More than a mere (if heady) catalog of intoxicants, however, Stuart Walton’s book is a smart, wry look at why intoxication has always been a part of the human experience—from our earliest Stone Age rituals to the practices of the ancient Greeks and Romans, right on up through the Victorian era and ending with a flourish in modern times—and more significantly, why the use of intoxicants is, and will continue to be, an essential part of being human. “An insightful overview of humanity’s historical and cultural attachment to various intoxicants. . . . It deserves a prominent place in the emerging discussion reshaping understanding and policies regarding intoxication and the use of drugs and alcohol.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred)“Walton is particularly, and convincingly, engrossing, an elegant and forceful stylist.”—The Guardian

    You just limit your calorie intake for two nonconsecutive days each week—500 calories for women, 600 for men. You’ll lose weight quickly and effortlessly with the FastDiet.Scientific trials of intermittent fasters have shown that it will not only help the pounds fly off, but also reduce your risk of a range of diseases from diabetes to cardiovascular disease and even cancer. “The scientific evidence is strong that intermittent fasting can improve health,” says Dr. Mark Mattson, Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences, National Institute on Aging, and Professor of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University.This book brings together the results of new, groundbreaking research to create a dietary program that can be incorporated into your busy daily life, featuring:• Forty 500- and 600-calorie meals that are quick and easy to make• 8 pages of photos that show you what a typical “fasting meal” looks like• The cutting-edge science behind the program• A calorie counter that makes dieting easy• And much more.Far from being just another fad, the FastDiet is a radical new way of thinking about food, a lifestyle choice that could transform your health. This is your indispensable guide to simple and effective weight loss, without fuss or the need to endlessly deprive yourself.

    Bringing the instruments and experimental techniques of the laboratory into the kitchen, This uses recent research in the chemistry, physics, and biology of food to challenge traditional ideas about cooking and eating. What he discovers will entertain, instruct, and intrigue cooks, gourmets, and scientists alike.Molecular Gastronomy, This's first work to appear in English, is filled with practical tips, provocative suggestions, and penetrating insights. This begins by reexamining and debunking a variety of time-honored rules and dictums about cooking and presents new and improved ways of preparing a variety of dishes from quiches and quenelles to steak and hard-boiled eggs. He goes on to discuss the physiology of flavor and explores how the brain perceives tastes, how chewing affects food, and how the tongue reacts to various stimuli. Examining the molecular properties of bread, ham, foie gras, and champagne, the book analyzes what happens as they are baked, cured, cooked, and chilled.Looking to the future, Herv' This imagines new cooking methods and proposes novel dishes. A chocolate mousse without eggs? A flourless chocolate cake baked in the microwave? Molecular Gastronomy explains how to make them. This also shows us how to cook perfect French fries, why a souffl' rises and falls, how long to cool champagne, when to season a steak, the right way to cook pasta, how the shape of a wine glass affects the taste of wine, why chocolate turns white, and how salt modifies tastes.

    An authoritative history of the foods of India, complete with delicious recipes, ranges from the imperial kitchen of the Mughal invader Babur to the smoky cookhouse of the British Raj and includes information on the influence of various food traditions on the evolution of Indian specialties.

    That includes going fishing for his own supply of bluefin tuna belly; nearly incinerating his oven in pursuit of the perfect pizza crust, and spending four days boning and stuffing three different fowl—into each other-- to produce the Cajun specialty called “turducken.” It Must’ve Been Something I Ate finds Steingarten testing the virtues of chocolate and gourmet salts; debunking the mythology of lactose intolerance and Chinese Food Syndrome; roasting marrow bones for his dog , and offering recipes for everything from lobster rolls to gratin dauphinois. The result is one of those rare books that are simultaneously mouth-watering and side-splitting.

    The World According to Monsanto tells the little-known yet shocking story of this agribusiness giant--the world's leading producer of GMOs (genetically modified organisms)--and how its new "green" face is no less troubling than its PCB (and Agent Orange) -soaked past.Robin reports that, following its long history of manufacturing hazardous chemicals and lethal herbicides, Monsanto is now marketing itself as a "life sciences" company, seemingly convinced about the virtues of sustainable development. However, Monsanto now controls the majority of the yield of the world's genetically modified corn and soy, ingredients found in more than 95 percent of American households, and its alarming legal and political tactics to maintain this monopoly are the subject of worldwide concern.Released to great acclaim and controversy in France, throughout Europe, and in Latin America, The World According to Monsanto is sure to change the way we think about food safety and the corporate control of our food supply.

    The resulting documentary earned him an Academy Award nomination and broke box-office records worldwide. But there's more to the story, and in Don't Eat This Book, Spurlock examines everything from school lunch programs and the marketing of fast food to the decline of physical education. He looks at why fast food is so tasty, cheap, and ultimately seductive--and interviews experts from surgeons general and kids to marketing gurus and lawmakers, who share their research and opinions on what we can do to offset a health crisis of supersized proportions.Don't eat this groundbreaking, hilarious book--but if you care about your country's health, your children's, and your own, you better read it.

    Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish--such as fried chicken, chitlins, yams, greens, and red drinks--Miller uncovers how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity.Miller argues that the story is more complex and surprising than commonly thought. Four centuries in the making, and fusing European, Native American, and West African cuisines, soul food--in all its fried, pork-infused, and sugary glory--is but one aspect of African American culinary heritage. Miller discusses how soul food has become incorporated into American culture and explores its connections to identity politics, bad health raps, and healthier alternatives. This refreshing look at one of America's most celebrated, mythologized, and maligned cuisines is enriched by spirited sidebars, photographs, and twenty-two recipes.

