Nutrition History

Food—how we produce, prepare, share and consume it—is fundamental to our wellbeing. It also connects the human body to the complex and dynamic systems of our environment. This is more significant than ever before in human history, as climate change and increasing population impact on global ecosystems.

The clearest, simplest guide to nutrition ever published

What makes fad diets so appealing to so many people? How did there get to be so many different ones, often with eerily similar prescriptions? Why do people cycle on and off diets, perpetually searching for that one simple trick that will solve everything? And how did these fads become so central to conversations about food and nutrition?

Nutrition spans a wide range of mechanisms from acquisition of food to digestion, absorption and retention of energy substrates, water and other nutrients. Nutritional principles have been applied to improving individual health, athletic performance and longevity of humans and of their companion animals, and to maximizing agricultural efficiency by manipulating reproduction or growth of tissues such as muscle, hair or milk in livestock. Comparative nutrition borrows from these tra- tional approaches by applying similar techniques to studies of ecology and physiology of wildlife.