The Omnivore's Dilemma: Part IV–Afterword

by Michael Pollan
Adapted for young readers, this important work is an investigation into the ways food production is shaped by politics and the effects of our food choices.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Introduction–Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV–Afterword
15 words 1165 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. forage
    collect or look around for, as food
    What I most remember from these early foraging (food-gathering) trips were the scary warnings from my mother. Some mushrooms and berries have poisons in them, and she made sure I knew exactly how terrible it would be to eat one of them.
  2. distinctive
    of a feature that helps to identify a person or thing
    Only around 100 of the nearly 10,000 different kinds of mushrooms — just 1 percent! — are safe to eat. This Amanita muscaria, with its distinctive red color and white speckles, is one of the most poisonous species.
  3. passive
    lacking in energy or will
    We don’t want to be passive consumers, sitting at the end of a food chain and eating what we are served.
  4. conscious
    intentionally conceived
    My meal would be an extreme experiment in being an active and conscious eater.
  5. stimulate
    cause to act in a specified manner
    When their egg production begins to drop, the hens will be “force-molted” — starved of food, water, and light for several days in order to stimulate a final spurt of egg laying before their life’s work is done.
  6. domestication
    adaptation to close association with human beings
    Zoologists will tell you that certain animals more or less “chose” domestication. Individual wild animals discovered that they could better survive by hanging around human beings, eating their crops or leftovers.
  7. agitated
    physically disturbed or set in motion
    If they knew they were going to die you’d see much more agitated behavior.
  8. brutality
    the trait of extreme cruelty
    The brutality of the industrial food system in America is something that is pretty recent. No other country raises and slaughters its food animals quite as cruelly as we do.
  9. wallow
    a puddle where animals go to roll around
    See that smoothly scooped-out puddle of water? That’s a wallow, but notice how the water is perfectly clear. Pigs haven’t disturbed it yet today.
  10. sow
    an adult female hog
    The pig was a sow weighing perhaps a hundred pounds.
  11. remorse
    a feeling of deep regret, usually for some misdeed
    I felt no sorrow or remorse.
  12. sage
    aromatic fresh or dried gray-green leaves used as seasoning
    I’d mash the beans with roasted garlic and sage and serve them on toasted rounds of homemade sourdough bread.
  13. reminiscent
    serving to bring to mind
    The sauce for the leg was almost joltingly rich and earthy, powerfully reminiscent of the forest.
  14. diminish
    lessen the authority, dignity, or reputation of
    I’ve never liked to think of myself as a mere “consumer” — the word sounds like someone who uses things up and diminishes the world, and very often that’s exactly what a consumer does.
  15. mandatory
    required by rule
    Physical education is already a mandatory part of your school day, after all, so why not eating education?
Created on Thu Apr 03 20:56:28 EDT 2014 (updated Wed Jun 25 17:02:55 EDT 2025)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.