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Eat More Better

How to Make Every Bite More Delicious

By Dan Pashman
Illustrated by Alex Eben Meyer

What if you could make everything you eat more delicious?

As creator of the WNYC podcast The Sporkful and host of the Cooking Channel web series You're Eating It Wrong, Dan Pashman is obsessed with doing just that. Eat More Better weaves science and humor into a definitive, illustrated guidebook for anyone who loves food. But this book isn’t for foodies. It’s for eaters.

In the bestselling tradition of Alton Brown’s Good Eats and M.F.K. Fisher’s The Art of Eating, Pashman analyzes everyday foods in extraordinary detail to answer some of the most pressing questions of our time, including: Is a cheeseburger better when the cheese is on the bottom, closer to your tongue, to accentuate cheesy goodness? What are the ethics of cherry-picking specific ingredients from a snack mix? And what role does surface-area-to-volume ratio play in fried food enjoyment and ice cube selection?

Written with an infectious blend of humor and smarts, Eat More Better is a tongue-in-cheek textbook that teaches readers to eat for maximum pleasure. Chapters are divided into subjects like engineering, philosophy, economics, and physical science, and feature hundreds of drawings, charts, and infographics to illustrate key concepts like The Porklift—a bacon lattice structure placed beneath a pancake stack to elevate it off the plate, thus preventing the bottom pancake from becoming soggy with syrup and imbuing the bacon with maple-based deliciousness.

Eat More Better combines Pashman’s award-winning writing with his unparalleled field research, collected over thirty-seven years of eating at least three times a day. It delivers entertaining, fascinating, and practical insights that will satisfy your mind and stomach, and change the way you look at food forever.

Read this book and every bite you take will be better.
Photograph by Lilia Cretcher for The Sporkful
Dan Pashman

Dan Pashman is the creator and host of WNYC’s James Beard Award–nominated food podcast The Sporkful. He’s also the host of the Cooking Channel web series Good to Know and You’re Eating It Wrong and a contributor to NPR, Slate, Buzzfeed, and LA’s KCRW. He lives with his wife and two daughters. Find Dan at Sporkful.com.
Alex Eben Meyer

Alex Eben Meyer is an illustrator working in Brooklyn, New York. His work frequently appears in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Wired, and other publications, and online at Eben.com.

“Hilarious and, if you're of a similarly obsessive ilk, pretty useful.”

– Newsday (New York)

“A humorous, witty narrative delivered in the form of a pseudo-textbook. . . . A perfect delivery system for Pashman’s comedic take on gustatory pleasure. . . . A good-natured, clever and informative romp through the modern culinary landscape.”

– Kirkus Reviews

“Dan Pashman is one of the great eaters. Eating is his passion. Eating is his life. This book is a celebration of putting food in your mouth.”

– Marc Maron, author of Attempting Normal and host of WTF

“For noncooks who like food but hate the preciousness that comes with the whole foodie subculture…[Eat More Better] will allow its readers to survive his or her salad days.”

– The Boston Globe

“Here’s a collection of unexpected, giggle-making meditations on food served with a ‘spork.’ I looked it up. It isn’t in the dictionary yet, but a ‘spork’ is a combination spoon, fork and knife. Yes, K’s in knives are usually silent, but in Dan’s world, as in ketchup, kimchi, and Kit Kats, K’s are never bashful.”

– Radiolab's Robert Krulwich

“To top pumpkin pie or not to top pumpkin pie; the optimal coffee-dunking speed of a yeast donut; [the] eternal struggle about bite consistency versus bite variety: these are important questions to anyone who eats. . . . It’s all about being the best, most pleasure-extracting eater you can be.”

– MaximumFun.org

Eat More Better

How to Make Every Bite More Delicious

By Dan Pashman
Illustrated by Alex Eben Meyer