(Silver Spring, Md.)—CuriosityStream – the award-winning streaming and on-demand destination from Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks – answers the age-old question, “what’s for dinner?” once and for all with its new five-part original docuseries, THE HISTORY OF FOOD. Premiering November 15, THE HISTORY OF FOOD offers a deep-dive into the science, history and cultural impact of food throughout time.
The viewers’ tour guides for this gastronomical journey are a diverse group of engaging experts including renowned chef Joseph “JJ” Johnson (James Beard Nominee, Between Harlem & Heaven, Henry at Life Hotel), primatologist Richard Wrangham (Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human), Sandor Katz (Food Writer, The Art of Fermentation), ecologist Dr. Robb Dunn (The Wild Life of Our Bodies), and other leading chefs & food visionaries.
“Quite simply, food is the fuel of life – and humans share a very intense and multi-dimensional relationship with what they eat,” said Clint Stinchcomb, President and CEO of CuriosityStream. “THE HISTORY OF FOOD combines breathtaking visuals with today’s top experts and tastemakers sharing mind-blowing insights – but delivers it with entertaining storytelling that makes it perfect for CuriosityStream and our viewers.”
THE HISTORY OF FOOD takes audiences on a mouth-watering, 2-million-year evolutionary journey beginning with our primordial ancestors, and closely examines the changing roles that diet has played over time. In each episode, viewers will explore a different monumental shift in how and what humans have eaten, the varying effects of those diets, and how the way we eat will continue to change.
The addition of THE HISTORY OF FOOD to the CuriosityStream library is a meaningful step in a significant content campaign for the streaming and on-demand platform. CuriosityStream is solidifying its topical focus to expand on highly-popular storytelling genres including food and cooking, true crime, historical biographies, and sports and culture, as it continues its mission to provide the broadest and best array of nonfiction storytelling anywhere. In addition, audiences who rely on CuriosityStream for best-in-class programming from the worlds of science, society, technology, nature, history, and lifestyle will continue to be super-served with hundreds of new titles representing the very finest from those topical areas.
Humans have depended on fire for millennia, but do we fully understand the impact it has had on our diet and, moreover, our cognition? When our hunter-gatherer ancestors learned to harness this tool, it ignited a culinary and cerebral revolution believed to be one of the most important factors in our evolution. In this episode, we meet some of the last hunter-gatherers on earth as well as some chefs in Australia elevating native ingredients to haute cuisine.
From the first row of planted crops, the practice of agriculture rendered man’s hunter-gatherer lifestyles obsolete in favor of settled life and stable food supplies. This led to a skyrocketing population and enabled humans to develop skills outside of gathering the food needed to survive. This episode explores the rise of agriculture and animal domestication in a time when civilization as we know it today was being developed… which led to one of humanity’s most timeless culinary invention -- the taco.
Just as humans have always sought food to survive, we have also sought the means to preserve that food. Right from the very moment of a kill or a harvest, food begins to break down. With preservation, humans can plan for times of scarcity during times of plenty, which led to favorite staples including beer, bread, kimchi and more. This episode goes behind the science of the historical advances in preservation and fermentation that gave humanity new opportunities to flourish and explore new tastes and flavors.
Industrialization brought the second great food revolution. Over the brief span of the 20th century, agriculture underwent greater change than it had since it was first practiced some 12,000 years ago. This episode examines the differences between the modern day, industrialized food production system––and the methods of the past––to reveal this seismic shift in humanity’s diet, health, and environment. We meet famed farmer, Joel Salatin (featured in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and an entrepreneur from the Netherlands trying to change the food industry from within.
In the final episode, THE HISTORY OF FOOD will change its focus from the past to the future. Industrialized and processed food has dominated the last century.
Now, the question is, what’s next? Starting at The Doomsday Vault in the Arctic, we take viewers around the world to meet pioneers in urban farming, veganism, and insect protein production to find out what will be the future of food.
THE HISTORY OF FOOD is produced by Roller Coaster Road Productions LLC for CuriosityStream. Sign up for a free trial and check out what’s new on CuriosityStream at CuriosityStream.com/new.
About CuriosityStream:
Launched by Discovery Communications founder and media visionary John Hendricks, CuriosityStream is the award-winning streaming and on-demand destination where viewers can journey through our world and beyond. Our immersive experiences feature experts from Stephen Hawking and David Attenborough to Veritasium’s Derek Muller, stunning visuals, and unrivaled storytelling to demystify science, nature, history, technology, society and lifestyle. With over 2,000 documentary features and series, many in Ultra HD 4K, including exclusive originals, CuriosityStream is available worldwide to watch on TV, desktop, mobile and tablets. Find us on the web and via Roku, Apple TV, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV and Sprint and Google Chromecast, iOS and Android, as well as Prime Video Channels, DISH, Sling TV, YouTube TV, VRV, Comcast Xfinity on Demand, Cox, Layer3 TV and the Sony, LG, Samsung and VIZIO smart TV platforms.
