Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us
Julia Belluz · Kevin Hall, PhD
Sep 2025 · Penguin
Ebook
352
Pages
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Eligible
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infoThis book will become available on September 23, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
The essential guide for understanding what you’re eating, and the forces that are driving you to eat it.
Nutrition isn’t rocket science; it’s harder.
There are new diet fads, bold claims about superfoods and articles promising the secrets to lasting weight-loss and longevity. The more ‘expert’ advice we hear about diet, the less clarity we have about what to eat.
In Food Intelligence, award-winning health journalist, Julia Belluz, and internationally renowned nutrition and metabolism scientist, Kevin Hall, cut through the myths about nutrition to deliver a comprehensive book on food, diet, metabolism and healthy eating.
Breaking food down into its constituent parts, they reveal the science behind how protein, fat, carbs and vitamins impact our bodies. They shine a light on the wonders of metabolism, and debunk the latest ‘theories’ about blood sugar trackers and ultra-processed foods. They reveal the ways that the world around us – our food environment – shapes our eating behaviors and the food choices we make every day. Diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes are not a result of a failure of will power; they are consequences of food systems working as designed.
Humane and deeply reported, this journey into the science of what we eat will equip you with the food intelligence you need to better understand what’s on your dinner plate, how it got there, and why you eat it.
Nutrition isn’t rocket science; it’s harder.
There are new diet fads, bold claims about superfoods and articles promising the secrets to lasting weight-loss and longevity. The more ‘expert’ advice we hear about diet, the less clarity we have about what to eat.
In Food Intelligence, award-winning health journalist, Julia Belluz, and internationally renowned nutrition and metabolism scientist, Kevin Hall, cut through the myths about nutrition to deliver a comprehensive book on food, diet, metabolism and healthy eating.
Breaking food down into its constituent parts, they reveal the science behind how protein, fat, carbs and vitamins impact our bodies. They shine a light on the wonders of metabolism, and debunk the latest ‘theories’ about blood sugar trackers and ultra-processed foods. They reveal the ways that the world around us – our food environment – shapes our eating behaviors and the food choices we make every day. Diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes are not a result of a failure of will power; they are consequences of food systems working as designed.
Humane and deeply reported, this journey into the science of what we eat will equip you with the food intelligence you need to better understand what’s on your dinner plate, how it got there, and why you eat it.
About the author
Julia Belluz is a journalist and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She has reported extensively on medicine, nutrition, and global public health from Canada, the US, and Europe. Previously, Belluz was Vox’s senior health correspondent in Washington, DC, and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. A Canadian, she holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science and lives with her family in Paris, France.
Kevin Hall, PhD, is an internationally recognized expert in human nutrition, metabolism, obesity, and neuroscience. Despite being a physicist by training, Dr. Hall has led groundbreaking clinical research investigating how our food environment shapes our diet and how our diet affects the physiology of our bodies and our brains. Dr. Hall has twice received the Director’s Award from the US National Institutes of Health and has also received the E.V. McCullum Award from the American Society for Nutrition, the Lilly Scientific Achievement Award from The Obesity Society, and the Guyton Award for Excellence in Integrative Physiology from the American Physiological Society.
Kevin Hall, PhD, is an internationally recognized expert in human nutrition, metabolism, obesity, and neuroscience. Despite being a physicist by training, Dr. Hall has led groundbreaking clinical research investigating how our food environment shapes our diet and how our diet affects the physiology of our bodies and our brains. Dr. Hall has twice received the Director’s Award from the US National Institutes of Health and has also received the E.V. McCullum Award from the American Society for Nutrition, the Lilly Scientific Achievement Award from The Obesity Society, and the Guyton Award for Excellence in Integrative Physiology from the American Physiological Society.
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