Michael Pollan opens The Omnivore's Dilemma with his distinctive investigative structure: tracing four distinct meals — representing industrial, industrial-organic, alternative/sustainable, and entirely foraged-and-hunted food chains — back to their actual origins, using this structural device to examine what each food chain reveals about the modern American food system and its considerable, often hidden complexity.

How Pollan develops this four-meal investigative structure:

• He traces an industrial meal back through its supply chain, examining how heavily processed, corn-derived ingredients dominate this food chain in ways many consumers remain genuinely unaware of despite these ingredients' pervasive presence in typical industrial food products
• Pollan examines an industrial-organic meal, tracing organic-certified products back to their actual production practices, revealing how large-scale organic agriculture, despite meeting genuine organic certification standards, sometimes only partially fulfills the more holistic ideals many consumers associate with the organic label
• He examines a meal sourced from a genuinely diversified, sustainable small farm, presenting this as an alternative model demonstrating different possibilities for food production beyond both industrial and industrial-organic approaches
• Finally, Pollan prepares an entirely foraged and hunted meal, personally sourcing every ingredient himself, using this most extreme investigative approach to force direct confrontation with food's fundamental biological origins, stripped of any commercial food system intermediation whatsoever

This structural device sets up the book's overall project: using these four contrasting food chains to illuminate different dimensions and models of how contemporary society produces and relates to food.