Eat More Better: How to Make Every Bite More Delicious

by Dan Pashman, Alex Eben Meyer (Illustrator)

Overview

What if you could make everything you eat more delicious?

As creator of the WNYC podcast The Sporkful and host of the Cooking Channel web series You're Eating It Wrong, Dan Pashman is obsessed with doing just that. Eat More Better weaves science and humor into a definitive, illustrated guidebook for anyone who loves food. But this book isn’t for foodies. It’s for eaters.

In the bestselling tradition of Alton Brown’s Good Eats and M.F.K. Fisher’s The Art of Eating, Pashman analyzes everyday foods in extraordinary detail to answer some of the most pressing questions of our time, including: Is a cheeseburger better when the cheese is on the bottom, closer to your tongue, to accentuate cheesy goodness? What are the ethics of cherry-picking specific ingredients from a snack mix? And what role does surface-area-to-volume ratio play in fried food enjoyment and ice cube selection?

Written with an infectious blend of humor and smarts, Eat More Better is a tongue-in-cheek textbook that teaches readers to eat for maximum pleasure. Chapters are divided into subjects like engineering, philosophy, economics, and physical science, and feature hundreds of drawings, charts, and infographics to illustrate key concepts like The Porklift—a bacon lattice structure placed beneath a pancake stack to elevate it off the plate, thus preventing the bottom pancake from becoming soggy with syrup and imbuing the bacon with maple-based deliciousness.

Eat More Better combines Pashman’s award-winning writing with his unparalleled field research, collected over thirty-seven years of eating at least three times a day. It delivers entertaining, fascinating, and practical insights that will satisfy your mind and stomach, and change the way you look at food forever.

Read this book and every bite you take will be better.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781451689730
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	10/14/2014
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Dan Pashman is the creator and host of WNYC’s James Beard Award–nominated food podcast The Sporkful. He’s also the host of the Cooking Channel web series Good to Know and You’re Eating It Wrong and a contributor to NPR, Slate, Buzzfeed, and LA’s KCRW. He lives with his wife and two daughters. Find Dan at Sporkful.com.

Alex Eben Meyer is an illustrator working in Brooklyn, New York. His work frequently appears in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Wired, and other publications, and online at Eben.com.

Table of Contents

The Quest for Perfect Deliciousness: A Mission Statement 1

1 Physical Sciences: Eating on Earth 7

2 Language Arts: Better Communication, Better Consumption 35

3 Engineering: Construction as Cookery 69

4 Philosophy: Sustenance and Existence 97

5 Business & Economics: Profit for the Palate 125

6 Cultural Studies & Anthropology: Holidays and Everydays 153

7 Mathematics: Calculating Your Way to Deliciousness 187

8 Psychology: Finding Yourself, Finding Your Food 213

9 Biology & Ecology: Eatscape as Ecosystem 243

10 Etiquette & Hospitality: When Eaters Mingle 273

Commencement 297

Glossary 303

Acknowledgments 317

Index 321

Editorial Reviews

Dan Pashman is one of the great eaters. Eating is his passion. Eating is his life. This book is a celebration of putting food in your mouth.

Marc Maron

For noncooks who like food but hate the preciousness that comes with the whole foodie subculture…[Eat More Better] will allow its readers to survive his or her salad days.

The Boston Globe

Here’s a collection of unexpected, giggle-making meditations on food served with a ‘spork.’ I looked it up. It isn’t in the dictionary yet, but a ‘spork’ is a combination spoon, fork and knife. Yes, K’s in knives are usually silent, but in Dan’s world, as in ketchup, kimchi, and Kit Kats, K’s are never bashful.

Radiolab's Robert Krulwich

To top pumpkin pie or not to top pumpkin pie; the optimal coffee-dunking speed of a yeast donut; [the] eternal struggle about bite consistency versus bite variety: these are important questions to anyone who eats. . . . It’s all about being the best, most pleasure-extracting eater you can be.

MaximumFun.org

Hilarious and, if you're of a similarly obsessive ilk, pretty useful.

Newsday (New York)

Here’s a collection of unexpected, giggle-making meditations on food served with a ‘spork.’ I looked it up. It isn’t in the dictionary yet, but a ‘spork’ is a combination spoon, fork and knife. Yes, K’s in knives are usually silent, but in Dan’s world, as in ketchup, kimchi, and Kit Kats, K’s are never bashful.

Robert Krulwich

11/15/2014
Pashman, who hosts NPR affiliate WNYC's podcast The Sporkful, is amusing in his first book. He fashions the work as the textbook of Sporkful University, complete with an assignment to be submitted to the author at the end of each chapter. The chapters are given titles of typical college subjects—language arts, philosophy, psychology, and so on—and end with commencement. The content is tongue in cheek; the math section discusses why pies aren't squared, for example. Also included are helpful suggestions or recipes, e.g., to eat a cheeseburger upside down so the cheese touches your tongue, a recipe for a veggieducken for Thanksgiving, and mac and cheese made with "potato cream" rather than milk. The black-and-white illustrations and diagrams are clever, particularly pictures of the "hover and dart" technique for navigating a buffet line and Pashman's Hierarchy of Cheeseburger Needs based on Abraham Maslow's theory. VERDICT A fun leisure read for lovers of food.—Christine E. Bulson, emeritus, Milne Lib., SUNY Oneonta

Library Journal

2014-09-05
The creator and host of WNYC's podcast The Sporkful develops a humorous, witty narrative delivered in the form of a pseudo-textbook.Pashman's conceit of writing a textbook, complete with homework assignments, a commencement speech and diploma for Sporkful University, is a perfect delivery system for his comedic take on gustatory pleasure. The text is organized around such chapters as "Physical Science: Eating on Earth," "Language Arts: Better Communication, Better Consumption," and "Engineering: Construction as Cookery." The author's fake university is dedicated to eating as an education, with a goal of achieving "Perfect Deliciousness." Pashman aims his text at eaters rather than foodies, and his amusing narrative is a refreshing response to our often too-serious culinary culture. The author encourages readers to follow Sporkful University's motto to "masticate, ruminate and promulgate," while pondering the important questions eaters face. Pashman examines the pros and cons of popcorn shapes, why sparkling water is neither sparkling nor water, and how to employ buffalo-wing consumption techniques designed to reduce meat and napkin waste ("Drummettes have an average meat-to-bone ratio of 0.49, while flats have an average MTBR of 0.62"). Pashman also explores the technical difficulties presented by the "sliced cucumber conundrum" ("it tends to slide out the back [of a sandwich] when confronted with bite force") and shows how vertical plating of a grilled cheese sandwich preserves crispness. The author's clever use of language plays a leading role throughout his wry culinary journey. Paired with the copious diagrams depicting problems eaters/students may encounter during their trek, Pashman leads readers through the "eatscape," which he defines as "a community brought together by its members' common passion for eating and seeking deliciousness." The book closes with a glossary of key terms, including "semolina fulcrum," "meat umbrella," "face funnel," "porklift" and "toothsinkability." A good-natured, clever and informative romp through the modern culinary landscape.

Kirkus Reviews