Fred Provenza is professor emeritus of Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University. At Utah State Provenza directed an award-winning research group that pioneered an understanding of how learning influences foraging behavior and how behavior links soils and plants with herbivores and humans. Provenza is one of the founders of BEHAVE, an international network of scientists and land managers committed to integrating behavioral principles with local knowledge to enhance environmental, economic, and cultural values of rural and urban communities. He is also the author of Foraging Behavior and the co-author of The Art & Science of Shepherding.
“Part mirror and part compass springing from a bedrock of science,
Nourishment takes us on an extraordinary journey through
bodies of wisdom. This book sets a new bar for how to think about
the intersection of food, nature, and ourselves.”—Anne Biklé,
coauthor of The Hidden Half of Nature
“Fred Provenza serves up a feast for the mind, heart, and soul.
Philosophical, spiritual, and rigorously scientific, Nourishment
takes readers on this humble deep thinker’s life journey of
discovery, sharing his insights about the nutritional and medicinal
wisdom of animals, while clarifying some of our own misconceptions.
Like a master mandala artist, Provenza provides perfect balance,
drawing together multiple disciplines and belief systems to
synthesize a paradigm shift based on wisdom that exists within each
of us for eating well and staying healthy. Provenza calls on us to
be responsible consumers and more compassionate visitors on this
planet.”—Michael A. Huffman, professor, Primate Research Institute,
Kyoto University, Japan
“Fred Provenza tells the story of the science behind how animals
wisely choose to feed themselves from the variety of plants in the
natural world. He integrates that story with the way we humans make
food choices in childhood, why we like some foods but not others,
and our propensity for addiction. Moreover he shows how animal
behaviors shape the natural world and how a healthy ecosystem
provides nourishment for our bodies, spirits, and intellects.
Nourishment provides the keys for relinking our appetites with our
health and happiness.”—William Foley, emeritus professor of
nutrition and ecology, Australian National University
“Fred Provenza spent his distinguished academic career becoming a
leading authority on the food habits of rangeland animals. In this
thought-provoking book, he uses his deep understanding of his
four-legged study subjects to cast light on our own nutritional
condition in a world where we have become increasingly
remote—philosophically and physically—from our food
supply.”—Stephen J. Simpson, PhD, academic director, Charles
Perkins Centre, University of Sydney
“I could describe this book as simply an enlightening treatise on
the philosophy of life, but that fails to do it justice. Fred
Provenza uses his life’s experiences as student, rancher,
fisherman, researcher, teacher, hiker, cancer patient, and retiree
to illustrate vividly the fundamental principles of nutrition not
only of animals (including humans) but also of plants and soil. In
Nourishment Provenza also offers a rich exposition of his
outstanding all-embracing views of life. To read this book is to
challenge many of one’s assumptions and prejudices.”—J. Michael
Forbes, professor emeritus, University of Leeds; author of
Voluntary Food Intake and Diet Selection of Farm Animals
“Throughout his illustrious research career, Fred Provenza has
taught us how animals—many of which we choose to eat—learn what
they themselves should consume to maintain optimal health. He has
now taken these lessons and applied them to the human situation in
insightful and clever ways, concluding that we ignore our body’s
wisdom to our nutritional detriment. But he goes further, tying his
metaphysical ideas about the lives of plants, the nature of food,
and the consciousness of cells to his fascinating life adventure.
