Eating Promiscuously: Adventures in the Future of Food

by James McWilliams

The human practice of farming food has failed. There are 7,500 known varieties of domesticated apples; we regularly eat about five. Seventy-five percent of the world’s food derives from five animals and twelve plants. Factory-farmed meat is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions (about 14 percent, larger than transportation) and consumes 75 percent of the water in drought-prone regions such as the West. We are stuck in a rut of limited choices, and the vast majority of what we eat is detrimental to our health and the welfare of the planet. But what if we could eliminate agriculture as we know it? What if we could start over?


James McWilliams’s search for a more expansive palate leads him to those who are actively exploring the fringes of what we can eat, a group of outliers seeking nutrition innovation outside the industrial food system. Here, we meet insect manufacturers, seaweed harvesters, road kill foragers, plant biologists, and oyster farmers who seek to open both our minds and our mouths—and to overturn our most basic assumptions about food, health, and ethics.


Eating Promiscuously generates hope for a more tasteful future—one in which we eat thousands of foods rather than dozens—with a new philosophy that could save both ourselves and our planet.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

Published May 16, 2017

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Disambiguated authors:
(1) James McWilliams - See below (Current Profile)
(2) James McWilliams - War Historian

He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Georgetown University in 1991, his Ed.M. from Harvard University in 1994, his M.A. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996, and his Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University in 2001. He won the Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Early American History awarded by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts for 2000, and won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture in 2009. He has been a fellow in the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University. He currently is a Professor in the History Department at Texas State University.

Writing has appeared in The Paris Review daily, The New Yorker.com, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, Slate, The American Scholar, Texas Monthly, The Atlantic, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. McWilliams writes column at Pacific Standard. Literary non-fiction has appeared in The Millions, Quarterly Conversation, The New York Times Book Review, and The Hedgehog Review.

Reviews

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very cool ideas about our food system and alternatives of what we're used to, and the impacts of our current system on our health

[Bexa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book talks about the dangers of eating a non-diverse diet. McWilliams discusses that as a culture the western world eats about 12 grains and 4 meats and doesn't branch out enough into other foods which is harming our health and the environment. He talks about a bunch of different types of diets and mentions that in his other books he kind of got it wrong. While there's a lot of good information and some useful advice in the conclusion, there's no real easy answer and so it left me feeling like I was doing everything wrong and even if I change it won't be enough because the rest of the world needs to change with me.

[M Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting set of thoughts, observations and ideas around diet and where the author thinks we might be able turn to rather than our current diet...
The author has written other works that I didn't agree with much... I don't know... seems like an interesting thought experiment but highly impractical on a massive scale.

[Violet · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those interested in rethinking food systems, this book offers a fun introduction. If you can get through the first chapter, the book touches on a handful of food alternatives that McWilliams envisions can help make the world a more sustainable place or at least challenge our current ways of thinking.

[Lissa00 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well written and thoughtful book about the way in which we look at food. It provides much to think about but in the end I did find it a bit depressing because such a sweeping change to the way we eat is pretty unrealistic. Overall, though, I liked it.

[Reshma · Rating 3 out of 5]

A real eye opener. It challenges food habits. It challenges to think about the restaurants and grocery stores they frequent and how they could eat a more diverse range of foods. More than what is actually available.