• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
Farnam Street Logo

Farnam Street

Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out

  • Articles
  • Newsletter
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Courses
  • Log In
  • Become a Member

Food

How Julia Child Used First Principles Thinking

There’s a big difference between knowing how to follow a recipe and knowing how to cook. If you can master the first principles within a domain, you can see much further than those who are just …

Continue readingHow Julia Child Used First Principles Thinking

Vaclav Smil: Should We Eat Meat? Evolution and Consequence of Modern Carnivory

What can and should be done about human carnivory? Vaclav Smil answers in this adapted excerpt from Should We Eat Meat?: Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory: There is no doubt that human …

Continue readingVaclav Smil: Should We Eat Meat? Evolution and Consequence of Modern Carnivory

America’s Food Crisis: The Omnivore’s Dilemma

As a follow up to the Michael Pollan food as culture post (on his new book Cooked), a reader passed along a link to this video on Pollan’s 2006 classic The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History …

Continue readingAmerica’s Food Crisis: The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Food As Culture

Food is so much more than a label. Food is cultural. As a culture, we’re cooking less and buying more prepared meals. Since the mid-sixties, the amount of time spent preparing meals has fallen …

Continue readingFood As Culture

The Science of Addictive Junk Food

Michael Moss, a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at The New York Times, just wrote a book called Salt Sugar Fat. Every year, the average American eats thirty-three pounds of cheese …

Continue readingThe Science of Addictive Junk Food

What Facts Do We Know About Food?

A summary of a recent talk by Michael Pollan about what we know about food. We are ignoring the elephant in the room when we only talk nutrients — this way of eating is killing us. For example by …

Continue readingWhat Facts Do We Know About Food?

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think will change the way you think about your next meal. According to eating behavior expert Brian Wansink the mind makes food-related decisions, more than …

Continue readingMindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

The Science of Obesity

One thing that has always baffled me is how we get fat. Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes unearths the biological truth around why we’re getting fat. In the process, Taubes dispels many accepted …

Continue readingThe Science of Obesity

Gary Taubes: Is Sugar Toxic?

In Robert Lustig’s view, sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us. But can sugar possibly be as bad as Lustig says? Lustig’s argument is that sugar …

Continue readingGary Taubes: Is Sugar Toxic?

Discover What You’re Missing

Get the weekly email full of actionable ideas and insights you can use at work and home.


As seen on:

Forbes logo
New York Times logo
Wall Street Journal logo
The Economist logo
Financial Times logo
Farnam Street Logo

© 2023 Farnam Street Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Proudly powered by WordPress. Hosted by Pressable. See our Privacy Policy.

  • Speaking
  • Sponsorship
  • About
  • Support
  • Education

We’re Syrus Partners.
We buy amazing businesses.


Farnam Street participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising commissions by linking to Amazon.