Wondering whether food television can educate without putting people to sleep? Lakshmi’s words from National Geographic Channel’s miniseries “EAT: The Story of Food” should retire any doubt. Her quote reflects EAT’s careful marriage food’s primal biological power with its civilizing intellectual force.

Food makes us animals, yet dining makes us human. EAT walks this paradoxical line with a new type of culinary programming. The show is not a crazed competition to create four-course meals from vending machines like so many other food television shows. Nor is it a snoozy chronicle tracing the history of a single obscure ingredient, ignoring food’s deep biological draw in its earnest efforts to enrich rather than entertain. But the beauty of television is that it