Fermented Foods serves up the history and science behind some of the world’s most enduring food and drink. It begins with wine, beer, and other heady brews before going on to explore the fascinating and often whimsical histories of fermented breads, dairy, vegetables, and meat, and to speculate on fermented fare’s possible future. Along the way, we learn about Roquefort cheese’s fabled origins, the scientific drive to brew better beer, the then-controversial biological theory that saved French wine, and much more. Christine Baumgarthuber also makes several detours into lesser known ferments—African beers, the formidable cured meats of the Subarctic latitudes, and the piquant, sometimes deadly ferments of Southeast Asia. Anyone in search of an accessible, fun, yet comprehensive survey of the world’s fermented foods need look no further than this timely, necessary work.

A sober engagement with the diverse meanings of intermittent fasting in human culture.
 
Fasting from food is a controversial, dangerous, and yet utterly normal human practice. In Why Fast?, Christine Baumgarthuber engages our fascination with restrictive eating in cultural history. If fasting offers few health benefits, why do people fast? Why have we always fasted? Does fasting speak to something deep and immutable within us? Why are our bodies so well adapted to intermittent fasting? And, what might this ancient, ascetic ritual offer us today? Thoughtful and considered, Why Fast? is a sober reconsideration of a contentious practice.