October 12, 2015
“Most of what we learn about food happens when we’re children—when we’re sitting at the kitchen table (if you’re lucky enough to have one), being fed,” says Wilson (Consider the Fork), a food writer and historian. Wilson takes a scholarly approach in this smart and telling journey that outlines food habits and where they originate. Mixing science with anecdotes, she incorporates past studies, including one landmark research study on infants’ inherent patterns of taste, explicating the sometimes-conflicting theories scholars spun from the outcome, Wilson debunks the notion that appetite is genetic and the idea that the body naturally selects what it needs. Old reports are countered by the latest research from food psychologists, neuroscientists, and biologists. Using brief tales, Wilson details many disorders across the consumption spectrum in an insightful and earnest tone that appeals to food-lovers and parents. Discussing everything from adults with stringent eating patterns to gendered weight misperceptions and changes in cultural norms, Wilson delineates how diets develop and, more importantly, how to make healthy modifications. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Zoë Pagnamenta Agency.
September 15, 2015
An exploration of the notion that we can change our early food habits. Following her lively and strikingly original history of culinary tools and techniques, Consider the Fork (2012), Wilson enters the increasingly crowded category of diet and nutrition with a well-informed, albeit overly earnest guide to healthy eating and a well-balanced diet. She demonstrates the ways our tastes and eating habits, formed at our earliest stages of development and influenced by friends, siblings, and overwhelmingly aggressive marketing campaigns, can often lead to a variety of eating disorders. "My premise...is that the question of how we learn to eat-both individually and collectively-is the key to how food, for so many people, has gone so badly wrong," writes the author. "The greatest public health problem of modern times is how to persuade people to make better food choices." Wilson maintains a strong belief in change and sets out to prove how it is possible. In such chapters as "Likes and Dislikes," "Feeding," "Hunger," "Disorder," and "Change," the author shares numerous anecdotes from her personal life-she had to overcome challenges as an overweight teenager and later as a mother of picky eaters-to underscore wide-ranging case-study results, often with encouraging outcomes. A profound example is the huge cultural shift in eating that has taken place in Japan over the past 50 years; prior to that, the current diet of fresh fish and rice was not customary. In a sublimely entertaining early chapter, flashes of M.F.K. Fisher or Diane Ackerman may come to mind as Wilson describes how the subtle influences of scent and taste can trigger memory, "the single most powerful driving force in how we learn to eat; it shapes all of our yearnings." With generous measures of grounded wisdom and solid research findings, the book should attract and possibly inspire broad groups of readers struggling with eating-related issues; for others, it may be of less interest.
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March 1, 2016
Wilson (Consider the Fork) draws on research from food psychologists, neuroscientists, and nutritionists to reveal that food-related habits are shaped by multiple factors including family, culture, memory, gender, hunger, and love. Featured here are people who only eat foods of a certain color, toddlers whose preferences are limited to hot dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches, and researchers who have pioneered effective ways to introduce new foods into a child's diet. While there are many solid books about getting children and babies to eat, ranging from straightforward cookbooks to more detailed feeding manuals such as Jill Castle and Maryann Jacobsen's Fearless Feeding, most focus on the practical aspects; not on the reasons behind developing food habits. With chapters addressing particular foods such as milk and cake and discussions on topics including eating disorders, pickiness, and binging, this book provides in-depth discussion of what makes us indulge, enjoy, crave, dislike, and choose the tastes and provisions that we do. VERDICT This work will appeal to food scientists, parents wishing to know the roots of their children's meal choices, and curious readers in general.--Dawn Lowe-Wincentsen, Oregon Inst. of Technology, Portland
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