This ethnobiologist studies how genes, diets, and ethnicity are interconnected. Includes a history of ancestoral dietary choices and how human health is affected by regions and cultural diversity.

Introduction -- Ch. 1. Sailing through histories encoded in our bodies -- Ch.2. -- Searching for the ancestral diet -- Did mitochondrial eve and java man feast on the same foods? -- Ch. 3. Finding a bean for your genes and a buffer against malaria -- Ch. 4. The shaping and shipping away of mediterranean cuisines --Ch . 5. Discovering why some don't like it hot -- Is it a matter of taste? -- Ch. 6. Dealing with migration headaches -- Should we change places, diets, or genes? -- Ch. 7. Rooting out the causes of disease -- Why diabetes is so common among desert-dwellers -- Ch. 8 -- Reconnecting the health of the people with the health of the land -- How hawaiians are curing themselves.