On Food and Cooking

Nutritional science has undergone a
profound revolution in that time. For most of
the 20th century it aimed to define an
adequate diet. It determined our body’s
minimal requirements for chemical building
blocks (protein, minerals, fatty acids), for
essential cogs in its machinery (vitamins), and
for the energy it needs to run and maintain
itself from day to day. Toward the end of the
century, it became clear from laboratory
studies and comparisons of health statistics in
different countries that the major diseases of
the adequately nourished developed world —
cancer and heart disease — are influenced by
what we eat. Nutritional science then began to
focus on defining the elements of an optimal
diet. So we discovered that minor,
nonessential food components can have a
cumulative effect on our long-term health.
And plants, the planet’s biochemical
virtuosos, turn out to be teeming with trace
phytochemicals — from the Greek phyton,