These days food comes to us in all manner of attractive packaging: fancy foils, bright boxes, and striking wrappers. But the plants that make up the bulk of our diets can be even more beautiful than the most cleverly designed package. This fact, often lost on modern day consumers, is celebrated in the second edition of linkurl:__The New Oxford Book of Food Plants__;http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019954946X/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0198505671&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1KEKMQSDPQWHTFD2E4WC by plant taxonomist John Vaughan and nutritionist Catherine Geissler. According to the book's preface, the motivation for updating __The New Oxford Book of Food Plants__, which was originally published in 1969, is twofold: first, a new and "considerable" emphasis that plant foods be incorporated into healthy diets, and second, the increased availability of food plants as modern transportation has allowed the delivery of plants from all over the world fresh to the consumer. Grocery shoppers are more likely to encounter and buy unfamiliar plants or plant parts...
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