Amber M. O'Connor has an extensive background in food studies. She's been a cook, an advocate for food sustainability and security, and a culinary anthropologist. Amber started in the food world as a cook. During culinary school she worked in Oaxaca, Mexico in culinary tourism. Later, she worked in non-profits related to food security. Her current research interests involve researching how processes designed to promote cultural diversity seem to instead constrain individual creative endeavors. In particular she is focused on the impacts of UNESCO's recognition of the indigenous cuisines of Mexico as "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" and the re-imagining of authentic "Maya" cuisine by the tourist industry in Quintana Roo and the greater Yucatan peninsula.

E. N. Anderson is Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, at the University of California, Riverside. He has done research on ethnobiology, cultural ecology, political ecology, and medical anthropology, in several areas, especially Hong Kong, British Columbia, California, and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. His books include The Food of China, Ecologies of the Heart, Political Ecology of a Yucatec Maya Community, and The Pursuit of Ecotopia. He has five children and five grandchildren. He lives in Riverside, California, with his wife Barbara Anderson and three large dogs.