Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • Magazines

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. Natural sciences
  3. Technology

Read and listen for free for 7 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
3.0(1)

Tasty : The Art and Science of What We Eat

“A fascinating blend of culinary history and the science of taste” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), from the first bite taken by our ancestors to ongoing scientific advances in taste and today’s “foodie” revolution.

Can’t resist the creamy smoothness of butter? Blame Darwinian natural selection. Crave the immediate zing of sweets? They bathe your brain in a seductive high. Enjoy the savory flavors of grilled meat? So did your ancestor Homo erectus. Coffee? You had to overcome your hardwired aversion to its hint of bitterness and learn to like it. Taste is a whole-body experience, and breakthroughs in genetics and microbiology are casting light not only on the experience of french fries and foie gras, but on the mysterious interplay of body, brain, and mind.

Reporting from kitchens, supermarkets, farms, restaurants, huge food corporations, and science labs, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John McQuaid tells the story of the still-emerging concept of flavor and how our sense of taste will evolve in the coming decades. Tasty explains why children have bizarre and stubborn tastes, how the invention of cooking changed our brains and physiology, why artificial sweeteners never taste quite right, why name brands really do taste better, how a 100,000-year-old walkabout by early humans is responsible for George H.W. Bush’s broccoli-hatred, why “supertasters” like salt, and why “nontasters” are more likely to be alcoholics.

“A fascinating story with a beginning some half a billion years ago…McQuaid’s tale is about science, but also about culture, history and, one senses, our future” (Scientific American). Tasty offers a delicious smorgasbord of where taste originated and where it’s going—and why it changes by the day.


Author:

  • John McQuaid

Format:

  • E-book

Duration:

  • 215 pages

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Natural sciences
  • Technology
  • Society and Social Sciences
  • Society
  • Society and Social Sciences
  • Psychology

More by John McQuaid

Skip the list
  1. Tasty

    John McQuaid

    audiobook

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. Langenscheidt Englisch-Deutsch Basiswortschatz : Die 1000 wichtigsten Wörter und Wendungen

    Das Neue dnf Verlag

    audiobook
  2. Activating and Engaging Learners and Teachers : Perspectives for English Language Education

    book
  3. Classroom Discourse Competence : Current Issues in Language Teaching and Teacher Education

    book
  4. The Ministry of Intercession : A Plea for More Prayer

    Andrew Murray

    audiobook
  5. Nature and Enactment of Tasks for Early English as a Foreign Language Teaching : A Collaborative Research Project with Teachers

    Constanze Dreßler

    book
  6. Cracking the Cube: Going Slow to Go Fast and Other Unexpected Turns in the World of Competitive Rubik's Cube Solving

    Ian Scheffler

    book
  7. Prevailing Prayer

    Dwight L. Moody

    audiobook
  8. The Power of Prayer and the Prayer of Power : Updated Edition

    Reuben A. Torrey

    audiobook
  9. The Essentials of Prayer

    E. M. Bounds

    audiobook
  10. The Role of Teacher - Developed Materials in Fostering English Language Skills

    Astrid Núñez Pardo, María Fernanda Téllez Téllez, Judith Jaimes

    book
  11. El gran Califa

    Paco Morales

    book
  12. Have You Felt Like Giving Up Lately?

    David Wilkerson

    audiobook

  • 2 books

    John McQuaid

    John McQuaid is the author of Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat and his journalism has appeared in Smithsonian magazine, The Washington Post, Wired, Forbes.com, and Eating Well magazine. His science and environment reporting for The Times-Picayune anticipated Hurricane Katrina, explored the global fisheries crisis and the problems of invasive species. His work has won a Pulitzer Prize, as well as awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. McQuaid is a graduate of Yale. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and two children.

    Read more

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5