A crunchy, juicy bite of a golden ear of corn on a cool, spring day. That seemingly simple bite is actually the byproduct of thousands of deliberate human decisions, from hunting and gathering to farming to the Aztecs and Mayas who made it nutritionally complete. We're hungry, we go to the market, and that might be the extent of our thoughts on food. But there's so much more to food than meets the eye. In An Edible History of Humanity, author and editor Tom Standage tells readers that food is at the core of political, social and economic forces from the beginning of time. He attacks the "profoundly unnatural" activity of farming that ended the "fun" of hunting and gathering. Madeleine Brand talks with Standage about his new book.

Tom Standage, author of An Edible History of Humanity, is the business editor at the Economist and the author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses and The Victorian Internet. He has written for Wired and the New York Times