The banquet is in the first bite.
Sugar was a rarity in eighteenth century America. Even after cane plantations were planted in the Caribbean, it remained a luxury good beyond the reach of most Americans...It wasn't until late in the...
Suffering... is not just lots of pain but pain amplified by distinctly human emotions such as regret, self-pity, shame, humiliation, and dread.
Specialization is undeniably a powerful social and economic force. And yet it is also debilitating. It breeds helplessness, dependence, and ignorance and, eventually, it undermines any sense of respon...
Some researchers attribute the increase in gluten intolerance and celiac disease to the fact that modern brands no longer receive a lengthy fermentation.
Since the body can’t break down resistant starch, it slips through the digestive track without ever turning into calories of glucose—a particular boon, we’re told, for diabetics. When fake sugars and...
Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to the scientists (and to the journalists through whom the scientists reach the public) to explain th...
Sigmund Freud wrote that there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our self, our own ego. Yet it is difficult to be quite so certain that anyone else possesses consciousness, m...
Science has trouble with this interpretation, however, because, whatever the perception is, it can’t be verified by its customary tools. It’s an anecdotal report, in effect, and so has no value. Scien...
Researchers have found that people (and animals) presented with large portions will eat up to 30 percent more than they could otherwise. Human appetite, it turns out, is surprisingly elastic, which ma...
R. D. Laing once said there are three things human beings are afraid of: death, other people, and their own minds.
Queen of Night is as close to black as a flower gets, though in fact it is a dark and glossy maroonish purple. Its hue is so dark, however, that it appears to draw more light into itself than it refle...
Psilocybes gave our hominid ancestors access to realms of supernatural power, catalyzed the emergence of human self-reflection, and brought us out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated...
Plant a vegetable garden if you have the space, a window box if you don’t. What does growing some of your own food have to do with repairing your relationship to food and eating? Everything. To take p...
Perhaps as the sway of tradition in our eating decisions weakens, habits we once took for granted are thrown up in the air, where they're more easily buffeted by a strong idea or a breeze of fashion.
People feel they have been let in on a deep secret of the universe, and they cannot be shaken from that conviction.
Part of the appeal of hamburgers and nuggets is that their boneless abstractions allow us to forget we’re eating animals.
Our brains constitute only 2.5 percent of our weight yet consumer 20 percent of our energy when we’re resting.
One would expect to find a comparatively high proportion of carbon 13 [the carbon from corn] in the flesh of people whose staple food of choice is corn - Mexicans, most famously. Americans eat much mo...
One of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a...