Summary

In Chapter 14 Bryson takes a break from his tour of the body to discuss food. The chapter starts with the “strange and complicated measure of food energy” known as the calorie (226). We consume 25 percent more calories today than we did in 1970. Bryson calls Wilbur Olin Atwater, born in 1844 in New York, the father of the calorie. Atwater invented a machine he called a respiratory calorimeter, which was a sealed chamber in which he confined people to measure their bodily inputs and outputs. Atwater came up with the calorie as a measurement, but also had other unfortunate ideas such as people should eat 730 pounds of meat a year. The average American eats 268 pounds of meat today, which is thought to be unhealthy. Calorie, as a measurement, has a number of failings, Bryson writes. It does not take into account whether a food...