    Just as French Impressionists upended centuries of tradition, Modernist cuisine has in recent years blown through the boundaries of the culinary arts. Borrowing techniques from the laboratory, pioneering chefs at world-renowned restaurants such as elBulli, The Fat Duck, Alinea, and wd~50 have incorporated a deeper understanding of science and advances in cooking technology into their culinary art. In Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet--scientists, inventors, and accomplished cooks in their own right--have created a six-volume, 2,400-page set that reveals science-inspired techniques for preparing food that ranges from the otherworldly to the sublime. The authors and their 20-person team at The Cooking Lab have achieved astounding new flavors and textures by using tools such as water baths, homogenizers, centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, and enzymes. It is a work destined to reinvent cooking. How do you make an omelet light and tender on the outside, but rich and creamy inside? Or French fries with a light and fluffy interior and a delicate, crisp crust that doesn't go soggy? Imagine being able to encase a mussel in a gelled sphere of its own sweet and briny juice. Or to create a silky-smooth pistachio cream made from nothing more than the nuts themselves.

    What does it take to run the American supermarket? How do products get to shelves? Who sets the price? And who suffers the consequences of increased convenience and efficiency? In this exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing and immersive reporting, Lorr leads a wild investigation in which we learn the secrets of Trader Joe's success from Trader Joe himself, why truckers call their job "sharecropping on wheels," what it takes for a product to earn certification labels like "organic" and "fair trade," the struggles entrepreneurs face as they fight for shelf space, including essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business, the truth behind the alarming slave trade in the shrimp industry and much more.

    From his first day on the job as the New York Times food critic, Craig Claiborne excited readers by introducing them to food worlds unknown, from initiating them in the standards of the finest French cuisine and the tantalizing joys of the then mostly unknown foods of India, China, Mexico, Spain, to extolling the pleasures of “exotic” ingredients like arugula, and praising “newfangled” tools like the Cuisinart, which once he’d given his stamp of approval became wildly popular. A good review of a restaurant guaranteed a full house for weeks, while a bad review might close a kitchen down.      Based on unprecedented access to Claiborne’s personal papers and interviews with a host of food world royalty, including Jacques Pepin, Gael Greene, and Alice Waters, Tom McNamee offers a lively and vivid account of Claiborne’s extraordinary adventure in food, from his own awakening in the bistros of Paris, to his legendary wine-soaked dinner parties, to his travels to colorful locals from Morocco to Saigon, and the infamous $4,000 dinner he shared in Paris with French chef Pierre Franey that made front-page news. More than an engrossing biography, this is the story of the country’s transition from enchantment with frozen TV dinners to a new consciousness of truly good cooking.

    New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese), Jennifer 8 Lee, traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.

    They impact thousands upon thousands of metabolic reactions inside the human body. But calculating the specific influence of each of these chemicals isn’t nearly sufficient to explain the effect of the apple as a whole. Because almost every chemical can affect every other chemical, there is an almost infinite number of possible biological consequences.And that’s just from an apple.Nutritional science, long stuck in a reductionist mindset, is at the cusp of a revolution. The traditional "gold standard” of nutrition research has been to study one chemical at a time in an attempt to determine its particular impact on the human body. These sorts of studies are helpful to food companies trying to prove there is a chemical in milk or pre-packaged dinners that is "good” for us, but they provide little insight into the complexity of what actually happens in our bodies or how those chemicals contribute to our health.In The China Study, T. Colin Campbell (alongside his son, Thomas M. Campbell) revolutionized the way we think about our food with the evidence that a whole food, plant-based diet is the healthiest way to eat. Now, in Whole, he explains the science behind that evidence, the ways our current scientific paradigm ignores the fascinating complexity of the human body, and why, if we have such overwhelming evidence that everything we think we know about nutrition is wrong, our eating habits haven’t changed.Whole is an eye-opening, paradigm-changing journey through cutting-edge thinking on nutrition, a scientific tour de force with powerful implications for our health and for our world.

    This irreverent and intelligent expose brings sanity and good sense to one of life's great pleasures." ―Steven Pinker, author of Angels of Our Better NatureNever before have we had so much information available to us about food and health. There’s GAPS, paleo, detox, gluten-free, alkaline, the sugar conspiracy, clean eating... Unfortunately, a lot of it is not only wrong but actually harmful. So why do so many of us believe this bad science?Assembling a crack team of psychiatrists, behavioural economists, food scientists and dietitians, the Angry Chef unravels the mystery of why sensible, intelligent people are so easily taken in by the latest food fads, making brief detours for an expletive-laden rant. At the end of it all you’ll have the tools to spot pseudoscience for yourself and the Angry Chef will be off for a nice cup of tea – and it will have two sugars in it, thank you very much.

    How can we strike a balance between preserving the past, maintaining valuable agricultural and culinary traditions, and looking ahead to breed new plants? What place does a cantankerous old pear or too-delicate strawberry deserve in our gardens, farms, and markets? To what extent should growers value efficiency and uniformity over matters of taste, ecology, or regional identity?While living in Washington State in the early nineties, Buchanan learned about the heritage food movement and began growing fruit trees, grains, and vegetables. After moving home to New England, however, he left behind his plant collection and for several years stopped gardening. In 2005, inspired by the revival of interest in regional food and culinary traditions, Buchanan borrowed a few rows of growing space at a farm near his home in Portland, Maine, where he resumed collecting. By 2012 he had expanded to two acres, started a nursery and small business, and discovered creative ways to preserve rare foods. In Taste, Memory Buchanan shares stories of slightly obsessive urban gardeners, preservationists, environmentalists, farmers, and passionate cooks, and weaves anecdotes of his personal journey with profiles of leaders in the movement to defend agricultural biodiversity.Taste, Memory begins and ends with a simple premise: that a healthy food system depends on matching diverse plants and animals to the demands of land and climate. In this sense of place lies the true meaning of local food.