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Stephen Le

100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today Paperback – January 9, 2018

by Stephen Le (Author)

4.2 137 ratings

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A fascinating tour through the evolution of the human diet and how we can improve our health by understanding our complicated history with food.

There are few areas of modern life that are burdened by as much information and advice, often contradictory, as our diet and health: eat a lot of meat, eat no meat; whole grains are healthy, whole grains are a disaster; eat everything in moderation; eat only certain foods--and on and on. In 100 Million Years of Food, biological anthropologist Stephen Le explains how cuisines of different cultures are a result of centuries of evolution, finely tuned to our biology and surroundings.

Today many cultures have strayed from their ancestral diets, relying instead on mass-produced food often made with chemicals that may be contributing to a rise in so-called Western diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, and obesity.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Picador
Publication date

January 9, 2018
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.72 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

1250117887
ISBN-13

978-1250117885
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This deliciously entertaining book will help you to enjoy eating your food, to enjoy thinking about your food, and to stay healthy.” ―Jared Diamond, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Times bestselling author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse

"The vastness, breadth, and ambitiousness of Stephen Le's 100 Million Years of Food makes it compelling and engaging."―Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt and Cod

"Le mixes advice, personal anecdotes, and medical science in this fascinating food-for-thought narrative."―Booklist

"In this accessible debut, Le offers a nimble hybrid that is equal parts travel memoir and informed speculation about the biology of human nutrition. The author, with roots in Vietnam and Canada, also explores how different cultures approach food in support of his thesis that straying from one's ancestral diets is a leading cause of modern disease. It's a surprisingly clear-eyed approach....The book's conclusions about what to eat and drink are common sense, but the journey Le takes to get us there is worth the cover price."―Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

STEPHEN LE earned his doctorate in biological anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he held a prestigious Chancellor's Fellowship. He also holds a master's degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins University and an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Ottawa. He has held grants from the National Science Foundation and the Japan Society for the promotion of science, and his research has appeared in the Journal of Theoretical Biology and Cross-Cultural Research.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; Reprint edition (January 9, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250117887
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250117885
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.72 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #716,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #774 in Food Science (Books)
- #857 in Gastronomy History (Books)
- #1,064 in Travel Writing Reference

Customer Reviews:
4.2 137 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

137 global ratings

5 star		58%
4 star		19%
3 star		12%
2 star		7%
1 star		5%

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Amazon Customer

Very insightful despite sloppy writing at times

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 20, 2016

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This book soundly shatters a lot of what most westerners believe to be "healthy eating" with a combination of biological science and anthropological evidence.

As my review headline suggests, the writing can be a little cringeworthy at times, but at others it's downright entertaining. If such a style bothers you, try to look past it as the facts and research provided are clear and well cited. And there is a LOT of great facts and research.

However, one of the best parts in my opinion was that the writing was not overly preaching or opinionated. He does not propose a new fad diet or hidden secret to unlock magical health. Where there is disagreement among scientists, the author objectively mentions all opinions and occasionally supports one side, but does not hide the opposition. He also keeps all his recommendations well within the economic (and psychological! Don't ingest pig parasites!) reach of most everyone living in a modernized country.

Some possible causes of common modern conditions addressed (again, not preachingly) in the book include obesity, asthma, acne, food allergies, and chronic disease such as cancer and diabetes. Overall the message simple: prepare your food as your ancestors did, and don't follow fad diets.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Mark

A great review of food and diets

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2016

Verified Purchase

The book will help those looking for dietary changes in their life without investing a large amount of time. The book would have been more helpful in discussing more seasonal dietary needs. Overall, the book is insightful.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 27, 2017

Verified Purchase

interesting, gives a good insight..

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 22, 2016

Verified Purchase

An interesting take on food.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 16, 2016

Verified Purchase

The book gives me a new view of how we see food as the whole. Balancing between his experiences around the world, the proven scientific facts on food and the human/food evolution is a master mind piece of work. It gives me a fresh way of how we need to look for our diet. Great book!

