How is it that a baboon and a blob of slime mould instinctively know what to eat, yet humans can't seem to figure it out? When and why did we lose the basic knowledge to intuit what foods our body needs, and in what proportions? All organisms trust their appetites to tell them what and how much to eat to ensure good health and reproduction. But unlike other species, the human appetite has gone haywire - we want foods that are terrible for us, and we can't seem monitor our own nutrition levels or our portion sizes. The Five Appetites provides readers with cutting-edge scientific knowledge of what drives the human appetite for food and how we can take control over what we crave.

Author Biography

David Raubenheimer is the Leonard P. Ullman Professor of Nutritional Ecology in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, and Nutrition Theme Leader in the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. He previously spent 17 years at Oxford, initially as a doctoral student then as a Research Fellow and Departmental Lecturer in Zoology and Fellow of Magdalen College. Stephen J. Simpson is Academic Director of the Charles Perkins Centre and Professor in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney. He spent 22 years at Oxford, where he became Professor of the Hope Entomological Collections in the Department of Zoology and a Fellow of Jesus College. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and has appeared on TV on National Geographic and Animal Planet. David and Stephen's academic partnership spans 30 years and between them they have authored 514 scientific journal articles and co-written The Nature of Nutrition (2012).