This book is sure to engage, educate, and provoke the reader.”—Gary
K. Beauchamp, director and president emeritus, Monell Chemical
Senses Center
“Fred Provenza has a brilliant, inquisitive, and open-minded
spirit, the kind that should live within all of us. Nourishment is
the result of a lifetime of observation, experimentation, and
incredible insight by a master scientist. This is a book you will
read, reread, dog-ear pages in, and tell your friends about. You
will be blown away, as I have been. Outstanding!”—Bob Budd,
executive director, Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust
“Fred Provenza has spent his career redefining the ways we
understand livestock intelligence when it comes to diet. In this
compelling and engaging book, he shares many of those lessons
and synthesizes a wide breadth of research and knowledge to
challenge some fundamental assumptions about diet, whether it be
for livestock or humans. Provenza connects the dots like few have
before, offering a new way to see the world and bringing new
meaning to ‘you are what you eat.’”—Steve Gabriel, author of
Silvopasture and coauthor of Farming the Woods
“Through Fred Provenza’s eyes, a simple meal becomes a wondrous
journey into the world, into our bodies, and into our deepest
selves. Nourishment will change the way you eat and the way
you think.”—Mark Schatzker, author of Steak and The Dorito
Effect
“In this path-finding and paradigm-breaking book, Provenza combines
a lifetime’s worth of scientific work with deep empathic insight to
further extend his unique contribution to healing our ailing
landscapes, our animals, and the human condition. Across five
continents Provenza has led livestock managers to upend traditional
beliefs about animals in grazing-browsing systems. Now, in exciting
and original fashion, he extends his ideas concerning we
humans—animals, after all, who also coevolved in diverse, once
nutrient-filled landscapes. In an era when the false pathway of
economic rationalism, aligned to industrial agriculture and its
food systems, is poisoning the planet and ourselves, Provenza
provides a vitally new holistic perspective of our species: a
perspective that provides exciting solutions to our Anthropocene
and human dilemmas.”—Charles Massy, author of Call of the Reed
Warbler
“Fred Provenza is a hero of mine. For more than thirty years, he
has been a leader in applying scientific knowledge to social good.
His deep understanding of how animals behave on the land—why they
eat what they eat, how they stay healthy, and how they teach their
young—has helped generations of ranchers, farmers, wildlife
managers, and university students understand and strengthen their
relationships with animals in sustainable ways. We are animals,
too, and in this magnificent book, the culmination of a lifetime of
learning, Fred weaves together philosophy, nutritional science,
memoir, and his humble appreciation for the natural world into an
inspiring meditation on our moment on Earth.”—Courtney White,
author of Grass, Soil, Hope and Two Percent Solutions
for the Planet
“In Nourishment Fred Provenza offers a rich explanation of how
animals follow instinctual wisdom of nutritional biochemistry when
nested in their proper ecological niche. Drawing from episodes of
his years of research and the cycles of life, Dr. Provenza
illuminates the fascinating mechanisms by which animals’ innate
knowledge of healthy eating is passed on to their offspring and how
we humans can learn from the simplicity of animals in our midst.
This engaging book provides proof that animals are not mindless
eaters—nor should humans be.”—Hubert Karreman, VMD, author of
Treating Dairy Cows Naturally
“Fred Provenza’s Nourishment is a synergy of the essence of his
lifetime of research coupled with commonsense nutritional advice to
aid both animals and humans. All readers will benefit from the
knowledge revealed in this book. I have long thought Dr. Provenza’s
work should comprise a required course in veterinary and medical
schools, and Nourishment confirms that opinion.”—Richard
J. Holliday, DVM, holistic veterinarian; coauthor of A
Holistic Vet’s Prescription for a Healthy Herd
“Once again, Fred Provenza shows he is one of the freshest and most
insightful thinkers about the role of herbivores (and omnivorous
humans!) in our food and land management systems. His clear
evolutionary thinking is matched by his keen powers of observation
of ecological interactions. This book is a landmark
contribution.”—Gary Paul Nabhan, author of Mesquite and Food from
the Radical Center
“An absolutely fascinating topic, engagingly written. Fred
Provenza will wholly up-end everything you think you know
about what you are supposed to eat and why. Nourishment should be
the first book read by every student of nutrition.”—Nicolette Hahn
Niman, author of Defending Beef
“In Nourishment a wise observer of the land and the animals becomes
transformed to learn the meaning of life. Fred
Provenza’s reflections on his long, fruitful career in
behavior-based management of landscapes include his joy in
observing the natural world around him.”—Temple Grandin,
author of Animals in Translation
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