Daniel E. Lieberman at the Harvard Science Center

RSVP is required for this event.

Harvard Book Store, the Harvard University Division of Science, the Harvard Library, the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture, and the Peabody Museum at Harvard welcome Daniel E. Lieberman—paleoanthropologist at Harvard University, where he is the Edwin M. Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences and former chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology—for a discussion of his new book, Fed Up: What Evolution Reveals About Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well. The presentation will take place in Hall D of the Harvard Science Center, located at 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge.

RSVP for free to this event or choose the "Book-Included" ticket to reserve a copy of Fed Up and pick it up at the event. Following the presentation will be a book signing.

Note: Books bundled with tickets may only be picked up at the venue the night of the event, and cannot be picked up in-store beforehand. Ticket holders who purchased a book-included ticket and are unable to attend the event will be able to pick up their book at Harvard Book Store up to 30 days following the event. This offer expires after 30 days. Please note we cannot guarantee signed copies will be available to ticket holders who do not attend the event.

A brilliant, no-nonsense look at two questions we never evolved to ask but now must consider several times a day: what should we eat, and why?

Daniel E. Lieberman—bestselling author of The Story of the Human Body and Exercised, and founding chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University—cuts through all the confusing and contradictory advice on diet and wellness to ar­gue that there can be no simple, definitive answer. Drawing from evolutionary biol­ogy, physiology, anthropology, anatomy, medical science, and history, Lieberman examines, with brio and wit, the history and health effects of food from before the invention of cooking up to today’s industrially produced diets. He shows how we evolved to eat almost anything, and by evalu­ating and trying many of these diets (raw food, Paleo, Mediterranean, Blue Zone, intermittent fasting, Atkins, DASH), he helps you understand why none is flawless though some are better than others.
Lieberman explores the costs and benefits of cheap, energy-rich, tempting, and often unhealthy ultra-processed foods; the tangled roots of weight gain; how diet influences obesity, heart disease, and cancer; and the claims of benefits offered by high- and low-fat diets, meal replacements, inter­mittent fasting, carnivorism, vegetarianism, and veganism—while also showing how over centu­ries most cultures evolved ingenious ways to grow and cook healthy, delicious food.
This fascinating and entertaining sci­ence-based book on nutrition, digestion, and health will teach you how to be well fed instead of fed up with dietary hucksterism.

Daniel Lieberman is the Edwin M. Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences at Harvard University and a Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. He is also a member of Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. He was educated at Harvard and Cambridge Universities. At Harvard, he teaches a variety of courses on human evolution, anatomy, physiology, and health. In addition to more than 200 peer-review articles, his three previous books are: The Evolution of the Human Head (Harvard University Press, 2011), The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease (Pantheon, 2013), and Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do is Healthy and Rewarding (Pantheon, 2020). Photo Credit: Antonia Prescott

The Harvard Science Book Talks series is a collaboration between the Harvard University Division of Science, the Harvard Library, and Harvard Book Store. The series features talks by the authors of recently published books on a variety of science-related topics and is open to both the Harvard community and to the general public.

The Harvard Museums of Science & Culture connect collections and research at Harvard with global audiences, fostering community and deepening appreciation for science, the natural world, human cultures, and our shared experiences.

The Peabody Museum at Harvard University connects people with the cultural heritage in the Museum’s care and amplifies global Indigenous, descendant, and diaspora community voices and knowledge to address colonial legacies.