Agriculture and cuisine: different subjects or the same?

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHfpocGA9xHFNyjaPqTZ8oWlC6URcsIBzBHin_8z3hocEHYaecJjANkLKvir4qwQUkiJldi3XMJSmdUZ9HU5q8Cvki3FAybOtq4zyjDe-R-An1e0plZW_obsG2HY2Rkl-CqwC3dVaLA957/s1600/Royal_Gardener_John_Rose_and_King_Charles_II_-_Hendrick_Danckerts_1675.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="514" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHfpocGA9xHFNyjaPqTZ8oWlC6URcsIBzBHin_8z3hocEHYaecJjANkLKvir4qwQUkiJldi3XMJSmdUZ9HU5q8Cvki3FAybOtq4zyjDe-R-An1e0plZW_obsG2HY2Rkl-CqwC3dVaLA957/s640/Royal_Gardener_John_Rose_and_King_Charles_II_-_Hendrick_Danckerts_1675.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hendrick Danckerts: "Royal Gardener John Rose Presenting a Pineapple to King Charles II," 1675 (Wikimedia)</td></tr></tbody></table>I've been reading about the introduction of European and Asian food plants and many domestic animal species to the Spanish colonies of the new world, and about the introduction of new world plants and a few animals to old world diners and farmers. I've read quite a bit on this subject in the past as well. In general, there are two approaches: either authors concentrate on agriculture, and with it sometimes on nutrition, or on cuisine.<br /><br />Agriculturally focused histories treat the development and spread of agriculture in the new world and eventually beyond it. Some authors describe the initial process of domestication of certain plant species (like corn or vanilla). Some study the biochemistry of ancient species and compare them to archaeological finds or to wild native plants. Others focus on the current state of food production, use, and availability, viewing the origin and spread of plants or animals as at most background material. The timing of the spread of each food plant into new areas, its nutritional value to the population that consumed it, commodity or market issues, and the plant's adaptability to growing in new areas are critical factors.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE4UMKiw3pbLu5LkkVzA_npsHlQnX5fSSVmQvLx_Db9QoqObyL7r56vA2KWCo-gleoNtOGZmt5UU0yBfS8Q3_p0KxQ6XsAwcyj_Z4kpcHRuZsIh7UWSKFpPhFdikCtlW2s414aW5XJ5g9-/s1600/gardens-dunmire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE4UMKiw3pbLu5LkkVzA_npsHlQnX5fSSVmQvLx_Db9QoqObyL7r56vA2KWCo-gleoNtOGZmt5UU0yBfS8Q3_p0KxQ6XsAwcyj_Z4kpcHRuZsIh7UWSKFpPhFdikCtlW2s414aW5XJ5g9-/s320/gardens-dunmire.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What I've been reading</td></tr></tbody></table>Books that cover the topics of agriculture and its effect on food ways include these:<i> Chilies to Chocolate: Food the Americas Gave the World,</i> a collection of essays edited by Foster and Cordell; <i>The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 </i>by Alfred Crosby; and <i>Gardens of New Spain: How Mediterranean Plants and foods changed America</i> by William Dunmire.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx4M91gjlnl5F1rA2DKtLCri-JsBlGZinvjhslJmp0_n-qkohBrF6dbyRqlxpyMod2cMWmleUVLB41qPwnMntDjr6Syu6gp1lEFhj57INKzdTeRov57sHPqyPLmFwXO_4P1NolxBTA5af8/s1600/chilies-to-chocolate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx4M91gjlnl5F1rA2DKtLCri-JsBlGZinvjhslJmp0_n-qkohBrF6dbyRqlxpyMod2cMWmleUVLB41qPwnMntDjr6Syu6gp1lEFhj57INKzdTeRov57sHPqyPLmFwXO_4P1NolxBTA5af8/s320/chilies-to-chocolate.jpg" width="188" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">More of what I've been reading</td></tr></tbody></table>In the epilogue to <i>Chilies to Chocolate</i> Gary Paul Nabhan acknowledge the division that I'm exploring here. He wrote: "Perhaps the complexity of crop evolution makes us lose sight of the concurrent cultural evolution of culinary traditions: changes in grinding, roasting brewing, baking,  and curing techniques, not to mention customs of spicing and serving prepared foods."