I greatly applaud. However, his arguments are long and drawn out. The first 120 pages are all about corn. Through his comedic expertise, it did not seem so horrifying. I wish Pollan had used his ability to stun the reader with personal experiences more. I found that I was able to connect with the processes and the industry most when he demonstrated how it connected to my life.

I give The Omnivore’s Dilemma 4.5 stars. Pollan caused me to question what I already know, prompting me to figure out what part my life plays in this bigger system, something I look for in first-rate books. However, I found that Pollan could have condensed his writing for clearer descriptions of scientific facts and processes.

The solution to the problems Pollan points out might just be going back to basics, returning to the roots of how we produce and consume our food. He explains that if we understood where our food came from and how it got to our table, “every meal would connect us to the joy of living and the wonder of nature. Every meal would be like saying grace.”