Diet History

In The Taste of Empire, acclaimed historian Lizzie Collingham tells the story of how the British Empire's quest for food shaped the modern world. Told through 20 meals over the course of 450 years, from the Far East to the New World, Collingham explains how Africans taught Americans how to grow rice, how the East India Company turned opium into tea, and how Americans became the best-fed people in the world.

Millions of Americans know yoga as a superb form of exercise and as a potent source of calm in the midst of our stress-filled lives. Far fewer are aware of the full promise of yoga as "the way of the fully alive human being" - a 4,000-year-old practical path of liberation that fits the needs of modern Western seekers with startling precision. Now Stephen Cope, a Western-trained psychotherapist who has lived and taught for more than 10 years at the largest yoga center in America, offers this marvelously lively and irreverent "pilgrim's progress" for today's world.

Inflammation is the body’s ancestral response to its greatest threats: injury and foreign microbes. But as the threats we face have evolved, new science reveals simmering inflammation underneath the surface of everything from heart disease and cancer to mysterious autoimmune conditions. In A Silent Fire, gastroenterologist Shilpa Ravella takes us on a lyrical quest across time, around the world, and into the body to reveal hidden inflammation at the root of modern disease―and how we can control it.

While many Westerners still think of yoga as an invigorating series of postures and breathing exercises, these physical practices are only part of a vast and ancient spiritual science. For more than three millennia, yoga sages systematically explored the essential questions of our human existence: What are the root causes of suffering, and how can we achieve freedom and happiness? What would it be like to function at the maximum potential of our minds, bodies, and spirits? What is an optimal human life?

What will it take to run a marathon in less than two hours? The world's fastest times for the marathon have been dropping since the distance of 26.2 miles was made official nearly one hundred years ago. But after a noticeable decline that occurred for a half century, the times, while still edging lower, have stalled several minutes north of two hours for the past decade. For the first time, 1:59 examines what it will take for an elite distance runner to go subtwo hours.

In Nourishing Diets best-selling author Sally Fallon Morell explores the diets of our primitive ancestors from around the world - from Australian Aborigines and pre-industrialized Europeans to the inhabitants of "Blue Zones" where a high percentage of the populations live to 100 years or more. In looking to the recipes and foods of the past, Fallon Morell points listeners to what they should actually be eating - the key principles of traditional diets from across cultures - and offers recipes to help translate these ideas to the modern home cook.

The best-selling author of Born to Run now travels to the Mediterranean, where he discovers that the secrets of ancient Greek heroes are still alive and well on the island of Crete, and ready to be unleashed in the muscles and minds of casual athletes and aspiring heroes everywhere.

From the secret training halls of ancient Sparta to the Arctic strength training methods of the Inuit to the magical underwater world of a tribe of aquatic superhumans in the Pacific, ‘A History of Physical Fitness’ will take you on a journey through history that will forever change the way you look at physical fitness.

The Nobel laureate Otto Warburg was widely regarded in his day as one of the most important biochemists of the 20th century, a man whose research was integral to humanity’s understanding of cancer. He was also among the most despised figures in Nazi Germany. As a Jewish homosexual living openly with his male partner, Warburg represented all that the Third Reich abhorred. Yet Hitler and his top advisors dreaded cancer, and protected Warburg in the hope that he could cure it.

He was abrasive, uncompromising, and iconoclastic. Vince Gironda—known as the Iron Guru—ran a small, severe gym in North Hollywood that became Hollywood’s secret finishing school for male bodies. From the late 1940s through the 1970s, producers and directors sent actors to Vince when they needed transformation. Tony Curtis, Clint Eastwood, Larry Scott, and countless others endured his brutal workouts, austere diets, and relentless critiques. The results spoke for themselves: lean, defined, camera-ready physiques that projected strength without grotesque bulk. Gironda rejected ...

