This book by Bee Wilson deserves a wide audience. When I was a younger person working in the food-processing industry, I pushed the claims of my organization. However, since then, I have learned to eat natural food, freshly cooked.

I have several books on this topic, so much of her material is familiar. However, she has done excellent research and covers countries spanning several continents, unlike many authors.

The book's organization is excellent, and I like her even tone throughout the text. The pitfalls of cheap, easy, processed food should be public knowledge and good eating habits. She also wrote about our low attention to food these days: we often wolf down our food or eat while looking at a screen. Similarly, she dissects the issues with 'liquid food,' which is becoming popular.

If you don't savor your food, you have lost half the battle to a good life and health. Bee Wilson makes this point with grace and subtlety.

This book is excellent. Read it. ( )

The bits where Wilson was talking to scientists and people in the food industry were fascinating. However, her own words were somewhat confused. Apparently it is problematic that food is stripped of the culture of its country of origin, yet conversely, we should all be revelling in the diversity of foods available to us from other countries. It was also rather irritating how she fetishizes foods and rituals that she deems 'good', with a particular paraphilia for beetroot, pickles and grapes with seeds in them. I sometimes wonder whether the book was just a love letter to her own varied, middle class diet. ( )

It's interesting enough but too often judgmental. It's a lot better when she lets food tell its story, instead of her giving her opinions about what we should be eating. Some is just slapdash, such as her saying we work fewer hours now. It's technically true, but doesn't account for the huge rise in women's paid labor or the huge variations in available time. ( )

The book is a little scattered, but at least it's not full of misinformation, and it pulls together a lot of valuable social commentary on food consumption around the world and in recent history, and discusses how various influences determine how and what we eat. I was thankful that the author did not omit socioeconomic disincentives to cook the "cleanest" food--nor did she shrink from debunking the new puritanism surrounding food that gave rise to the idea that gluten is toxic, among other idiotic, cultish food ideas.

The author concludes on a hopeful note for the improvement of nutrition and the resurrection of cooking. I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to my "foodie" friends. ( )

An extended rant on everything you could possibly find wrong with, well, the way we eat now.

I didn't really learn anything, except a lot of Britishisms. "Clingfilm" for plastic wrap. "Veg" for vegetables - much preferable to the babyish "veggies" we say in this country.

But anyway, lack of balance really bothered me, more in the beginning of the book than the end. For example, passing rants about increasing alcohol consumption - but a broad swipe like that has no meaning; alcohol consumption has to be the most varied of all food & drink intake habits across time and culture. There are cultures where alcohol has no traditional basis and was never heard of centuries ago; there are cultures where wine is a daily drink. There are American subcultures who are teetotalers; while colonial America was apparently drunk on hard liquor throughout the days of the founding fathers. There's no mention of any of this.

It got more enjoyable and balanced towards the end. For example, she's actually tried and liked meal kits, so instead of rants, they get a balanced treatment. She's better when talking about her direct experience than when presenting history. ( )