Animal, Vegetable, Junk

From hunting and gathering to GMOs and ultra-processed foods, this expansive tour of human history rewrites the story of our species and points the way to a better future. The history of Homo sapiens is usually told as a story of technology or economics. But there is a more fundamental driver - food. How we hunted and gathered explains our emergence as a new species and our earliest technology; our first food systems, from fire to agriculture, tell where we settled and how civilizations expanded. The quest for food for growing populations drove exploration, colonialism, slavery, even capitalism. A century ago, food was industrialized. Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of the story and explains how we can rescue ourselves from the modern wrong turn.