基本説明
Through a series of essays concerning human eating seen from the perspective of contemporary biology / medicine and recent research articles, the book explores the links between food and Man's cultural and physical evolution.
Full Description
When you go into a scientific library or look through the catalogues of scientific publishers, you will quickly find books from food scientists, food technologists, food chemists, food microbiologists, and food toxicologists. Agronomists, nut- tionists, and physicians have written on food, and last but not least cooks. What I missed was a book on food written from the perspective of a biologist. When Susan Safren, the food science editor from Springer Science + Business Media, LLC, invited me to write a book, I decided that I would write this book on food biology. What I had in mind was a survey on eating through space and time in a very fundamental way, but not in the format of a systematic textbook. The present book is more of an ordered collection of scientific essays. Contents.In Chapter 1, I start with a prehistoric Venus to explore the relationship between sex and food. Then I use another lady—Europe—to inv- tigate the strong links between food and culture. I then ask what is eating in a very basic but simple physicochemical sense. In Chapters 2 and 3, I embark on a biochemistry-oriented travel following the path of a food molecule through the central carbon pathway until it is decomposed into CO and H O and a lot 2 2 of ATP. My account does not intend to teach biochemistry, but to use recent research articles from major scientific journals to look behind food biochemistry.
Contents
Foreword.- A few glimpses of biological anthropology.- Basic concepts on eating.- The central carbon pathway.- De revolutionibus orbium metabolicorum.- Bioenergetics.- The beginning of biochemistry.- Early eaters.- Photosynthesis.- The acquisition of the atoms of life.- Nutritional interactions in the ocean: a microbial perspective.- Early steps in predation.- Increasing complexity.- Animals: enlarging the food space.- Eat or be eaten: Anatomy of the marine food chain.- Life histories between the land and the sea.- The war of the senses: the example of echolocation.- Herbivory.- Choosing food: to eat or not to eat.- A lion's share?- Going for our blood.- Going for our gut.- From gut to blood: the battle for iron.- An agro(-eco)nomical outlook: Feeding the billions.- Index.
