Meet Us and Eat Us: Food plants from around the world

Meet Us and Eat Us: Food plants from around the world is a book celebrating biodiversity in poetry, prose, and fine art photography. It explores 90 food plants in the context of their family relationships, history of use, geographical origin, their role in culture and mythology, and the journeys they take to reach our plates. 

The book gives food plants a voice and agency, to encourage readers and cooks across a wide age range to actively engage in and take responsibility for their everyday food choices. While the prose is aimed at adult levels of understanding, children can absorb the information in the images and poetry. Each illustrated page features the plant’s vital statistics, including botanical and common names and geographical origin. 

Meet Us and Eat Us aims to stimulate thought, discussion and appetite through imaginative, playful, and scientifically rigorous exploration. 

The book is a beautifully and robustly bound hardback. Its anti-scuff cover resists fingerprint marks, while head and tail bands protect the spine from damage. Meet Us and Eat Us is a book that different generations can enjoy together for years to come. 

Author Biographies

Vilma Bharatan had a scientific education and is a classically trained artist, who for the past three decades has been working with people to improve their health through food choices and homeopathy. 

Liz Kendall studied literature and worked in an art gallery and an independent bookshop while establishing her career in Shiatsu, massage, and Tai Chi Qigong. She is a published poet with work in several anthologies and journals. 

Appreciating how their different academic backgrounds complement each other led them to work together to explore their shared interest in food and the natural world. Meet Us and Eat Us is the essence, an elixir, of years of research and thought, and of long discussions over many meals together. 

Reviews

"Different, orginial - and utterly absorbing"

Orlando Murrin, cookbook and culinary crime writer, and founder of Olive magazine

"This book really celebrates the joy and wonder of the foods we eat, which is a fundamental part of our food education programmes in school. We always try to get across the idea to children that food is inherently interesting (where it comes from, how its grown, its cultural significance), and how much fun we can have if we simply notice this, and the book captures this idea perfectly. 

In particular, when we deliver sensory food education to children in schools we encourage them to let their imagination run wild when describing what different foods look like to them. The artwork of food in the book really aligns with this childlike lens of creativity and fantasy when perceiving different foods. This is great as it makes every opportunity to eat an opportunity to discover something new and exciting. We'll bring the book along to our next sensory food education session"

Will Holmes, School Gardener/Project Officer at School Food Matters.

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