I have actively engaged in researching nutrition and American eating behaviors for the past twenty years, at least. I have not even attempted to extricate my personal involvement in our food system from the 30,000-foot view of the state of things. Questions about food and what it does to our bodies color every day for me, both as...

One of my daughters has discovered in herself a talent and passion for Tri-Athlete competitions. She's a hella swimmer, runner, and biker and she trains with Spartan discipline. So even though she's a relative beginner to the world of Tri racing, she's made a showing in some big races. My husband and I get so excited by these acco...

            Like most Americans, I am an omnivore. I eat red meat occasionally, but because of its environmental costs (or economic cost if it is sustainably raised), I don't like to eat much of it. I do relish fresh, local fish that doesn't break the bank — but that's hard to come by, even in the land of plenty where I live, 15 m...

In writing nonfiction, imagination is a critical ingredient. It's the jump-start that makes a writer dive down the rabbit hole to explore why this or that is how it is. Historical nonfiction is a meta endeavor -- following other people's rabbit holes and back-tracking to figure out which histories might be real, and which simply a...

            The other night, I desired a well written nonfiction book to lull me to sleep. For as long as I can remember, we have had a copy of M.F.K. Fisher's With Bold Knife & Fork tucked among our cookbooks. I have denied myself what I regarded as a somewhat off-topic treat for all these years. A few ni...

            Big Sugar shapes American lives in countless places. Our collective waistlines constitute one locale. But there are bigger areas of concern.

            The LA Times recently reprinted a Miami Herald article that poi...

I have not yet done the deep dive on Soylent, the 1.6 powder or the 2.0 liquid, but I'm going to assume that the eponymous product is not the evil sham portrayed in the movie "Soylent Green." One thing I love about it, it's a great conversation starter. Everybody's got an opinion about food, including Rob Rhinehart, CEO and founde...

Oliver Evans's Grist Mill: First Automated Industrial Processing in the World c. 1790

            Several weeks ago, I asked my daughter who has access to Stanford's magnificent Green Library, to borrow a book I needed for my research on wheat. Oliver Evans: A Chronicle of Ea...

Labels on humans and human institutions always distort the reality they purport to represent. "Feminism" and "feminist" fall among labels that are too ambiguous, malleable, and fraught with the carnival-mirror reflections of history and personal bias. So I don't like the title of this article, but I like where it goes — to promote...

Like the ineluctable course of a grist-mill water wheel, the profession of milling wheat is coming full circle. My new book on the history of food processing in the United States starts with the story of Oliver Evans, a brilliant inventor hobbled by his humble roots. Evans, a fussy sort of precisionist, reviled the rancid, rock-st...