5 Appetites: Eat Like the Anim. This item is unavailable.5 Appetites: Eat Like the Anim

A New Scientist Best Book of 2020

How is it that a baboon and a blob of slime mould instinctively know what to eat for optimal health, balancing their protein, fat and carb intake in perfect proportions?

In new, groundbreaking research that is transforming our understanding of nutrition, animals from locusts to lions and yes, humans too, demonstrate the remarkable science behind appetite.

Appetite communicates the body's nutritional needs to the brain, and eating in accordance with your body's demands, like the animals, should ensure optimal health, but the modern fast food world wreaks havoc on this evolutionarily honed system.

In several landmark studies, Raubenheimer and Simpson prove that appetite can be hacked – we can eat for optimal health, for increased fertility or for a longer lifespan. Understanding the science of the appetite offers tremendous power in shaping our bodies and controlling our lives.

** Previously published as Eat Like the Animals **

David Raubenheimer is the Leonard P. Ullman Professor of Nutritional Ecology in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, and Nutrition Theme Leader in the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. He previously spent 17 years at Oxford, initially as a doctoral student then as a Research Fellow and Departmental Lecturer in Zoology and Fellow of Magdalen College.

Stephen J. Simpson is Academic Director of the Charles Perkins Centre and Professor in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney. He spent 22 years at Oxford, where he became Professor of the Hope Entomological Collections in the Department of Zoology and a Fellow of Jesus College. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and has appeared on TV on National Geographic and Animal Planet.

David and Stephen’s academic partnership spans 30 years and between them they have authored 514 scientific journal articles and co-written The Nature of Nutrition (2012).