<br /><br />Nabhan cites a number of recipes and culinary techniques known to have characterized pre-Columbian cuisine. However, most books seem to focus on one area at a time -- how crops are grown, how foods are used in recipes, how they are adopted for nutritional value, how they spread from culture to culture, and how new flavors were added to familiar ones.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6sLhM4z5bkW6qMSC1QCDCKBHW2YvI2lZUdDH_CCN7aZj_K_OIgpxwwEzX4cwegTFzAUiIz1Bt8COaEZAkA9i-vVD8K9TVP4-TEp-_49GJfrLo_08kF_UyNMNsyh4FX8aW0UPEZgXawwOR/s1600/coe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6sLhM4z5bkW6qMSC1QCDCKBHW2YvI2lZUdDH_CCN7aZj_K_OIgpxwwEzX4cwegTFzAUiIz1Bt8COaEZAkA9i-vVD8K9TVP4-TEp-_49GJfrLo_08kF_UyNMNsyh4FX8aW0UPEZgXawwOR/s200/coe.jpg" width="131" /></a>Nabhan has written many books on food, cuisine, agriculture, and ethnobotany of the American Southwest. His point of view is political as well as scientific -- he's very concerned about the loss of biodiversity among native American plants, about climate change, and about mistreatment of native peoples worldwide. An author with a complementary point of view is Sophie Coe, who wrote two books about the sources, uses, and transmission of new world foods: <i>America's First Cuisines </i>and<i> The True History of Chocolate</i>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgINq58rRcnvtrP4nve77otMarWOpJunk7EMWn_tstP4rDUEYVMepADu5-r80H06V3QoIBNHQHrBY4H8UnE05qgdmciiP8UihmGEjUoqyGLym_MA45QNa5KmRtMtON5Mp9xFjzacZBTQQ/s1600-h/somelikehot.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="200" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5053668798495652146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgINq58rRcnvtrP4nve77otMarWOpJunk7EMWn_tstP4rDUEYVMepADu5-r80H06V3QoIBNHQHrBY4H8UnE05qgdmciiP8UihmGEjUoqyGLym_MA45QNa5KmRtMtON5Mp9xFjzacZBTQQ/s200/somelikehot.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;" width="131" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I reviewed this book <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2007/04/book-review-why-some-like-it-hot.html">here</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="line-height: 1.5;"><span style="line-height: 1.5;">As do Coe and Nabhan, authors interested in cuisine trace influences on food preparations such as the use of spice blends in East Asian, Middle Eastern, North African, Spanish, and later Mexican cooking (which I mentioned in an earlier post). They explore how taste and familiarity of species determined which plants or animals were readily integrated into regional concepts of food, such as the rapid acceptance of corn or the reluctant acceptance of tomatoes. </span><br /><span style="line-height: 1.5;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 1.5;">An important element of several essays in <i>Chilies to Chocolate</i> is to show how diners and cooks at various points in history believed that foods should be cooked, presented, and eaten and thus what new foods could fit into their view. For example, n</span><span style="line-height: 1.5;">ew world chile peppers satisfied the original explorers' quest for spicy flavor, so they spread very readily as an addition to familiar cuisines in the old world. The nutritional value of the potato was obvious to some Europeans, but its unfamiliarity and ugly appearance made its spread difficult at first -- then of course it became too common in some places, notoriously in Ireland. Tomatoes and to some extent avocados now appear in virtually all produce markets worldwide, but required still longer to be accepted as part of European/American cuisine.</span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-BOJtOvqj3BAzcjVjsSrr9m3w1Ta5eBhxFHCLXPAqPkTXeVs159Yntj6FCyZAGcjohnQ60qSW4P3xGPknF_tfk24VLbhhMoTN6KWc1ak8tFLfGhPOIhs5giOHSC4SO7h9JjziK0yyKnLh/s1600/potato+eaters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-BOJtOvqj3BAzcjVjsSrr9m3w1Ta5eBhxFHCLXPAqPkTXeVs159Yntj6FCyZAGcjohnQ60qSW4P3xGPknF_tfk24VLbhhMoTN6KWc1ak8tFLfGhPOIhs5giOHSC4SO7h9JjziK0yyKnLh/s320/potato+eaters.