What did Michael Pollan find in his investigation of human/food relationships?

One of Pollan's main themes is centered around the connection between the foods we eat and our relationships with nearly all other organisms on the planet. What we eat, how we eat it, and where we eat it all contribute to the transformation of eating into culture. Our planet has drastically changed as a result of agriculture, and our eating defines our relationship with plants, animals, fungi, and all other parts of nature. Many of the plants, such as corn, Pollan argues, have developed solely as a result of the human need for the product and thereby rely on us for their survival just as we rely on them.

Industrial eating, however, destroys these relationships, or at best hides them to the point of invisibility, thereby destroying not only the symbiotic relationship but also the culture that would stem from it. This costly journey, as Pollan puts it, away from nature allows us to forget the damage we cause the environment, and to allow inhumane treatment of animals, simply because of the hidden nature of the process. If the industrial process were forced to be visible, Pollan believes we as Americans would change the way we eat, thereby regaining the lost relationships to our food, which would in turn help heal the environment as well as our own bodies.