Ellie Whitney grew up in New York City and received her B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English and Biology at Harvard and Washington Universities. She taught at both Florida State University and Florida A&M University, wrote numerous newspaper columns on environmental matters for the Tallahassee Democrat, and coauthored almost a dozen college textbooks on nutrition, health, and related topics, many of which repeatedly reappear as new editions. She spent three decades exploring outdoor Florida and studying its ecology, and then co-wrote PRICELESS FLORIDA: NATURAL ECOSYSTEMS AND NATIVE SPECIES. Now retired, and more concerned about climate change than any other issue, she volunteers full-time for the nonpartisan national nonprofit Citizens Climate Lobby.

Frances Sienkiewicz Sizer, M.S., R.D., F.A.D.A., attended Florida State University, where, in 1980, she received her BS and, in 1982, her MS in nutrition. She is certified as a charter Fellow of the American Dietetic Association and Fellow of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She is a founding member and vice-president of Nutrition and Health Associates, an information and resource center in Tallahassee, Florida, that maintains an ongoing bibliographic database tracking research in more than 1,000 topic areas of nutrition. Her textbooks include LIFE CHOICES: HEALTH CONCEPTS AND STRATEGIES; MAKING LIFE CHOICES; THE FITNESS TRIAD: MOTIVATION, TRAINING, AND NUTRITION; and others. She is a primary author of NUTRITION INTERACTIVE, an instructional college-level nutrition game-teaching resource. In addition to writing, she has lectured at universities and at national and regional conferences and serves in several local hunger and homelessness relief organization in her community.