This work sets out to show the way that food played a determining role in the way that creatures developed on earth, and goes on to show how nutrition is shaping life in the future. It points to the links between poor nutrition and modern degenerative diseases, and shows how European ignorance of African ecology led to the destruction of natural ecosystems and the introduction of inappropriate European farming methods to colonial Africa, leading to the terrible famines we have seen this century. It shows how farming methods in the developed world have changed the physiology of our food animals beyond all recognition, turning the nurient-rich wild animals that our forefathers ate (until as recently as the industrial revolution) into the meat machines we eat today.