An Edible History of Humanity

Imagine buying an expensive orchid at a plant store. You take it home and place it next to a sunny spot by the window. You read about how to care for orchids, and soon you join an online forum for orchid enthusiasts, where you make a few friends. After a few months, you buy new orchids in the hopes of cross-pollinating to create a new breed. This scenario illustrates one of Standage’s main points in the work: As humans change plants, plants change humans. In comparison to the example of the orchid, though, the coevolution of humans and plants through agrarian practices was far more gradual. The early attempts by humans to control their food supply took millenia to develop into the complex relationship between food and society present today. Standage argues that humans were not aware of how drastically their lives were changing, given the span of time over which the change took place. Nonetheless, with each choice that humans made about selective breeding and farming practices, their lives altered in new ways. Humans and food are so interconnected that any alteration in one causes an alteration in the other. By tracing this mutuality from the birth of agriculture, Standage reveals the radical ways in which farming has changed human life.