Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Kindle
$11.99

Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Hardcover
$18.80

Paperback
$7.51

$18.80 with 30 percent savings

List Price: $27.00

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Wednesday, June 5 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery Tuesday, June 4

Select delivery location

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$18.80 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

barslan

Sold by

barslan

Returns

30-day easy returns

Returns

30-day easy returns

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$7.46

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

Good condition or better. Not an ex-library book. May have writing or highlights in text. Good condition or better. Not an ex-library book. May have writing or highlights in text. See less

FREE delivery Tuesday, June 4 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Select delivery location

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$18.80 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Sold by Growing Knowledge and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (129) from $1.81 + $3.98 shipping

Follow the author

Jo Robinson

+ Follow

More books from this author

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health Hardcover – June 4, 2013

by Jo Robinson (Author)

4.8 1,310 ratings

Editors' pick Best Cookbooks, Food & Wine

See all formats and editions

Great on Kindle

Great Experience. Great Value.

Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.

View Kindle Edition

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$18.80","priceAmount":18.80,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"18","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"80","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"DsbZQ5s2s8E3JNSFLDfXnoGojUt%2B40FkOEJXsaHX2X998tDx3QLds8v8JbXchM4c8zUdua60do5PD7O969RX3rRICyMYpyEEn8aFgkYby93BgblWgus1hdiSjVkV7EwfOUqP%2BHYnO4hWPakCDmW3s5uE4sNnvSKzH0LZj5NWxkNMnVvCMUGzYe7%2FDdLYG54Z","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$7.46","priceAmount":7.46,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"7","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"46","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"DsbZQ5s2s8E3JNSFLDfXnoGojUt%2B40Fk0y%2FVAkemuCEmdYL0rsn4ftH%2F7MFgO%2FX6brxQPZlmCvNZ1eq2pdg6T5CbdglAet8qO6fsQGyutP35ZgFD1A5OWct0UeRh50n38mZ6dmI9hUPUuLRhhmrzcB%2FM7OHM5SXoUBOBKx%2BlimHaPG5fhQA%2B5g%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

The next stage in the food revolution: a radical way to select fruits and vegetables and reclaim the flavor and nutrients we've lost.

Ever since farmers first planted seeds 10,000 years ago, humans have been destroying the nutritional value of their fruits and vegetables. Unwittingly, we've been selecting plants that are high in starch and sugar and low in vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants for more than 400 generations.

Eating on the Wild Side reveals the solution -- choosing modern varieties that approach the nutritional content of wild plants but that also please the modern palate. Jo Robinson explains that many of these newly identified varieties can be found in supermarkets and farmer's market, and introduces simple, scientifically proven methods of preparation that enhance their flavor and nutrition. Based on years of scientific research and filled with food history and practical advice, Eating on the Wild Side will forever change the way we think about food.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Photos from Jo's Personal Garden

Black Tomatoes

Blue Jade Corn

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Purple Carrots

View to the South

Potato Salad with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Kalamata Olives

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 20-45 minutes, depending on method

Chilling time: 24 hours

Yield: 5 cups

Ingredients

2 pounds unpeeled new potatoes or unpleeled baking potatoes, preferably with red, blue, or purple flesh

1/2 cup oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained and chopped or julienned

1/2 cup thinly sliced red onions or chopped scallions (including white and green parts)

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, preferably unfiltered

3 tablespoons red or white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

1–2 garlic cloves, pushed through a garlic press

1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard or 1 teaspoon prepared mustard

1/2 cup pitted and chopped kalamata olives

1/3 cup chopped prosciutto or diced cooked bacon (optional)

Directions

Steam or microwave the potatoes in their skins until they are tender. Cool and store in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Quarter the chilled potatoes, then cut into 1/4-inch slices and place in a large mixing bowl. Do not remove the skins. Combine remaining ingredients in a small bowl and pour over the potatoes. Toss to coat evenly. Serve cold or at room temperature.

From Booklist

For some, locavorism isn’t enough. Farmed food of any sort lacks the full panoply of flavors and textures that wild foods bring to the table. Moreover, wild foods offer some nutritional advantages and may be richer in some vitamins and minerals than their cultivated cousins. Some laboratory studies have concluded that medical benefits, including protection from cancer cells, can be found in vegetables such as brussels sprouts. Despite her impassioned advocacy for eating foods culled from woodlands and creek beds, Robinson is not so doctrinaire as to believe that everyone has the time or the access to such foods. So she offers a guide to buying the best, most flavorful produce in supermarkets. Robinson guides readers through ranks of greens, explaining how to judge lettuces by color and why to select loose spinach rather than the bagged variety. Such guides can benefit grocery shoppers who lack the means of foraging their dinners. --Mark Knoblauch

Review

"I learned so much from this outstanding book. Highly recommended reading for all who are health conscious."―Andrew Weil, MD

"Phenomenal....The cure for what ails us is right there, and it's delicious."―Dan Barber, chef and owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns

"Because recent studies have taught us that we should be getting our beta carotene and other health-builders not from pills but from well-grown food, this book is just what gardeners and cooks need."―The Washington Post

