Its subtitle—What Everyone Needs to Know (and that means you)—is nonetheless a bit overwhelming and deeply humbling for this writer, for how can any single work cover the entirety of food and nutrition? After all, “[w]hen you get right down to it, food is practically the whole story every time” (in the wise words of American author Kurt Vonnegut). Thus, no individual book could ever do justice to this vast subject, covering in depth the myriad ways food shapes and impacts our health, environment, economy, and society. I try, even so, to provide what everyone needs to know, taking you on a journey that spans time, space, and place—and large bodies of literature across scientific disciplines like nutrition, agriculture, biology, and anthropology—to better understand how and why what we eat matters, from farm to fork.
