Setting out to examine how food played a determining role in the way in which creatures developed, this book goes on to explore how nutrition is now shaping the future of life on earth. It points to the links between poor nutrition and modern degenerative diseases and aims to show how European ignorance of African ecology led to the destruction of natural ecosystems and the introduction of inappropriate European farming methods to colonial Africa, and in turn to the famines of the 20th century. The book also deals with the effect of farming methods on the physiology of man's food animals.