Fed Up

Contrary to widespread claims, Lieberman argues, there can be no simple, definitive answer. Using lines of evidence from evolutionary biology, physiology, anthropology, anatomy, medical science, and history, Lieberman examines, with brio and wit, the history and health effects of food from before the invention of cooking up to today’s industrially produced diets.

He shows how we evolved to eat almost anything, and by evaluating and trying many of these diets (raw food, Paleo, Mediterranean, Blue Zone, intermittent fasting, Atkins, DASH), he helps you understand why none is definitive, and some are better than others.

Lieberman explores the costs and benefits of cheap, energy-rich, tempting, and often unhealthy ultra-processed foods; the tangled roots of weight gain; how diet influences obesity, heart disease, and cancer; and the claims of benefits offered by high- and low-fat diets, meal replacements, intermittent fasting, carnivorism, vegetarianism, and veganism—while showing how over centuries most cultures evolved ingenious ways to grow and cook healthy, delicious food.