Everyone eats : understanding food and culture

Everyone eats, but rarely do we ask why or investigate why we eat what we eat. Why do we love spices, sweets, coffee? How did rice become such a staple food throughout so much of eastern Asia? Everyone Eats examines the social and cultural reasons for our food choices and provides an explanation of the nutritional reasons for why humans eat, resulting in a unique cultural and biological approach to the topic. E. N. Anderson explains the economics of food in the globalization era, food's relationship to religion, medicine, and ethnicity as well as offers suggestions on how to end hunger, starvation, and malnutrition.

Everyone Eats feeds our need to understand human ecology by explaining the ways that cultures and political systems structure the edible environment.

Introduction: Everyone eats -- Obligatory omnivores -- Human nutritional needs -- More needs than one -- The senses : taste, smell, and the adapted mind -- Basics : environment and economy -- Food as pleasure -- Food classification and communication -- Me, myself, and the others : food as social marker -- Food and traditional medicine -- Food and religion -- Change -- Foods and borders : ethnicities, cuisines, and boundary crossings -- Feeding the world.