Mark Bittman traces the history of food from early human societies to modern industrial agriculture, showing how the shift from diverse hunter-gatherer diets to grain-based farming fundamentally reshaped societies. Agriculture enabled surpluses and population growth but also produced inequality, elites, and systems of labor exploitation, while monotonous diets, disease, and environmental degradation became widespread consequences. Early societies were often cooperative and relatively egalitarian, but the accumulation of surplus created hierarchies and ruling classes, tying control of land and food directly to political power and social stratification.
Migo Aguado 