"Eating on the Wild Side is a wonderful, enlightening book. Jo Robinson has done a magnificent job of bringing together information from so many diverse disciplines--most of it unknown to nutritional scientists, physicians, and lay people alike."―Loren Cordain, Ph.D., author of The Paleo Diet

"If the organic movement needs a Joan of Arc I would surely nominate Jo Robinson. Eating on the Wild Side illustrates why she is without a doubt the quiet anchor of the movement. Only Michael Pollan would come close to her superbly researched work.."―Bill Kurtis, Chairman and Founder, Tallgrass Beef Company

"With Eating on the Wild Side, Jo Robinson has written the next Omnivore's Dilemma--a book of revelations that food lovers and home cooks everywhere will be reading, recommending, quoting, and living by. Robinson may not be a household name yet, but her groundbreaking work will turn much of what you thought you knew about food upside down and inside out."―Epicurious.com

"From its pages, you will get a wonderful education on the changes that have taken place in agriculture over the past century, and you will discover new ways to enhance your health by choosing the best that natures has to offer us."―The Sacramento Bee

"A great book. I think people will change the way they buy their food. I know that I will."―Dr. Sanjay Gupta

"Robinson busts conventional wisdom on vegetables. Those of us who follow nutrition news have heard it all. And so it is not insignificant to say that Robinson has turned things on their proverbial heads."―The Huffington Post

"Eating more fruits and vegetables is wise advice. This entertaining and informative guidebook shows us why it's true--and which types are the best to add to our diet."―Shelf Awareness

About the Author

Jo Robinson is the author or co-author of 14 books of nonfiction. Her research on pastured animals has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Mother Jones, USA TODAY, Men's Health, the San Francisco Chronicle, Atlantic Monthly, and many other publications. She lives and works on Vashon Island, a rural island close to Seattle, WA.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (June 4, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316227943
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316227940
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.27 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #661,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #695 in Food Science (Books)
- #11,750 in Engineering (Books)
- #70,821 in Politics & Social Sciences (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.8 1,310 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Jo Robinson

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

I am an investigative journalist who specializes in science and health. In my most recent books, I have mined the scientific literature for information about how we've diminished the nutrient content of our diet, when and why we did it, and how we can recoup the losses by making more informed choices at the supermarket, farmers market, and in seed catalogs. My latest book, Eating on the Wild Side, a New York Times bestseller, explains how to select the most delicious and nutritious varieties of fruits and vegetables currently available. I live on Vashon Island, an island a short ferry ride from Seattle, where I have a demonstration garden showcasing some of the most stellar varieties.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5

1,310 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all photos

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Susie

Huge Fan!

Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2024

Verified Purchase

Great book for anyone interested in nutrition. I have bought multiple copies as gifts for friends. An enjoyable and interesting read even if you don't care about nutrition. Very talented author!

Helpful

AH

Very good book and a great reference

Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2014

Verified Purchase

The authors contention is that what has happened over the past 10,000 years in our agriculture has bred out many of the disease preventing properties our foods used to have prior to domestication. Many of the phytonutrients that prevented people from being sick have been removed because they were not so pleasant to eat. They were originally more bitter, sour, or otherwise less palatable, but within that they had more protective capacity to ward off DISEASE. For example--the wild apples people started eating had far far more disease protecting properties than our current apples. And, one of the most favored apples here in the USA is the golden delicious. It is very sweet. But in a recent study, researchers learned that with this apple the phrase--"An apple a day keeps the doctor away" is actually not true. With that particular variety, it makes your health worse to eat it on a regular basis--it's phytonutrient value is very very LOW--the lowest on the scale of domestic apple cultivars. If you are worried about nutrition--that one is not the one to buy or grow.

She then proposes how to gain back the nutrition that has been lost by the varieties one chooses to buy from the supermarket and tells you how to cook and store them to retain what nutrition they still have.

Many of the phytonutrients which protect so well from disease are very fragile and are easily lost because of the way the food in industrial agriculture is bred, harvested (before it is ripe), stored, shipped, and then marketed at the supermarket. I found the book very valuable so I bought it. It has many useful tips.

My own conclusion is, if you can grow it yourself--DO THAT because the fresher it is, the more nutrition it retains. So so much gets lost in storage and transport. Also you can pick the most nutritious varieties to grow for yourself--pick them at optimum flavor and ripeness and thus retain their nutritional value. But, even if you can't, the book is very very valuable.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Debbie

Fantastic information

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2023

Verified Purchase

If you’re a science nerd, health enthusiast, plant lover, gardener, and/or foodie this book is for you. So much good information and so interesting, the author has certainly done her research and she even includes recipes. I’ve been plant based for a few decades as well as a health care professional and researcher and I learned so much more about the nutritional content of the different varieties of species of food plants and the tremendous variation therein. She also informs on the best ways for cooking these plants to maintain and benefit from their valuable phytonutrients. I am reading it a second time to try to retain as much of the interesting information as possible and will continue to refer back to it especially when I visit the farmers market. We need to advocate for the growing and availability of more varieties of heirloom plants and not just purchase the most commercially desirable but nutritionally bereft “cheap” ones because in the long run it is to our own detriment.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kenneth Johnson

Good Book

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

This book was recommended to me by my sister, a nutritionist and home gardener. This is like the flip-side to Steve Solomon's book, The Intelligent Gardner. Solomon's book teaches you HOW to grow; Eating of the Wild Side tells you WHAT to grow.

