As the tone of its main title implies, "Consider the Fork" is casual fare, a tapas bar rather than the banquet suggested in the subtitle. Bee Wilson calls this "an exploration of the way the implements we use in the kitchen affect what we eat, how we eat and what we feel about what we eat. Food is the great human universal Some live without sex, that other fact of life.
she argues that incisors evolved to grip food, enabling the eater to tear off bits.
Looking further back in prehistory, Ms. Wilson acknowledges Richard Wrangham's fascinating thesis in "Catching the Fire" (reviewed in these pages three years ago) that the first ancestral humans to stumble on cooking per se nourished themselves better than their tartare-eating cousins.
