Dinner with Darwin Food, Drink, and Evolution

Who could refuse such an invitation to dinner? In fourteen short chapters, Silvertown provides a smörgåsbord of topics on the role of food in human evolution and vice versa, many of which have been covered here in recent reviews. This is his fourth book with the University of Chicago Press, and based on this, I would love to read his other books as well. Care to join me at the table?

Silvertown starts off recapping Wrangham's thesis put forth in Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, shortly mentioning the role of fossil teeth that Ungar elaborated upon in Evolution's Bite. He then traces our migration around the globe following the heaps of empty shells we left around the world's coastlines. Domestication secured our food supply, and the reader is given a summary of the beginning of agriculture in what is now the Middle East, something that was covered more in-depth in Against the Grain. We are also introduced to the seed collection efforts of Russian scientist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (more on him in Where Our Food Comes From and Never Out Of Season). Silvertown delves into the biochemistry of taste and the budding discipline of neurogastronomy, while a side-dish of fish allows him to discuss the importance of smell on our experience of flavours. Meat and livestock are an entry point to discuss the genetic changes involved in domestication (in passing touching on Dmitry Belyaev's work that was reviewed in How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)). A chapter on vegetables sees Silvertown delving into the biochemistry of plant chemical defences, which we circumvent through cooking and food processing. Spices and herbs, on the other hand, are valued for their chemical compounds, as discussed in a second chapter.

The chapter on desserts finally made me understand that not all sugars are created equal, revealing how fructose hoodwinks our metabolism, hormones, and digestion, and has become a prime suspect in obesity and diabetes. Microbes and fermentation (see also The Rise of Yeast) play a role the production of cheese, beer, and wine. We even get a crash course on the evolution of altruism when discussing the sharing of food. Finally, Silvertown discusses the future of food. He summarises the first green revolution and role of Norman Borlaug (more on him in The Wizard and the Prophet) and stresses the importance of genetic engineering of crops in launching the second green revolution, which we will need to meet the challenges of a changing climate and expanding population. He makes short work of the non-sensical arguments put forth by the anti-GMO movement (see also Seeds of Science). If anything, genetic engineering is as natural as it gets – nature has been doing it for a very long time, as shown by the discovery of horizontal gene transfer (the transfer of genetic material between species done by bacteria and viruses – see Quammen's book The Tangled Tree). Even the tools that we use, including the most recent discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 (see A Crack in Creation for more details on that), have been taken straight from nature's (cook)book.

It's amazing that Silvertown manages to cram all this, and much more, in in under 200 pages. This book is a veritable feast for the popular science buff and food lover. The finger-licking selection of chapters provides a good entry point to various topics, summarising a lot of recent primary literature. Silvertown is a gifted writer who engages as much as he amuses. His observation (p. 154) that "A heroin addict is a bystander casualty of the war between poppies and caterpillars" is the kind of wit you would expect from a biologist. Before I opened this book, I wasn't sure whether I would enjoy it much (I'm really not sure why anymore),, but it turns out this book sits right in the middle of subjects I have been reading about a lot lately. This entertaining read would also make the perfect gift for your foodie friend.