In fact, nutrition plays only a small part in our food choices. Adele Davis,
whose bossy opinions on food were to a whole generation as authoritative as
Dr. Spocks on childrearing (she recommended a diet of liver and yogurt),
held that European history was determined by food habits. The French ate
white bread and drank wine and strong coffee, she said, and this was about as
nutritionally disastrous as possible; the Germans, on the other hand, ate dark
bread and drank beer both nutritionally sound. Was it any wonder, she
asked, that the Germans kept beating the French? But even if both nations
were to accept this interesting hypothesis as sound, do we believe they would
change their food preferences?