Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food - Hardcover

Rachel Herz is a neuroscientist specializing in perception and emotion. She teaches at Brown University and Boston College, and is a professional consultant. The author of The Scent of Desire and That’s Disgusting, she lives in Rhode Island.

“A fun and compelling book that touches upon several subjects.”
- Library Journal

“One of Herz's major strengths is her skill at creating catchy phrasing to convey complicated scientific theories and experiments.”
- Kirkus Reviews

“Herz . . . delivers on her promise to explain human eating habits in this research-based work on neurogastronomy. . . . Herz's book illuminates Western eating habits and offers some ways that both individuals and wider society might change in order to make Westerners eat more sanely.”
- Publishers Weekly

“Eating can be a pleasure or a compulsion, and it can fatten, daze, energize, sicken, or kill some of us―but not others. Rachel Herz deftly and charmingly explains the latest science on the mysteries and paradoxes of this eternally fascinating human pastime.”
- Steven Pinker, author of How the Mind Works and The Better Angels of Our Nature

“Rachel Herz . . . reveals how our minds and emotions influence taste, and vice versa, helping explain why there is such a thing as bacon-scented underwear, why grapefruit aroma suppresses appetite and why loud noise enhances tomato flavor. Your plate, and your skivvies, may never look the same.”
- Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix

“Continuously fascinating . . . Rachel Herz sets new standards in helping readers deal with the vast range of problems that beset our eating habits.”
- Gordon Shepherd, author of Neurogastronomy

“This engaging and accessible account by a leading neuroscientist has something for everyone.”
- Rachel Laudan, author of Cuisine and Empire

“There are so many reasons, besides being hungry, that we eat the food we do. Rachel Herz writes clearly and evocatively about the science behind these choices, ones dictated by all of our senses.”
- Molly Birnbaum, author of Season to Taste