Meat is rarely out of the headlines. From the clamour of climate campaigners to the protestations of beleaguered farmers, a steady stream of media commentators insist that our consumption of meat is either a tremendous good or something terribly bad. It wasn't always like this. Long ago, we were much like the fox or the bear. We ate the foods that were available to us - animal and plant - and if those foods were nourishing then they were good. But something changed. Our ancestors evolved a heightened capacity for compassion. We began to feel remorse for the animals we killed.

Meat was nourishing, but it was also morally disturbing. We evolved to become the most peculiar of creatures: a predator inclined to empathise with its prey . The Meat Paradox is the first book to explore and examine the psychological roots of our dietary unease. It explains that beneath the polished Instagram snaps of smashed avocado, and beyond the public uproar at the prospect of 'chlorinated chicken' arriving on supermarket shelves, is a deep-rooted sense of cognitive dissonance. We care for animals. We eat them. We struggle to make sense of the contradiction. The Meat Paradox combines memoir, science writing and activism, and unfolding in dialogue with scholars and scientists, it leads the reader from the Palaeolithic to the present, from the Arctic and through the Amazon, to the frontiers of climate crisis and towards an urgent, thrilling and unexpected conclusion.