Former FDA chief David Kessler took on Big Tobacco. Now he tells us how the food industry plays with our brain chemistry, and turns us into hyper-eaters.

What did they eat in the Great Depression? We’ll find out, and tuck in. Plus: video of Tom and our guests tasting authentic ’30s recipes.

Ruth Reichl, eminent food writer and editor of Gourmet magazine, opens her mother’s diaries and finds a person she’d never known.

Pass on the chicken Caesar salad, save the planet. New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman on how to change the world with your diet.

We go on the road to hot and sour China and beyond with intrepid cookbook authors Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

36 million people in America don’t get enough to eat. We’ll look at hunger in the land of obesity.

A conversation with “Silver Palate” chef and cookbook star Sheila Lukins on what we eat now.

In 2004, author Paul Roberts came out with his book “The End of Oil,” and we’ve all seen oil’s path since then.
Now Roberts is out with a kind of follow-up: “The End of Food.” It could make a person want to hoard tuna.
Not that oil or food are literally vanishing anytime soon. But Roberts argues [...]

World food prices are soaring. The world’s poor are hurting. And the price hikes may pinch in a supermarket near you.
In Cameroon and Burkina Faso and Egypt and Indonesia, they’ve rallied and rioted over hunger and the high price of food. In Haiti, they’ve turned out a government.
The U.N. calls it a “silent tsunami,” but [...]

America has a love affair with hamburgers. From the first ones served up at White Castle in Kansas to those Golden Arches and your backyard grill, the burger has worked its way into America’s stomachs and hearts.
Its transformation from German hamburger steak to an American icon is a delicious story, and has more twists and [...]

In China, pork has become so expensive they’re stealing pigs by the truckload. In Kansas, it’s wheat. In Mexico, they’ve got tortilla riots over the cost of corn. In American supermarkets, the price of milk and eggs has soared.
All over the world, the price of food is headed up. Sometimes way up. And an era [...]

We’re looking at the amazing story through history of the American stomach and the extremes of consumption and digestion.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guest:
Frederick Kaufman, author of the new book “A Short History of the American Stomach.” He’s a contributing editor at Harper’s magazine and wrote the article “Wasteland: A Journey Through the American Cloaca” for the February issue.

Behold, the humble banana. It’s not as simple as you think. Its tree is not a tree. Its fruit is a giant berry — in fact, it’s the world’s largest herb.
The banana is the planet’s biggest fruit crop, but most can’t reproduce without human intervention. Until 1876, almost no one in North America had ever [...]

Here’s a callout to American fans of Indian food. After you’ve enjoyed your samosa and chicken tikka masala, and maybe a curry and some goolab jam, Chitrita Banerji wants you to know there’s a much bigger world out there.
A universe barely touched on most Indian menus in America of rich and varied cuisine from the [...]

While the fast food nation has revolutionized America’s eating habits, another, quieter revolution has taken place at the other end of the culinary spectrum. And today, if you’re a “foodie” — as devotees of good food and cooking are called — you may have Judith Jones to thank.
When Julia Child’s first manuscript, for “Mastering the [...]

Deep in the cocoa bean plantations of Brazil and beyond, there’s a chocolate revolution underway. Deep, dark, intense, pure chocolate — extreme chocolate — is rising up as the chocolate of choice like never before among chocolate connoisseurs and beyond.
Chocolate that lives very close to the bean. Forget milk chocolate. This is 70 percent pure [...]