We know that our diet influences our health. But is there more to the adage “you are what you eat?” Connecting the dots from agriculture to medicine, geologist David R. Montgomery and biologist Anne Biklé argue we overlook the other half of a healthy diet: how we grow our food.

Journeying from research labs to the fields of regenerative farmers, they uncover scientific and historical evidence for how farming practices—so often disruptive to microbial partnerships—influence soil health and shape the types and amounts of health-promoting minerals, fats and phytochemicals in our crops, meat and dairy—and thus ourselves. Understanding these connections has profound implications for what we eat and how we grow it, now and in the future. A capstone work from lauded authors, What Your Food Ate is a story both sobering and inspiring: what’s good for the soil is good for us, too.