Omnivorous Mind: Our Evolving Relationship with Food - Hardcover

John S. Allen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674055721 ISBN 13: 9780674055728

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Title: The Omnivorous Mind( Our Evolving Relationship with Food) <>Binding: Hardcover <>Author: JohnS.Allen <>Publisher: HarvardUniversityPress

About this title

Review:

"Whether we're obsessing over intricate recipes or daydreaming about chocolate, our minds are often focused on food...Allen uses this mental gustation as a lens on our biological and cultural past, through anthropology, food history and the experience of chefs. The result is a banquet. Ranging over food cravings and aversions, cultural preferences and diets, he serves up plenty of amuse-bouches, not least an unusual take on the global love for the crispy and crunchy."-- Nature, 4th May 2012

"[Has] a refreshing emphasis on the physiological and evolutionary aspects of our relationship with food. Recommended for readers seeking a better understanding of their complex relationship with food and its biological and cultural significance. -- Jon Bodnar, Library Journal, 5th May 2012

"[Allen's] lucid, careful examination of how we think about food (as well as how our brains receive input about food, whether we're actively cogitating about it or not) is a welcome addition to the growing bookshelf exploring the brain, about which we know more and more but never, somehow, enough." -- Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe, 13th May 2012

"In The Omnivorous Mind [Allen] explores our biological equipment for taste and the ways in which each culture builds a unique cuisine upon a shared cognitive blueprint...Allen admirably conveys that our varied taste is both what makes us human and what marks each of us as an individual." -- Leo Coleman, Wall Street Journal, 20th May 2012

"John S. Allen's The Omnivorous Mind is a clever and original take on how we think about food. Allen is a research scientist, which means that he's less interested in the cultural history of food--how the pickle migrated from Eastern Europe to New York, for example--than he is in hard appetite. Allen's approach involves the intriguing, if inconclusive, results that come from peering at brain scans and noticing which bits light up when we're asked to think about different foods. Some of his best conclusions involve mapping current food preferences onto the long march of evolutionary biology." --Kathryn Hughes, Prospect, 1st May 2012

About the Author:

John S. Allen is Research Scientist at Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center and the Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0674055721
• ISBN 13: 9780674055728
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 266