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Van Gogh "The Potato Eaters" <br />Native American food that became a European staple</td></tr></tbody></table>Staple new world foods, such as the potato and corn, rapidly made major changes in the diets of Europe, Africa, and Asia; by the sixteenth to eighteenth century these became standard in cuisines of Europe or the totally Europeanized American settlements. New world beans evidently spread readily but silently, joining the few bean species that existed in Europe so effectively that their origin had to be rediscovered in the 19th century.<br /><br /><span style="line-height: 1.5;">Some exotic foods from the new world actually changed European tastes rather than moving into a niche in what was already being cooked. Vanilla, chocolate, and pineapple were like nothing in existing old world cuisine. The latter was very slowly accepted in Europe, first grown in royal hothouses as illustrated above; eventually becoming a curiosity and then a luxury food, but never a staple and never integrated the way that corn, chiles, or potatoes were.</span><br /><br />Agriculturally oriented writers ask, how could new world species be cultivated in the old world? As with acceptance into European or Asian diets, adaptability of plants for old world agriculture varied. Potatoes, native to the high Andes, turned out to be extremely flexible; the potato, with its many varieties, adapted to many climates. Chiles and corn could adapt to a range of temperature, day-length, and rainfall and now grow in places as diverse as India and Michigan. Chocolate now grows in many tropical climates while vanilla is extremely picky about the latitude where it grows and needs special insect pollinators. Finding new places to cultivate vanilla was difficult, though most of the world's supply of vanilla today grows in the old world, not in Mexico. Early horticultural interest in the pineapple, which I perversely think of as Hawaiian, was to see who could get it to grow fruit in a greenhouse: not a sign that it would go native in England! (<i>Chilies to Chocolate</i> p. 35 and p. 4)<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixY4CFJ-IkhBgTeQ0LeUxfTSUhMYuvQ_Kj64Jw3lqVsj8HIZt3_h4SMQFynTLIoCU_wWsegifh-FKep7TyDDxmHkZoPlm_dkboxYQh1THw13JSdiQUGs1XXRSGjhLl0USYfZ6af_BtqvtQ/s1600/sugar-factory-West-Indies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixY4CFJ-IkhBgTeQ0LeUxfTSUhMYuvQ_Kj64Jw3lqVsj8HIZt3_h4SMQFynTLIoCU_wWsegifh-FKep7TyDDxmHkZoPlm_dkboxYQh1THw13JSdiQUGs1XXRSGjhLl0USYfZ6af_BtqvtQ/s640/sugar-factory-West-Indies.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early West-Indian sugar mill -- old-world crop, new world resources, African slave labor (<a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Sugar-Masters-in-a-New-World.html#">Smithsonian</a>, no artist named)</td></tr></tbody></table>The same questions of cuisine and agriculture concern writers who look at the introduction of old world foods into Mexico and other parts of the Spanish new world. Dunmire's <i>Gardens of New Spain </i> provides detailed documentation of each conquest, exploration, or colonizing move, and the plants that were introduced. He includes complete lists and descriptions of the transported plants, and mentions imported livestock and how the Spaniards introduced them to New Spain.</div><br />Rather than representing an interest in the new or the exotic, plants and animals that were brought to the Americas often represented European colonists' effort to preserve their former food ways; for example, the introduction of pigs, fruit trees, or wheat. Some introductions were motivated by desire to produce exports for the European market, like sugarcane.<br /><br />A few old world plants like bananas and watermelons were immediately popular with the native population. Their cultivation resembled already existing species (watermelons can be cultivated in the same way as new world squashes). So they spread seamlessly, eventually seeming to be native to the Americas, Dunmire points out. Other writers, Nabhan, especially, stress how the remarkable variety of plant species in the Americas, and biodiversity at all levels down to individual farms and fields, was negatively disrupted by the introduction of European plants and growing methods.