Consumer Reports

The editors Jeff Dupuis and A. G. Pasquella begin their science fiction anthology with a lean introduction. They conjure an old friend of the food writing world, the French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, whose The Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, from 1825, left us with several gems of wisdom, including the opening line of Devouring Tomorrow: “You are what you eat.”

Brillat-Savarin’s original claim was “Dis‑moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.” Tell me what you eat, I will tell you what you are. The English translation of Brillat-Savarin’s aphorism is often interpreted as a warning against sensory appetites. In it, I hear the finger wagging of generations of Canadian and American dietary guidance: make wise meal choices, or else. This realm of nutrition is inherently adversarial, less a place of nourishment and delight than of temptation, peril, and discipline. But Brillat-Savarin was not...