This book offers an exciting, coherent and interdisciplinary introduction to the study of food studies for the beginning reader. Food choices, the author argues, are the result of a complex negotiation among three competing considerations: the consumers' identity; matters of convenience, including price; and an awareness of the consequences of what is consumed. The book concludes with an examination of two very different future scenarios for feeding the world's population; the technological fix, which looks to science to provide the solution to our future food needs, and the anthropological fix, which hopes to change our expectations and behaviors. As a whole this book provides an essential overview to this increasingly critical field of enquiry.