<br /><br />European colonists actually spread some of the foods of Mexico and South America into North America, Dunmire shows. For example, Spanish settlers (along with many Indian and mestizo family members or employees) pushed quickly into New Mexico, later to California and Texas. These colonists not only brought with them European animals and plants but also such Mexican foods as chiles. Potato cultivation on the east coast of North America was introduced by Europeans as well.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJsHBqwNe-AOTf6gfx8UqFCY6WwYk3S_pzG8Kl4vch2iG7RIh-sqOm6Ull9YrmAukkkfN1CjhYhfKSwsfhdVpNs9dUBmijGwPGbav6H2_svmPOcsvdG6h5zWopLZKuNcTDFxLAGFO0Ah9n/s1600/rivera-maize-festival-1924.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJsHBqwNe-AOTf6gfx8UqFCY6WwYk3S_pzG8Kl4vch2iG7RIh-sqOm6Ull9YrmAukkkfN1CjhYhfKSwsfhdVpNs9dUBmijGwPGbav6H2_svmPOcsvdG6h5zWopLZKuNcTDFxLAGFO0Ah9n/s640/rivera-maize-festival-1924.jpg" width="364" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Diego Rivera, "The Maize Festival" (Wiki Paintings)</td></tr></tbody></table>Books books books! An important work on the relationship of new and old world food is Crosby's <i>The Columbian Exchange</i>, first published in 1973, which I mentioned above. Many very specific books cover parts of the topic: just on the potato, for example, one can read <i>The History and Social Influence of the Potato</i> by Redcliffe N. Salaman; <i>Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent</i> by John Reader;  <i>Potato: A Global History </i>by Andrew F Smith; and <i>The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World</i> by Larry Zuckerman. PLUS books about the Irish potato famine and other potato topics. Not to mention incidental information in huge numbers of cookbooks, many of which are dedicated to just potato recipes and lore. Similarly for chile peppers, chocolate, and tomatoes -- you can read about, say, the tomato's history in America or in Italy or else Barry Estabrook's political story of just our time,<i> Tomatoland.</i> I could go on and on.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipK2buADilOLoFOwwUJTfuebh4I9HdG6ZYvkdf3wTzPnNfFq_7k0wYzMOcROpMfJgvS7oVAfP37MKedufS-DuO8XShgPCv6uFaxEyXzRyQBNJwGGgzANoZ-evx7r3a94Mrj8XYsmkIYIfO/s1600/Chocolate_girl-liotard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipK2buADilOLoFOwwUJTfuebh4I9HdG6ZYvkdf3wTzPnNfFq_7k0wYzMOcROpMfJgvS7oVAfP37MKedufS-DuO8XShgPCv6uFaxEyXzRyQBNJwGGgzANoZ-evx7r3a94Mrj8XYsmkIYIfO/s640/Chocolate_girl-liotard.jpg" width="379" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jean-Étienne Liotard, "The Chocolate Girl," 1745<br />One more artist's illustration of new-world food's success in Europe.</td></tr></tbody></table><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZn1aLnB0XT5I2VkvrAD4L7h69cb1ujLSRtEe7QQUkWc-JRQSGGEEYbpnk5FGzuz_VLxq9WD9g3ZLwyg4VheERVSRhrjYJ8plGpIdq60i2dyVlJRor1ac7F8L_fAEbC2tOCizYEJTMw2my/s1600/herbal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZn1aLnB0XT5I2VkvrAD4L7h69cb1ujLSRtEe7QQUkWc-JRQSGGEEYbpnk5FGzuz_VLxq9WD9g3ZLwyg4VheERVSRhrjYJ8plGpIdq60i2dyVlJRor1ac7F8L_fAEbC2tOCizYEJTMw2my/s320/herbal.jpg" width="198" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">17th Century Herbal<br /><div><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Finally, an early group of interesting sources of information on food plants, which I often hear about in secondary sources, is Renaissance herbals, early cookbooks, and early books on medicinal plants. These were written before the current distinction between foods and drugs became firm, so the food and medicine could be handled as a single topic, but their combined interest in botany, agriculture, and cooking vastly predates the books I'm discussing.<br /><br />

