Ingredients

The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us

By: George Zaidan

Narrated by: George Zaidan

Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

Cheese puffs. Coffee. Sunscreen. Vapes. George Zaidan reveals what will kill you, what won’t, and why - explained with high-octane hilarity, hysterical hijinks, and other things that don’t begin with the letter H.

Ingredients offers the perspective of a chemist on the stuff we eat, drink, inhale, and smear on ourselves. Apart from the burning question of whether you should eat that Cheeto, Zaidan explores a range of topics. Here’s a helpful guide:

Stuff in this book:

• How bad is processed food? How sure are we?
• Is sunscreen safe? Should you use it?
• Is coffee good or bad for you?
• What’s your disease horoscope?
• What is that public pool smell made of?
• What happens when you overdose on fentanyl in the sun
• What do cassava plants and Soviet spies have in common?
• When will you die?

Stuff in other books:

• Your carbon footprint
• Food sustainability
• GMOs
• CEO pay
• Science funding
• Politics
• Football
• Baseball
• Any kind of ball really

Zaidan, an MIT-trained chemist who cohosted CNBC’s hit Make Me a Millionaire Inventor and wrote and voiced several TED-Ed viral videos, makes chemistry more fun than Hogwarts as he reveals exactly what science can (and can’t) tell us about the packaged ingredients sold to us every day. Sugar, spinach, formaldehyde, cyanide, the ingredients of life and death, and how we know if something is good or bad for us - as well as the genius of aphids and their butts - are all discussed in exquisite detail at breakneck speed.

Includes a PDF of the author’s illustrations as well as the appendix about prayer and death.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 George Zaidan (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"If you crossed Bill Nye with Stephen Colbert, you’d get George Zaidan. Ingredients is a masterful piece of science writing." (Daniel H. Pink, New York Times best-selling author of When and Drive)

“I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that food is very important, and yet we are terrible at talking about it. Nutrition is a mess of marketing, classism, science, truth, guilt, confusion, and outright hucksterism. Ingredients lifts the film from our eyes with humor and reassurance.” (Hank Green, author of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing)

"At last, a book on nutrition that tries to make you understand how little we know instead of offering blanket prognostications. If instead of a simple solution, you want a guide to how to think about health, this is it." (Zach and Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times best-selling authors of Soonish)

A fun and timely urge to value science more

This was a fun audiobook for a science oriented topic! Normally, I end up focusing too much on the details and get frustrated that I don't get it. None of that concern here.

The author's voice carries you through the 280+ pages like your really smart best friend just wants you to understand something really valuable. This will help me indirectly be more aware of how information and news that tends to be sensationalized for our consumption can really help us manage our sanity, especially as we navigate this time of SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19/Coronavirus.

Topics covered are chemistry, nutrition, statistics, the scientific method, Harry Potter, and sunscreen. Reading this won't make you an expert but you should definitely have slightly smarter conversations after it. Who can say no to that?

somewhat meandering

author clearly knows what he's talking about. but wanders about a lot throughout his subject matter. first time i kind of struggled to finish a book

Informative and Witty

I truly enjoyed this book. It was well written and also quirky at times which kept your interest despite all the scientific jargon. The authors performance was great! I felt like we were chatting over a glass of wine and ended up smarted for it.

Irreverent, seriously funny serious science book

You can listen to this book just for fun, whether or not you care about the ingredients you put in you or on you. George Zaidan is an entertaining narrator with a droll delivery of a science book with an attitude. I am looking forward to reading all his future books whatever their topic. He could write a great book on tree bark or moss if he wanted to.

Get the facts

The effects of foods and products on the human body are a complex subject. There is no simple answer like something being good or something being bad. The author goes into great detail about how research can be incomplete, inconclusive, or plain wrong. There are a lot of examples of how experiments can be designed in such a way to get significant results. This is why coffee, wine, and eggs are both good and bad for you. My takeaway from this book is to be aware and do your fact-checking, especially the foods and medication you ingest.

Fantastic, Interesting, Fun Look at Science

Am amazing overview of the science and statistics of what we eat and put on to our bodies. The author is a matter of narrating his own work. And a subject matter that could be as dry and boring as toast is a wild ride.

Really enjoyed this book

The author is very humorous and entertaining while presenting a lot of good science. I’ll be looking for other books by him.

Wonderfully enlightening look at the impact of how and what we eat.

I typically don’t invest in listening to things that aren’t solely focused on entertaining me. This presentation and the book it was drawn from were not only entertaining but I learned a few things. The best piece of advice from the book, “Relax and don’t worry so much.” Really enjoyed the time I invested in this!

Got a lot from this book

I bought this book thinking it would be a breakdown of things that might poison me, aka things to avoid. Instead, the author broke down the scientific process and the complexities thereof. For me this was unexpected but I appreciated it. As someone who is always striving to understand science more deeply, I gained valuable knowledge in how to think about food and ingredients vs. a no-no list. Plus, the author is funny and a lively narrator.

Solid science

Although this mix of science, xkcd, and Malcolm Gladwell leaves you with an unsatisfying conclusion, he works very hard to support it. In so doing, Zaidan teaches much needed and solid scientific and statistical rigor.