What Your Food Ate

We know that our diet influences our health. But is there more to the adage "you are what you eat?" Connecting the dots from agriculture to medicine, geologist David R. Montgomery and biologist Anne Biklé argue we overlook the other half of a healthy diet: how we grow our food. Journeying from research labs to the fields of regenerative farmers, they uncover scientific and historical evidence for how farming practices-so often disruptive to microbial partnerships-influence soil health and shape the types and amounts of health-promoting minerals, fats and phytochemicals in our crops, meat and dairy-and thus ourselves. Understanding these connections has profound implications for what we eat and how we grow it, now and in the future. A capstone work from lauded authors, What Your Food Ate is a story both sobering and inspiring: what's good for the soil is good for us, too.

David R. Montgomery is a professor of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington. He studies the evolution of topography and the influence of geomorphological processes on ecological systems and human societies. He received a BS from Stanford University (1984, geology) and a PhD from UC Berkeley (1991, geomorphology). His field studies have included projects in the Philippines, eastern Tibet, South America, California, and the Pacific Northwest of North America. He is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and has received many awards throughout his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the Vega Medal. His books Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon, and The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood have all won the Washington State Book Award in General Nonfiction. Montgomery's Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life was a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing. He also coauthored with Anne Biklé The Hidden Half of Nature and, most recently, What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health. His books have been translated into ten languages. He is also a coauthor of the new textbook Essentials of Physical Geography with W. W. Norton.