What sex is to inter-personal relationships, eating is to the Human-Environment relationship, a daily consummation of our de facto marriage to the living biosphere.

This book is about the true meaning of eating, intimacy, love, vomiting and diarrhea: You and your food partner. It is about the celebration of ecology through eating and about how food poisoning can save the world.

This book should be kept next to your toilet, and also next to your refrigerator. The next time you suffer from a bout of food poisoning, doubled over in abdominal pain, feeling like there rages a true revolution within, I want you to understand what is happening to you, why the inner child is having a gaseous tantrum in your guts. I want you to hear Gaia’s, the earth organism’s, whispered love-message to you.

David Waltner-Toews is a veterinary epidemiologist and university professor emeritus at the University of Guelph. He was founding president of Veterinarians without Borders / Vétérinaires sans Frontières – Canada and a founding member of Communities of Practice for Ecosystem Approaches to Health in Canada. In 2010 the International Association for Ecology and Health presented him with the inaugural award for contributions to ecosystem approaches to health, and in 2019 he received an award from the World Small Animal Veterinary Association recognizing “veterinarians who have exhibited exceptional acts of valour and commitment in the face of adversity to service the community.”

Besides being an author of many scholarly books and articles, he has published six books of poetry, a collection of recipes and dramatic monologues, a collection of short stories, two novels and various books of popular science including On Pandemics: Deadly Diseases from Bubonic Plague to Coronavirus; The Origin of Feces: What Excrement Tells Us About Evolution, Ecology and a Sustainable Society; Eat the Beetles: An Exploration into our Conflicted Relationship with Insects and Food, Sex and Salmonella: Why Our Food Is Making Us Sick. His nonfiction books have won awards in the US and Canada, and have been published in Japanese, French, Chinese and Arabic.

David Waltner-Toews' profile page