Eats: The Shocking Secret History of Food and Eating

Nearly all the food we eat today has radically transformed from its historic beginnings. Ancient and Medieval food animals were significantly smaller than they are today; carrots weren't orange, apples weren't sweet, raw cukes were thorny and could kill you, eggplants triggered madness, and potatoes could cause ugly babies. Food history and lore is truly, disturbingly, profoundly weird. And that is before we even consider mythical, magical foods, poisonous foods, and fabulous half-vegetable, half-animal hybrids with supernatural powers and ill intentions.

Even New World foods like tomatoes and corn would be unrecognizable to a shopper shunting a grocery cart through the local Piggly Wiggly. Ancient foods were so profoundly different that the shape and size of the human jaw and palate changed dramatically to accommodate our new foods and preparation methods. Here is a small taste of juicy facts:

-A rock and some resolute whacks were needed to crack open each individual rock-hard ancient corn kernel, and it was hardly worth the work. The cob was barely the length of our thumb, with only a dozen kernels, each encased in its own granite-like covering.
-Cannibals don't typically eat people for nutrition and calories, and cannibalism still happens today.
-Security measures for US watermelon caused more deaths in the 1850s than any other farming.
-Spontaneously combusting tempura flakes are responsible for at least seven restaurant fires across the United States.
-Leonardo da Vinci, Rasputin, and Armin Meiwes (the Rotenburg Cannibal now serving a life sentence in prison) are all vegetarians.
Eats is lavishly illustrated in color with historic images on nearly every page.

I guarantee you will learn something new or funny and a tidbit to tickle your dinner guests' synapses. Please join me on this twisty, festive ramble through food history. I saved you the best seat at the feast!

Who would love this book: Fans of history, food history, gastronomic trivia, cooks, people who like cooks, living history fans and history reenactors, adventurous travelers, adventurous eaters.

Similar Works: If you enjoy any of these authors you will love Eats: Max Miller Tasting History, Ken Albala's many works on food history, Tom Standage's, An Edible History of Humanity, or Matt Siegel's The Secret History of Food.