Agriculture and cuisine: different subjects or the same?

Hendrick Danckerts: "Royal Gardener John Rose Presenting a Pineapple to King Charles II," 1675 (Wikimedia)I've been reading about the introduction of European and Asian food plants and many domestic animal species to the Spanish colonies of the new world, and about the introduction of new world plan…

Baca selengkapnya »

Who's Rational?

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJdGWfXetWOHXEToIi53gHPc9xFjGlhDfQ7bH9wY7yIhTL508a2RpURtkbZww-PbGTbpfCO3NjXd50CnnwmL5-EW8CUYET4CUH4fs2rEJj18xDMH_LGKposFEkgVqaol4YwNYD4CTDW37W/s1600/moss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJdGWfXetWOHXEToIi53gHPc9xFjGlhDfQ7bH9wY7yIhTL508a2RpURtkbZww-PbGTbpfCO3NjXd50CnnwmL5-EW8CUYET4CUH4fs2rEJj18xDMH_LGKposFEkgVqaol4YwNYD4CTDW37W/s320/moss.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><i>Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us</i> by Michael Moss provides an overwhelming insight: big food companies know much more about how humans choose food than anyone else (including academics). If any people still think that humans "intuitively" or "instinctively" choose to eat the foods that their bodies actually "need" -- they should read<i> Salt Sugar Fat</i>! Potato chips and soda aren't nature's most perfect foods, but they are carefully designed with the purpose of meeting a human's strongest cravings for (yes) salt, fat, and sugar. So are lots of other processed foods. Broccoli, we just aren't that into you. Our instincts stink. It's a good read with lots of data.<br /><br />I was thinking about several other books with coordinating insights about the issue of how humans choose what to eat, and how unlikely it is that our instinctive choices can help us achieve healthy lives, desirable body weight, and avoidance of nutritional maladies like diabetes. Also how hard it is to achieve these ends through rational self-control. Or government intervention. Or medical treatment.<br /><br />First, I thought about a book that's really not about food at all: <i>Thinking, Fast and Slow</i> by Daniel Kahneman. Decision making in the many humans the author has observed is far from the calm rational process that many people believe in -- especially diet prescribers! The last thing you heard, a major event that impressed you, or someone who was manipulating you have a much higher impact on your conclusions than you would prefer to believe. Overlay this with the evidence of direct manipulation of your love of certain flavors in <i>Salt Sugar Fat</i>. OOPS.<br /><br />Next, a very frequently quoted book: <i>Mindless Eating</i> by Brian Wansink PhD. As I read it a few years ago, I constantly thought about how the food industry had already learned what Wansink's research revealed. They kept their insights mainly secret and used their knowledge to make people eat more. In contrast Wansink presented his research studies as a set of insights that could help one create a strategy to eat less. Yes, we suck up more calories if there's a huge bowl of M&Ms than if there's a smaller one. We'll eat much more from a self-refilling bowl of soup because our eyes are fooling us. If someone takes away the piles of bones, people will eat more chicken wings because they lose track of what they are doing. Wansink's experiments are cited (often out of context) frequently, but reading the book really shows you how little control you have even when you think you're paying attention.<br /><br />The book <i>Why Some Like it Hot</i> by Gary Paul Nabhan is about evolution (though not going all the way back to our prehistoric ancestors and not particularly applicable to most urban westerners). He discusses traditional foods in some relatively isolated areas where the native people over time adapted to the available food supplies, and he describes how a change, usually a forced change, to a western and modern diet has harmed them, especially by causing obesity and diabetes. Among others, he explores the foods of the eastern Mediterranean island of Crete, Native American foods in parts of the southwestern US, and native foods of Hawaii. He describes some efforts where people have reintroduced foods of their recent ancestors. His research theme: "how food reflects the interaction between biological and cultural diversity." (p. 2)<br /><br /><i>The Omnivore's Dilemma</i> by Michael Pollan tackles similar themes from a different angle. His exploration of what the term "organic" has meant at various times offers an alternative view of what people think they are doing when they think they are rational.<br /><br />Science applied to nutrition is not new. <i>Perfection Salad</i> by Laura Shapiro describes the well-meaning but often misguided efforts of the late 19th and early 20th century women to create the new discipline that they titled "home economics." Shapiro illustrates how their efforts paved the way for mass-produced and highly processed foods to be accepted into the American diet, and how the longest-lasting achievement was pathetic "home-ec" classes that may recently have at last disappeared from junior high schools. (I sure remember Miss Gordon, our home-ec teacher!) These well-meaning advocates of scientific nutrition 100 years ago or so also tried to change lower class eating habits in American cities, especially among the very poor and immigrant communities, but people preferred to eat what they liked, not what someone told them was good for them. One amusing thing: how the same type of reasoning is going on now, and probably has never stopped since the era covered by the book.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHAQAUDccpo5LjqHtQ4Pf6RtzYfK0iB54gKrlVFmLVq5rE46dyZet8LOUNI9NRZL4caGy6ZErmrg1ei4rREVDm3dGKBNRJ5xAngoi4Uyvz54sBaIs4wWgYmeJeBQ60TFb0WYxymIjUVjDL/s1600/books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHAQAUDccpo5LjqHtQ4Pf6RtzYfK0iB54gKrlVFmLVq5rE46dyZet8LOUNI9NRZL4caGy6ZErmrg1ei4rREVDm3dGKBNRJ5xAngoi4Uyvz54sBaIs4wWgYmeJeBQ60TFb0WYxymIjUVjDL/s320/books.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>When I read libertarian arguments about the freedom to choose whether to drink a 32 ounce soda or not, I wonder about the rationality of the writer. When I read about people who think they are on a "paleolithic" diet because their food choices become so rational and evolutionarily sensible, I suspect that they don't know about actual food history. Same for the fad for "intuitive eating" and a number of other claims about how our bodies can guide us to health. (<i>Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism</i> by Sarah Conly as reviewed <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/mar/07/its-your-own-good/?pagination=false">here</a> sounds as if it has a lot of relevant material, but I haven't read it yet.)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />

