The Way We Eat Now by Bee Wilson

THE WAY WE EAT NOW by Bee Wilson contains an analysis of “how the food revolution has transformed our lives, our bodies and our world.” Wilson, a food historian and Wall Street Journal commentator who lives in England, notes the trends towards globalization and more variety in what we eat as well as a move towards diets that are simultaneously both more and less healthy.

For example, I found her comments about looking at what we drink and the calories associated with that to be very interesting. She cites research that says, "we have reached a state where many people – adults and children alike – can no longer recognize a simple thirst for water, because they have become so accustomed to liquids tasting of something else."  There are no recipes in this somewhat academic work, but numerous charts (decreasing cooking oil prices, increasing consumption of processed potatoes, etc.) and numerous detailed statistics (e.g., changes in rye bread consumption in the Czech Republic and its impact on diet) are included.

Given students’ interest in nutrition, diet and health, this will be a useful text to supplement their research (perhaps involving related works by Perlmutter, Pollan, Schlosser, and Taubes), particularly for Junior Theme. THE WAY WE EAT NOW received a starred review from Booklist and contains a sixteen-page bibliography, extensive notes and a helpful index.