Tom Standage is known for his 2005 book "A History of the World in 6 Glasses," which begins with the invention of beer in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and works up to the United States and its love of Coca-Cola.
His latest project, "An Edible History of Humanity," takes a similarly long view. Beginning with the shift from nomadic hunter-gatherer culture to farming, the book considers early food surpluses (which encouraged specialization and hierarchy), the way curiosity about food spurred global exploration and the modern use of food in warfare and politics.
Standage, the business editor at the Economist, spoke to The Times from the magazine's offices in London.
How does "An Edible History" fit in with "A History of the World in 6 Glasses"?
I was on tour for the drinks book, and my wife said, "You're gonna do food next, right?"
The history of food is actually a much more serious story. The drinks book is quite frivolous: It says each era has a dominant drink, and each drink didn't do much more than reflect what is already going on. I'm not really saying that drinks changed the world.
There's a contrarian streak to this book: You argue that crops are less natural than we think, and you see contradictions in the locavore movement.
What I'm trying to do is take a level-headed view of our food culture, and some of that ends up not agreeing with the food fads of the moment.
They're rather like fundamentalist religions. The people who say we need only biotechnology, or only organic food, or only local food -- I don't think are right. The trick is to work out when we should use one and when the other.
Your book appears at a time when there are a lot of serious books about food.
I divide the other books into two categories: The kind that looks at a particular single food -- the fish or the potato -- and the kind that looks at a particular cuisine or eating custom. "How Southern cooking got to be the way it is"; there's also a very good history of curry.
But that's about how history has influenced food, and I'm more interested in how food has influenced history.
A lot of medieval and Renaissance history was driven by the spice route. How did it become so world-changing?
