Dinner with Darwin: Food, Drink, and Evolution

by Jonathan Silvertown

Overview

What do eggs, flour, and milk have in common? They form the basis of waffles, of course, but these staples of breakfast bounty also share an evolutionary function: eggs, seeds (from which we derive flour by grinding), and milk have each evolved to nourish offspring. Indeed, ponder the genesis of your breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and you’ll soon realize that everything we eat and drink has an evolutionary history. In Dinner with Darwin, join Jonathan Silvertown for a multicourse meal of evolutionary gastronomy, a tantalizing tour of human taste that helps us to understand the origins of our diets and the foods that have been central to them for millennia—from spices to spirits.

A delectable concoction of coevolution and cookery, gut microbiomes and microherbs, and both the chicken and its egg, Dinner with Darwin reveals that our shopping lists, recipe cards, and restaurant menus don’t just contain the ingredients for culinary delight. They also tell a fascinating story about natural selection and its influence on our plates—and palates. Digging deeper, Silvertown’s repast includes entrées into GMOs and hybrids, and looks at the science of our sensory interactions with foods and cooking—the sights, aromas, and tastes we experience in our kitchens and dining rooms. As is the wont of any true chef, Silvertown packs his menu with eclectic components, dishing on everything from Charles Darwin’s intestinal maladies to taste bud anatomy and turducken.

Our evolutionary relationship with food and drink stretches from the days of cooking cave dwellers to contemporary crêperies and beyond, and Dinner with Darwin serves up scintillating insight into the entire, awesome span. This feast of soup, science, and human society is one to savor. With a wit as dry as a fine pinot noir and a cache of evolutionary knowledge as vast as the most discerning connoisseur’s wine cellar, Silvertown whets our appetites—and leaves us hungry for more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226760094
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/11/2020
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Silvertown is professor of evolutionary ecology and chair of technology-enhanced science education in biological sciences in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of numerous books on ecology and evolution.

Table of Contents

1. An Invitation to Dinner
2. A Cooking Animal
3. Shellfish—Beachcombing
4. Bread—Domestication
5. Soup—Taste
6. Fish—Flavor
7. Meat—Carnivory
8. Vegetables—Variety
9. Herbs and Spices—Piquancy
10. Desserts—Indulgence
11. Cheese—Dairying
12. Wine and Beer—Intoxication
13. Feasting—Society
14. Future Food
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Dinner with Darwin ranges far more widely—and offers vastly more substance—than the common horde of food books. This is not a candlelit foodie memoir or a ‘breakthrough’ weight-loss manual. Dinner with Darwin is a wide-ranging natural history of our diet, crafted at a pitch-perfect level for the science buff and the general reader alike. Silvertown is also a wonderful writer: erudite, informative, and thoroughly entertaining.

Washington Independent Review of Books - Bob Duffy

[A] fascinating celebration of the green world upon which all human life depends.

New Scientist

In a nutshell, I will never look at seeds the same way again, whether teeny poppy seeds or mammoth coconuts. . . . [A] delicious little book.

on Silvertown's "An Orchard Invisible" Australian

A gem. . . . Read it as a gardener, scientist, food aficionado, historian, botanist, or naturalist, and you’ll not be disappointed.

on Silvertown's "An Orchard Invisible" Times Higher Education

Silvertown breaks down the sociology, selective breeding, and nutritional evolution behind each contemporary dietary staple. . . . This tour—from animal to vegetable to beer—will give even the most ambitious foodie something to chew on.

Scientific American

A series of beautifully plated amuse-bouche, raising tantalizing and rich ideas. . . . The book left me feeling as if I had attended a dinner party, where foodies, historians, and scientists mingled, sharing vignettes on various food-related topics. Each ‘bite’ . . . left me contemplating the relationships between genetic changes, speciation, and, at times, even the future of our planet.

Science - Mari-Vaughn V. Johnson

The Darwinian dining served up by evolutionary ecologist Silvertown in this delectably erudite study is all about tracing the impact of natural selection on foods. We learn that mussels helped to fuel the hominin exodus from Africa; rye is a weed domesticated by accident; carnivory and tapeworms are intimately linked; and Penicillium camemberti mold evolved in soft cheeses. We even examine engastration—stuffing one animal into another before cooking—as a status-led manifestation of the need to share food. This intricate scientific banquet is a marvelous read: bon appétit.

Nature - Barbara Kiser

Deserves a spot on any natural history lover’s bedside bookstand. . . . It is simply a delight to read.

on Silvertown's "An Orchard Invisible" Natural History

From the opening course of oysters to the final swill of wine, Silvertown’s account of the evolution of our diet is a sumptuous experience. Dinner with Darwin combines natural history, biography, archaeology, and biology into food stories that will enlighten any meal.

Richard Wrangham

“[A] fascinating celebration of the green world upon which all human life depends.

New Scientist

A series of beautifully plated amuse-bouche, raising tantalizing and rich ideas. . . . The book left me feeling as if I had attended a dinner party, where foodies, historians, and scientists mingled, sharing vignettes on various food-related topics. Each ‘bite’ . . . left me contemplating the relationships between genetic changes, speciation, and, at times, even the future of our planet.

Science

2017-08-06
A science-informed tour of the table, showing how our fare comes to us courtesy of natural selection—and, of course, survival of the fittest.Why does food taste different to different people? Did Australopithecus cook? Why can't some people handle booze—or milk? The taphonomic, paleontological, and archaeological records are full of pointers to the answers to questions like these, but it's only with modern genetic and genomic analysis that full replies emerge. Silvertown (Evolutionary Ecology/Univ. of Edinburgh; The Long and the Short of It: The Science of Life Span and Aging, 2013, etc.) delves in with gusto, opening by noting that "everything we eat has an evolutionary history," a history that opens onto other questions of evolutionary biology. He notes that Darwin's most famous book, On the Origin of Species, opens with a discussion of plant and animal domestication precisely because "Darwin realized that the process of artificial selection that breeders use to produce new varieties is analogous to natural selection." Thus cocktail corn and bespoke pigs. The foods we select in turn select us: the evolutionary record is light on information about vegetarianism, what with the absence of datable bones, but by Silvertown's account, humans may have been cooking food—and eating meat—by the time Homo erectus emerged on the scene nearly 2 million years ago. The author's accessible discussion ranges from shellfish gathering to bread-making to gardening, from issues of food security (which "depends on being able to continually match the challenge posed by constantly evolving diseases") to the genetic basis for taste and genetic variability among populations of food plants, with local adaptations governed by sets of genes charged with protecting plants from predators. Along the way, he ponders matters such as why we drink milk, which raises further issues of distinguishing cause and consequence—which, in turn, teaches novice readers how scientists approach problems. Nothing world-shaking but a tasty nibble for the bookish, science-inclined foodie.

Kirkus Reviews