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Lotus Man

Disappointed

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

Disappointed. If you are just looking for an entertaining read, then you may enjoy this. It's more of a personal travel diary of the author than it is a deep dive into the science of diet and nutrition. While he does sprinkle Inca few scientific studies throughout, there are far better books if you are more interested in a thorough and practical look at the science of evolutionary diet and anthropology. This is not the book i would buy I'd you are looking to take control of your diet and health.

2 people found this helpful

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mk.kim

this book might be good one. If you want to understand the anthropological ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 17, 2016

Verified Purchase

If you want to get some advice or guide for some kind of diet, this book might be good one. If you want to understand the anthropological reason or the cultural background behind the phenomenon, this must be a great book.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Kris

Great reading

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 8, 2020

Verified Purchase

Bought enough for a family members

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Top reviews from other countries

Eva Soltesz

Highly recommend it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

Enjoyable, clever read. Learned a lot.

Danni

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 16, 2018

Verified Purchase

Loved this book

Russell O. Redman

Fun and interesting book, but take it with a grain of salt (pun completely intended).

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 26, 2020

Verified Purchase

I like the approach this book takes to our nutritional needs. A lot of it makes good sense. I do take a bit of exception with the recommendation that we fall back to the "traditional diets" of our ancestors from five hundred years ago. For a start, people lives shorter lives in those days. We are, in fact, the longest-lived generation that has ever existed, so the diets of people who died in their forties and fifties may not have been that good. He does address the problem tangentially at one point, noting that diets that help children grow fast also make them die young, and diets that allow us to live to great age also delay our growth and maturity. People died of so many non-dietary causes in the middle ages (disease, famine - just a shortage of food, not a bad diet, personal violence, etc.) that there must have been a premium on fast growth and early maturity. Hardly anyone reached the nominal four score years and ten, with a diet poorly tuned for age being a minor problem. I kind of wish he had followed up on this issue in more detail.
Also, we know so little about the diets of people who lived more than a few centuries ago. We have a handful of cookbooks from wealthy households, but only archaeological evidence for the common peasantry. The traditional diets of people from the nineteenth century had already been powerfully influenced by the transport of crops and livestock during the colonial period. Again, he touches on the shifting diets of people who accepted the new foods, but does not follow up with a consideration of whether the older diets were better or worse.
My last little grump is that ordinary people did not tune their diets consciously in the ancient world. They ate whatever they could get. In many cases, the diets were so coarse that their populations were severely restricted. Hunter-gatherers collected everything edible from their environment, but often dumped the traditional foods when better quality meals came available. People in renaissance England gathered acorns because they kept over the winter, but despised the acorn "bread" as bad-tasting peasant food if wheat bread was available. Ask Icelanders if they prefer their traditional diet of fish and mutton over the vegetables they can get today. Ask about the way they learned to prepare Greenland shark to make it edible, and whether anyone would attempt such a thing if they were not perpetually threatened with starvation.
Still, our modern hyper-processed, overly sugared food is surely worse for us than the stuff available to middle-class people fifty years ago. This book is a nice antidote to the many fad diets being promoted so that the authors can make a few bucks before the trend dies out.

M Young

comment on content of book.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 20, 2016

Verified Purchase

It is a very objective review of different studies o nutrition, diet and their relationship to health with reference to human evolution history in various geographic regions. Nothing stuffy at all. In fact, a lot of fun to read. I would recommend it to anybody who is interested in healthy eating. Some of the theories in the book can actually explained what have been happening to my husband and myself when we started a year ago to go back to eat what we grew up with before we moved to North America: blood sugar came down big time and then started to lose weight about 5 months ago, i.e. 6 months into the change of diet.

2 people found this helpful

Cheryl Wilson

I'm not finished the book yet, but so far ...

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 25, 2016

Verified Purchase

I'm not finished the book yet, but so far I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Mr Le is trying to sort out the different dietetic philosophies in an unbiased way. I'm enjoying the journey immensely.

2 people found this helpful

See all reviews

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