Overview

""A fascinating blend of culinary history and the science of taste"" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), from the first bite taken by our ancestors to ongoing scientific advances in taste and today's ""foodie"" revolution. Can't resist the creamy smoothness of butter? Blame Darwinian natural selection. Crave the immediate zing of sweets? They bathe your brain in a seductive high. Enjoy the savory flavors of grilled meat? So did your ancestor Homo erectus. Coffee? You had to overcome your hardwired aversion to its hint of bitterness and learn to like it. Taste is a whole-body experience, and breakthroughs in genetics and microbiology are casting light not only on the experience of french fries and foie gras, but on the mysterious interplay of body, brain, and mind. Reporting from kitchens, supermarkets, farms, restaurants, huge food corporations, and science labs, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John McQuaid tells the story of the still-emerging concept of flavor and how our sense of taste will evolve in the coming decades. Tasty explains why children have bizarre and stubborn tastes, how the invention of cooking changed our brains and physiology, why artificial sweeteners never taste quite right, why name brands really do taste better, how a 100,000-year-old walkabout by early humans is responsible for George H.W. Bush's broccoli-hatred, why ""supertasters"" like salt, and why ""nontasters"" are more likely to be alcoholics. ""A fascinating story with a beginning some half a billion years ago...McQuaid's tale is about science, but also about culture, history and, one senses, our future"" (Scientific American). Tasty offers a delicious smorgasbord of where taste originated and where it's going--and why it changes by the day.

Full Product Details

9781451685015

Table of Contents

Reviews

Our tastes evolved to help us: delicious food nourishes us and makes us healthy. John McQuaid, in teaching us about taste, engagingly shows how our food can be more pleasing and our lives more healthful. The only thing better than a delicious meal, is a delicious meal eaten after reading <i>Tasty</i>! --Paul Jaminet, author of Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat

Our tastes evolved to help us: delicious food nourishes us and makes us healthy. John McQuaid, in teaching us about taste, engagingly shows how our food can be more pleasing and our lives more healthful. The only thing better than a delicious meal, is a delicious meal eaten after reading Tasty ! --Paul Jaminet, author of Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat

Our tastes evolved to help us: delicious food nourishes us and makes us healthy. John McQuaid, in teaching us about taste, engagingly shows how our food can be more pleasing and our lives more healthful. The only thing better than a delicious meal, is a delicious meal eaten after reading Tasty! --Paul Jaminet, author of Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat

Author Information

John McQuaid is the author of Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat and his journalism has appeared in Smithsonian magazine, The Washington Post, Wired, Forbes.com, and Eating Well magazine. His science and environment reporting for The Times-Picayune anticipated Hurricane Katrina, explored the global fisheries crisis and the problems of invasive species. His work has won a Pulitzer Prize, as well as awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. McQuaid is a graduate of Yale. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and two children.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available