She received her B.A. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she took a senior seminar on the anthropology of food that fueled her interest in the ways that humans are shaped by their diet and foodways. She then completed M.A. and Ph.D. studies in biological anthropology at the University of Michigan. Her research on prehistoric health and diet includes a study of the comparative effects of hunter-gatherer and pastoral subsistence on human health in eastern Africa, and most recently, the relationship between health, diet, social status, and ritual feasting in Bronze Age Greek Mycenaeans and Shang Dynasty populations in China.