Popular science topics are fairly evenly divided between those that are of pure intellectual interest, such as astronomy or relativity, and those with a direct impact on our lives - such as climate change or quantum physics. There's often a danger with the 'direct impact' that they can be a little worthy and try too hard to be deeply meaningful. For some reason this often seems to be the case with anything food related. But thankfully agriculture is a topic that is both rarely examined and has the potential for plenty of interesting science (and history thereof). Inevitably climate change does come into the mix, both in terms of its impact on our ability to grow crops and in the greenhouse gas emissions from cow burps, fertiliser and more. To make things more complex, with a growing world population and some parts of the world chronically short of food, we need ways to grow more without impacting the climate in a negative fashion. It's purely coincidental that I'm r...

There's a real shortage of popular chemistry titles, which made this book seem very appealing, but unfortunately that's not what it is. There is far more on fertiliser than phosphorus in its own right, interspersed with folksy site meetings that add little more than atmosphere. Sometimes the deviation from topic is dramatic. For example, the treatment of small boat illegal immigrants by Australia, sending them to a camp on Nauru, takes up around 10 pages without a mention of phosphorus. This is a social and political history book with a light seasoning of science.  All too often this deviation from topic occurs - for example in chapter 1 we get a story of nineteenth century agricultural arson in East Anglia and the life of John Henshaw for around four pages, followed by a similar amount on geology. Even the very opening, which makes use of a decaying whale in the ocean (and throws in the nature of near death experiences) seems to meander far from the subject. This isn't hel...

There are two provisos here - first, this is primarily not a science book, but has enough science scattered through it to be worth covering. And second, I'm giving this book four stars because I enjoyed reading it despite its irritating flaws. It's a bit like a film I watched the other day in which an American actor did one of the worst Scottish accents I've ever heard. I still managed to enjoy the film, but I had to work at ignoring it. In Slow Rise , Robert Penn provides a memoir of his attempt to produce a year's worth of bread for his family using traditional wheat varieties he has grown and converted into flour himself. This may sound a bit like one of those amusing self-challenge books that Tony Hawks does so well, and there certainly is an element of humour in Penn's self-deprecating comments when things go wrong. But here this is also combined with some really interesting material on the biology and nature of wheat and the technical details of the bread-maki...

My first impression here was that S L Bridle was going to have to work very hard to recover from the subtitle, which is painfully inaccurate. (Spoiler alert for those who don't like suspense - thankfully, the book is a lot better than the subtitle.) The subtitle reads 'Change your diet: the easiest way to help save the planet.' Firstly, the planet does not need saving from climate change. A good  number  of species are put at risk by climate change and human civilisation could be severely traumatised, but the planet will be just fine. It's gone through far worst in the past. Second, changing diet isn’t easy. Not at all. As Bridle makes clear, one longhaul flight has the same impact as a whole year of food consumption, while even a shorthaul flight contributes a similar amount of greenhouse gasses as the change that could be made by a transformed diet. It's much easier to not take one flight than it is to change several meals a day. (Of course it's best to do...

Is processed food bad for you?  That’s the big question that George Zaiden seeks to answer in Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of Plants, Poisons & Processed Foods . Of course, since this is a book, and not a tweet, the answer is a little more complicated than yes or no. Taking a broader look, the book explores the things that we put into (and onto) ourselves when we eat, smoke, or use sunscreen. Zaidan seeks to explore not just whether these things are good for us or not, but how we know whether certain ingredients are harmful. I really appreciate Zaidan’s dissection of the scientific method, and how we learn about the effects of various chemicals. He goes through the benefits and shortfalls of various types of scientific studies in even-handed and easily accessible ways. I also enjoyed his commentary on the way the press presents nutritional findings. You often see things like 'Coffee causes/cures/prevents/worsens cancer' and Zaidan goes through where these ofte...

This is a tasty little volume, packed with kitchen-based science. I must admit, when I saw that the author was the One Show's science expert and Marty Jopson's author photo has that 'Hey, I'm a mad scientist, kids!' look, my heart fell - I was sure the book would be the written equivalent of a 'Wow, look, aren't I clever, I can make this go bang!' science show - but, in fact, it's packed full of (appropriately) meaty scientific content. I was really pleased that Jopson didn't stick purely to the chemistry of cooking, but launched with the working of some familiar kitchen gadgets - there was genuinely fascinating reading to be had about apparently humdrum equipment in the form of the physics and materials science of a knife and chopping board. And Jopson took us into industrial kitchens too, to reveal, for example, the remarkable process required to make puffed wheat. Inevitably, the chemistry of cooking - how, for example, proteins denature...

Like almost anything that gets the attention of the green movement, the genetic modification of food is a subject on which it's very difficult to find good, balanced coverage - so Rebecca Nesbit's book is a breath of fresh air. From the title you might think it takes the 'horror stories of GM' approach, but the concept of fish DNA in tomatoes is only mentioned in passing as an example of how misleading information is used - this is a far more nuanced and well-written book. Throughout, Nesbit gives us the science, the potential benefits and the potential threats. She describes from practical experience the protest side (she was anti-GM as a student), but also interviews plenty of scientists involved in GM foods and now has a much more balanced view. She takes us through the early days of GM foods, when it all turned nasty, what's involved in the various processes labelled as GM and much more. In crops there are whole chapters on insect resistance and herbicide to...

As author Matthew Hartings, chemistry lecturer by day and kitchen wizard by night (well, he has things he says he's pretty good at cooking) points out, chemistry and cooking have a lot in  common. You don't have to be into molecular gastronomy like Heston Blumenthal, running your kitchen more like a lab than an everyday part of the home. Whenever we deal with food and drink, we are inevitably dealing with chemistry. As Hartings also points out, chemistry is the Cinderella of the popular science world, so it's great to see a book in this field that works reasonably well (I'll come back to that 'reasonably'). What we get here are trips through a whole host of familiar (at least, familiar if you are American) food and drink experiences, from coffee via Kraft Mac and Cheese, through meat to beer and cocktails. At his best, Hartings is an engaging storyteller, for example taking us through his experience being hauled onto a TV show at the last minute to talk...