Description

🎙️ Welcome to “Revise and Resubmit,” your weekend sanctuary for stories, scholarship, and seriously good books. This is the Weekend Book Review, and today, we're setting the table for a global feast—intellectual, ethical, and utterly essential.

📘 The book is How the World Eats: A Global Food Philosophy, published by Granta Books in October 2024. And this isn’t just a food book—it’s a philosophical expedition, a culinary atlas, a moral compass for the 21st-century plate.

🧠 At the helm is Julian Baggini—philosopher, author, and guide to the world’s deepest questions about what we eat and why. You might know him from How the World Thinks or The Virtues of the Table. He’s also the Academic Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, a member of the Food Ethics Council, and a voice that regularly stirs thought in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Prospect, and more.

In How the World Eats, Baggini takes us across continents and cultures—from the Hadza of Tanzania to the supermarkets of the West; from ancient grains to astronaut meals; from rice fields and aquaculture to debates over lab-grown meat and food waste. He’s not chasing fads or pushing a miracle diet—he’s asking the big questions. What does it mean to eat well in a time of plenty and poverty? What values shape our meals, and what kind of food future are we building, one bite at a time?

He doesn’t give us a single answer. He offers a pluralistic, humane, and thoughtful proposal—a global food philosophy rooted in equity, compassion, and sustainability.

🥗 So here’s a question to whet your appetite:
If how we eat reflects who we are—then what does the global dinner table say about the kind of world we want to live in?

🙏 A heartfelt thank you to Julian Baggini for this important, wide-reaching work.

📲 If today’s conversation feeds your curiosity, make sure to subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, and check out our YouTube channel—Weekend Researcher. We’re also available on Amazon Prime Music and Apple Podcasts, so no matter where you’re listening, we’re right there with you.

Now let’s dig in—and think deeper about dinner. 🍽️

Reference

Baggini, J. (2024). How the World Eats: A Global Food Philosophy. Granta Books. https://www.julianbaggini.com/how-the-world-eats/

Youtube channel link

https://www.youtube.com/@weekendresearcher

Support us on Patreon

https://patreon.com/weekendresearcher