Tom Standage

Tom Standage is the business editor at the Economist and the author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses, The Victorian Internet, The Turk, and The Neptune File. He has written for Wired, the New York Times, and numerous magazines and newspapers. His new book is An Edible History of Humanity.

From his Q & A at the Los Angeles Times:

How does "An Edible History" fit in with "A History of the World in 6 Glasses"?

I was on tour for the drinks book, and my wife said, "You're gonna do food next, right?"

The history of food is actually a much more serious story. The drinks book is quite frivolous: It says each era has a dominant drink, and each drink didn't do much more than reflect what is already going on. I'm not really saying that drinks changed the world.

There's a contrarian streak to this book: You argue that crops are less natural than we think, and you see contradictions in the locavore movement.

What I'm trying to do is take a level-headed view of our food culture, and some of that ends up not agreeing with the food fads of the moment.

They're rather like fundamentalist religions....[read on]

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--Marshal Zeringue