The Quest For Food begins in prehistoric times with religion and the exploration of the connection between food and sex.

The Quest For Food embarks on a biochemistry-oriented journey tracing the path of a food molecule through the central carbon pathway until it is decomposed into CO2, H2O and ATP.

Contents

1. A Nutritional Conditio Humana

• A Few Glimpses on Biological Anthropology
• Basic Concepts on Eating

2. Some Aspects of Nutritional Biochemistry

• The Central Carbon Pathway
• De Revolutionibus Orbium Metabolicorum

3. Bioenergetics

• Oxygen
• Electrons
• Protons and ATP

4. The Evolution of Eating Systems

• The Beginning of Biochemistry
• Early Eaters
• Photosynthesis
• The Acquisition of the Atoms of Life
• Nutritional Interactions in the Ocean
• A World of Iron
• Early Steps in Predation
• Increasing Complexity
• The First Animals
• Vertebrates

5. The Ecology of Eating Systems

• Eat or be Eaten: Anatomy of the Marine Food Chain
• Life Histories Between the Land and the Sea
• Nutritional Ecology
• Herbivory

6. Eating Cultures

• Choosing Food
• Behavior
• Animal Technology
• Human's Progress?
• Domestication
• Fishery

7. We as Food and Feeders

• Prey of Microbes
• Going for our Blood
• Going for our Gut
• Viruses Going for Gut or Genome

8. An Agro(-Eco)nomical Outlook: Feeding the Billions

Index

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