Both books are fundamentally about nutritional health. The selection of plant varieties, as well as soil conditions, can dramatically influence food nutritional content. Some examples: French Fingerling potatoes have ten times more antioxidants than Yukin Gold. Deep yellow corn has 58 times more carotenoids than white corn. Scallions have 140 times more phytonutrients than common white onions.

Robinson's book provides a wealth of information on varietal plant selection (for shopping or growing) and practical advice on how to store and prepare food. For example, refrigerated produce will keep fresh longer if stored in a zip-lock bag with 10 or 20 pin pricks. The nutritional benefits of garlic can be destroyed by cooking, but if you crush the garlic cloves and then wait 10 minutes before putting them in the frying pan there is no loss of nutrients. Adding sliced avocados to salad can increase absorption of beta-carotene and lutein from the greens by 1500 percent.

The book has many interesting stories about how food varieties have evolved over the millennia, mainly in response to people's "genetic tinkering." For example, modern super-sweet corn was cultivated from mutant seeds that were exposed to radiation fallout from an H-Bomb test in 1946. Carrots are naturally purple; the ubiquitous (and nutritionally inferior) orange carrot is a cross-breed between two mutant varieties, which was developed to honor a sixteenth-century Dutch dynasty - the "House of Orange."

Going further back in time, Robinson gives us a glimpse into a bygone botanical world of incredible wild abundance, only lightly touched by human cultivators. Several examples:

- An area on the southern tip of Lake Michigan was once so rife with garlic that the odor perfumed the air for miles. The native Americans called their prized garlic field Shikako, or "skunk place," now known as "Chicago".

- English colonists in North America were astounded by the rampant bounty and flavor of wild strawberries that covered large areas of the eastern seaboard in the early 1600s. They remarked in their writings that "it is impossible to direct the foot without dyeing it in the blood of this fruit" and "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did."

- In 1585 an explorer on an island off present-day North Carolina reported finding a muscadine (sweet grape) vine that was two feet thick at the base and sprawled over a half acre of land. The vines were wrapping around trees for support and setting fruit sixty feet above the ground.

One element that is missing in the book is consideration of how food quality and nutrition is affected by soil quality. The land that the early American settlers found had soil nothing like what we have today. (For example, the soils of the Great Plains used to be rich and black, but are now yellow from extensive leaching and erosion.) The nutritional potential of wild foods can be realized only by restoring the fertility of the soil that it is grown in.

17 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Legolas

A lire

Reviewed in France on July 4, 2021

Verified Purchase

Vraiment intéressant pour tirer le meilleur de notre alimentation.

Translate review to English

Fantastic Mrs Fox

You'll never cook or eat the same way again.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 22, 2019

Verified Purchase

This book is amazing. I've been cooking my food wrong for 37 years! As a health conscious foodie this hbook has revolutionised the way I buy, cook and eat food. I've just bought load of seeds to grow my own broccoli, kale and corn. It's honestly a life changing book. I loved it.

One person found this helpful

Kreativa

An easy and useful guide

Reviewed in Germany on June 4, 2016

Verified Purchase

This book is very useful. The way you keep or prepare food increase or decrease ist property. Here is clearly explained in an easy way also how to choose the most valuable vegetables in the stores. I am happy I bought it.

RICHARD G HOUSE

This book changed my life.

Reviewed in Canada on September 29, 2013

Verified Purchase

My best friend chided me when I told her I had ordered this book. Something along the lines of "you haven't read enough books on the subject?" I was feeling a little embarrassed that I had ordered it.

When I delved into it, I was shocked. There's a whole world of healthy eating that I was oblivious to. I've spent much of my life focusing on healthy eating, preferring nutrition from food over supplements, and eating organic whenever possible. But little did I know, how little I knew!

I don't expect I will ever purchase another of those perfect looking tomatoes in the grocery stores. I don't care if they are organic. They have been engineered to look perfect, and the nutrition has been engineered out of them at the same time.

Flavor is another issue. Real tomatoes are bursting with flavor, and once you taste one, I doubt you will want a grocery store tomato again.

Tomatoes are only one example. The book is loaded with ways to get back to real food.

I've read many books on nutrition. I would rate this book as number one. Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon Dr. Mary Enig just moved to number two.

Rick G. House

14 people found this helpful

Maria Barbado

My bueno!

Reviewed in Spain on October 14, 2013

Verified Purchase

Sencillo, muy directo y con muy buenos consejos a la hora de consumir frutas y verduras de forma más sana y ecológica.

Translate review to English

See more reviews

Return this item for free

Return this item for free

Follow the author

Image Unavailable