100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today

100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today

by Stephen Le
100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today

100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today

by Stephen Le

Hardcover

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Overview

A fascinating tour through the evolution of the human diet and how we can improve our health by understanding our complicated history with food.

There are few areas of modern life that are burdened by as much information and advice, often contradictory, as our diet and health: eat a lot of meat, eat no meat; whole grains are healthy, whole grains are a disaster; eat everything in moderation; eat only certain foods—and on and on. In 100 Million Years of Food, biological anthropologist Stephen Le explains how cuisines of different cultures are a result of centuries of evolution, finely tuned to our biology and surroundings.

Today many cultures have strayed from their ancestral diets, relying instead on mass-produced food often made with chemicals that may be contributing to a rise in so-called Western diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, and obesity.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250050410
Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 02/02/2016
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Stephen Le is currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Ottawa. He received a Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010 where he was a recipient of a UCLA Chancellor's Fellowship and a National Science Foundation grant for his fieldwork in Vietnam. 100 Million Years of Food is his first book.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Should We Eat And How Should We Live? 1

The Irony of Insects 7

The Games Fruits Play 17

The Temptation of Meat 43

The Paradox of Fish 61

The Empire of Starches 81

Elixirs 101

A Truce among Thieves 115

The Calorie Conundrum 147

The Future of Food 175

Afterword: Rules to Eat And Live By 215

Endnotes 225

Bibliography 249

Acknowledgments 295

Index 299

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