Why We Eat

To understand how to eat, we have to know why we eat

The more expert advice we hear about diet, the less clarity we have about what to eat. Leading researcher Kevin Hall and award-winning health journalist Julia Belluz want to cut through the smoke screen thrown up by the food industry on one side, and the diet gurus on the other, with this definitive book about food, diet, metabolism and nutrition.

We evolved to eat everything. If we eat a starchy potato or a fatty steak, the chemical pathways and hormone responses will look different but in the short term the net result is the same: we get the calories we need for fuel. But what result will that diet have in the long term? Hall and Belluz tease out the answers, examining the underlying truth about popular food plans (keto, vegan, pescatarian), the critical impact of micronutrients, what we really know about the microbiome, and the truth that in terms of weight loss – but not necessarily our health – a calorie is a calorie.

Nutrition isn’t rocket science; it’s harder. This accessible, illuminating, often funny book will change how you think about food forever.