Despite the immense popularity of yoga today, there is surprisingly little knowledge of its roots among practitioners. This book brings together the core teachings of yoga in the words of their authors, rather than in the secondary versions of modern interpreters. Including key passages from the Upanishads, the Buddhist and Jaina traditions, the yoga sections of the Indian Tantras, and many texts that are being critically translated for the first time, Roots of Yoga provides a comprehensive and immediate insight into the essential texts of the Indian traditions of yoga.

Food is one of life's great joys. So why has eating become such a source of anxiety and confusion? Bee Wilson shows that in two generations the world has undergone a massive shift from traditional, limited diets to more globalized ways of eating, from bubble tea to quinoa, from Soylent to meal kits. Paradoxically, our diets are getting healthier and less healthy at the same time. For some, there has never been a happier food era than today: a time of unusual herbs, farmers' markets, and internet recipe swaps.

One in ten American adults tried intermittent fasting last year, and they may be on to something. The latest research shows that fasting repairs cellular damage, improves the outcomes for chemotherapy patients, and helps with keeping a healthy weight, leading to a resurgence in recent years. Journalist Steve Hendricks’s The Oldest Cure in the World tells the history of fasting—from the ancient world (Jesus treated an epileptic with fasting) to its rediscovery centuries later.

Many yoga practitioners explore the benefits of yoga through its poses, but did you know that the magic and mystery of yoga lie within the power of yogic mythology? Myths of the Asanas was the first book to collect and retell the ancient tales of yogic myth to a modern audience, and has since become a beloved resource for yoga practitioners and instructors the world over. This expanded edition contains nine unheard stories about some of the yoga world's most beloved poses.

Fasting helps you enjoy a super-charged, healthy, happy long life. Fasting is the key to internal purification. Remember that all those inorganic chemicals must be passed out of your body or they can cause great damage. If the body's Vital Force drops too low then it can't force these inorganic chemicals through your eliminative systems. Then they remain in the body and can cause grave health damage in the future! If we are to get these poisons out of our bodies we must fast. By fasting we give our bodies a physiological rest. This rest builds Vital Force.

The cavemen kids first met the baby mammoth after the Mammoth Hunt and since the baby mammoth had nowhere to go it just followed the kids. The baby mammoth followed the kids back to the river where a heavy downpour upstream swelled the river and this wall of water came swirling towards the kids and the family. They were lucky the mammoth had started to run up the hill and kids and the tribe followed it. The tribe found a new cave to live in but they were in the territory of the Spotted Beast and the Spotted Beast came back for lunch but Grandpa was waiting and killed the Beast. The clan ...

Yoga is part of a large majority of peoples lives and I’m sure if you don't practice you have come across it in one form or another. What yoga "is" or what it "does" will most likely depend on who you ask and this was an issue when finding a book on the subject. Most authors have been submerged yoga enthusiasts all their lives and sometimes forgot that talking about in-depth philosophy, traditional terms, and names without full explanation can get confusing for not so experienced or beginners in yoga. There are other books out there that explore these areas in more detail.

Wing Chun is the most popular form of Chinese kung fu in the world today, with more than four million practitioners. This guide will fascinate and educate anyone interested in the martial arts, from beginner to master. The art as it is presently understood has been handed down from teacher to student for more than 300 years. Until now, no one has ever stepped back and taken a critical look at why this art's techniques are presented and performed the way they are.

The story of humankind is usually told as one of technological innovation and economic influence—of arrowheads and atomic bombs, settlers and stock markets. But behind it all, there is an even more fundamental driver: Food. In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, trusted food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of how the frenzy for food has driven human history to some of its most catastrophic moments.

John Harvey Kellogg was one of America's most beloved physicians; a best-selling author, lecturer, and health-magazine publisher; founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium; and patron saint of the pursuit of wellness. His youngest brother, Will, was the founder of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. In The Kelloggs, Howard Markel tells the sweeping saga of these two extraordinary men, whose lifelong competition and enmity toward one another changed America's notion of health and wellness and who helped change the course of American medicine, nutrition, wellness, and diet.