On Food and Cooking

fields led to settlement, the first cities, and
cultivation of the human mind. On the other
hand, agriculture drastically reduced the
variety of plant foods in the human diet.
Millennia later, industrialization reduced it
even further. Fruits and vegetables became
accessory, even marginal foods in the modern
Western diet. Only recently have we begun to
understand how the human body still depends
for its long-term health on a various diet rich
in fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices.
Happily, modern technologies now give us
unprecedented access to the world’s
cornucopia of edible plants. The time is ripe
to explore this fascinating — and still
evolving — legacy of natural and human
inventiveness.
This chapter is a general introduction to
the foods that we obtain from plants. Because
there are so many of them, particular fruits
and vegetables, herbs and spices are described
in subsequent chapters. Foods derived from