Who's Rational?

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss provides an overwhelming insight: big food companies know much more about how humans choose food than anyone else (including academics). If any people still think that humans "intuitively" or "instinctively" choose to eat the foods that t…

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Tequila!

I am reading <i>Tequila! A Natural and Cultural History</i> by Ana G. Valenzuela-Zapata and Gary Paul Nabhan. Science and poetic description combine beautifully as the author describes the taxonomy of the agave plant used in the beverage, its long history beginning in prehistoric Mexico, and the lives and traditions of the Mexican agricultural workers who plant, cultivate, and harvest the agave crop. Valenzuela-Zapata describes their hard physical labor and the taxing heat and aridity of the fields, the simple meals they cook and eat while working, and their "quixotic" oral tradition.<br /><br />"Mescaleros are forever spinning yarns about mescal -- the plant and the spirit -- while working in fields or resting in the nearby shade, and while jiving on the street corner or drinking in the cantina on the village plaza," writes the author. "They keep up their running commentary while bolting for cover during a sudden downpour, or cursing the sun as it bakes the plants they have tended for seasons." (p. 31)<br /><br />The labor continues in the distilleries where huge harvested "pinas" are roasted and their liquid fermented, possibly with sugar, into a variety of tequilas. The lore continues, backward and forward in time, in many traditions of eating and drinking the fruit of this very widespread plant.<br /><br />Two images kept recurring in  my mind. One was of a worker taking care of huge agave plants at Lotus Land, an eccentric botanical garden in Santa Barbara that I visited in 2003; you can see the large pine-cone-like agave bulb similar to that used to make tequila:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMi40OfqYJ46Ub_Pb6k0yU-F89G0zce3PwcvF_FV1Ra7h-T4Fko5f8NJsbsRAqjtAfsXyc6RW4SKX7lxMubxWmFTJD0D93mLmBU3fUZhByjJDKfOdgnKv9kXHzzdN4FZlDv5fTXhGF-DU_/s1600/114_1403.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMi40OfqYJ46Ub_Pb6k0yU-F89G0zce3PwcvF_FV1Ra7h-T4Fko5f8NJsbsRAqjtAfsXyc6RW4SKX7lxMubxWmFTJD0D93mLmBU3fUZhByjJDKfOdgnKv9kXHzzdN4FZlDv5fTXhGF-DU_/s400/114_1403.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />The second image is of Mayahuel, Aztec goddess of agave, mentioned at various points in the book:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhUwFnllBjcnhBYZnvPy8d-hi-w_SWnLLNdXbIjVChCIgDLJCFPvfwQ8K3DiyxbZ1HXG_y7Y53wnuH3eNF16c8NwN8YkLuDP_uA9pZNfDlZfboRY8jWFMack4n7fCL1yOdQ_MfHrO_qMUu/s1600/mayahuel-goddess.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="530" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhUwFnllBjcnhBYZnvPy8d-hi-w_SWnLLNdXbIjVChCIgDLJCFPvfwQ8K3DiyxbZ1HXG_y7Y53wnuH3eNF16c8NwN8YkLuDP_uA9pZNfDlZfboRY8jWFMack4n7fCL1yOdQ_MfHrO_qMUu/s640/mayahuel-goddess.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />I'm looking forward to a lively discussion of the book in my culinary book club next week.

Tequila!

I am reading Tequila! A Natural and Cultural History by Ana G. Valenzuela-Zapata and Gary Paul Nabhan. Science and poetic description combine beautifully as the author describes the taxonomy of the agave plant used in the beverage, its long history beginning in prehistoric Mexico, and the lives and …

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