Desert Nature

The Nature of Desert Nature,
published 2020.

The Nature of Desert Nature by Gary Paul Nabhan is a collection of essays and other writings about the plant and animal life, the geology, the beauty, the religious inspiration, and the poetry of deserts. The subtitle, "A Deep History of Everything that Sticks, Stinks, Stings, Sings, Swings, Springs, or Clings in Arid Landscapes" indicates the variety of information included in the many writings. Understanding the nature of deserts is important, Nabhan writes, because:

"The ongoing discussion about deserts... has generated and refined a certain set of questions that may be more pertinent to our own survival today more than ever before. That is because of the degree to which global climate change is already forcing an ever-larger proportion of the world’s human inhabitants to deal with ever more hot, dry, and sparsely vegetated landscapes. These recently desertified, or biologically impoverished landscapes—which often lack the integrity and diversity found in ancient deserts—are becoming all too common on every one of the major continents." (p. 9). 

In order to clarify the nature of deserts, Nabhan has selected a wide variety of viewpoints and specialties. Some authors present the overwhelming impressions, both mental and spiritual, of experiencing life in the desert, whether they are describing a camping trip or a life lived in a monastery in a desert climate. Several authors are particularly aware of the cruel deaths that have taken place as migrants trying to enter the US are destroyed by the harsh desert heat, cold, and lack of water. The book includes scientific discussions by researchers who have spent their entire careers in the study of desert plants and animals, especially in understanding how all the various forms of life in the desert work together to survive extreme conditions. Each author has a unique view of deserts.

Most of the experiences presented in The Nature of Desert Nature took place in the Sonora Desert, which extends on both sides of the US-Mexican border. Tucson, Arizona, is in the most northern part of the Sonora Desert, including Saguaro National Park and other nature preservation areas. I've been to this desert, and I would love to return, so I especially enjoyed learning about the flowers, cactus, symbiotic insects and animals, and water resources of this desert. In fact, I liked all the chapters, but I can't go into detail about them.

I will just concentrate on the last chapter by Paul Mirocha titled "Staring at the Walls: Views of the Desert in Southern Arizona Public Art." The text is illustrated with a collection of photos of murals from Tucson and in Ajo, Arizona. These impressive paintings reflect many different views of the desert and the people who live there. "Humans all over the world have been making petroglyphs and pictographs for at least thirty thousand years (probably longer)," Mirocha writes, and "Public art is free and visible to everyone. It’s democratic and gains its creative power from being multicultural. By its existence and widespread acclaim, public art, in a sense, has been voted on." (p. 176-177)

Here are a few of the illustrations. If you love murals, you will love this chapter, which makes many connections between the artists, the cities, and the desert scenes and myths that they have painted.

Rock Martinez and Cristina Perez, Goddess of Agave, Tucson, Arizona (p. 159).

About this mural Mirocha says: "The agave woman on the walls of Tucson’s Benjamin Supply building is the Mexican agave goddess, Mayahuel, well-known even in these northern parts. She is one of several mother and fertility goddesses in Aztec spirituality, a personification of beauty, nourishment, and fruitfulness. She is also the artist’s girlfriend. The image is riveting, hot and spicy as heck."(p. 183). 

Michael Chiago, Untitled mural, Ajo, Arizona (p. 170).

This mural seems to me to capture an entirely different view of the desert. I like the turtle and many plants growing at the foot of the saguaro cactuses, the people doing something (I don't know what), and the birds in the sky. I do not understand the maze at the right, and would love to know what it means. The author writes:

"O’odham artist Michael Chiago’s work, hidden behind the Curley School in Ajo. The landscape is painted carefully, like a portrait of a well-known friend. O’odham people are shown in a landscape carefully observed, with everything in its place. There are the little bursage bushes, palo verdes, and saguaros. The vast emptiness of the landscape is saturated with both knowledge and love. The sense of being at home, safe, in a familiar place is palpable." (p. 182) 

Joe Pagac, Roadrunner Cycling, Tucson, Arizona (p. 167). 

Finally -- my favorite of all the murals: a roadrunner on a bicycle, with a snake too. I love the birds that live in the Sonora Desert, and the roadrunner is my favorite of all! I also like what Mirocha says about the desert creatures in these murals:

"Such mural art could be an urban scene anywhere, couldn’t it? Not likely—there’s only one place where people recognize a Gila monster, a jackalope, or a javelina. And where else do they know how to pronounce saguaro, ocotillo, or Gila? That place is the Sonoran Desert. There’s a desert on the edge of town, and it wants to seep quietly into your mind, to remind you where you are" (p. 175). 

A roadrunner that I saw in Arizona a few years ago.

Petroglyphs by the Hohokum Indians, Saguaro National Park, Tucson, Arizona, 2009. 

 It's hard to capture the charm and fascination that I find in this very diverse collection of writings. It really makes me want to return to the desert for birdwatching, enjoying the scenery, and more. 

This review © 2021 by mae sander.

A Fascinating Painting

"Pepper-Pot: A Scene in the Philadelphia Market," is a painting by John Lewis Krimmel (1786 – 1821). Krimmel was born in Germany, and immigrated to Philadelphia, where he painted this work in around 1811. "In the 1790s Philadelphia became a refuge for Afro-Caribbeans fleeing war in Haiti. Cooking inexpensive local foods with Caribbean spices, Haitian immigrants helped create a unique Philadelphia cuisine. This included pepper-pot, a thick, spicy soup made of vegetables and tripe, ox-feet, or other cheap meats, sold by street vendors for a few pennies." (source)

I learned of this painting in the book Chasing Chiles: Hot Spots along the Pepper Trail by Kurt Michael Friese, Kraig Kraft, and Gary Paul Nabhan, in their chapter on the peppers grown in rural Maryland and nearby locales. They trace these peppers to Afro-Caribbean slaves who were brought to the area in the eighteenth century, linking a preparation called picalilli to the Caribbean peppers called pilipili. In this painting, and in the pepper-pot dish depicted, they find a combination of history, language, food ways and culture --

"Pilipili, it turns out, is the name for red peppers in Swahili, Zulu, and Lingala dialects from sub-Saharan Africa, but it is entomologically related to berebere, fulful, and filfil. Those terms were first used for black pepper in North Africa and the Middle East, and later applied to red peppers or chiles. ... The name might have arrived in Maryland with West African slaves or, more likely, with their descendants .... 

"The slaves brought up from the Caribbean could have also carried along in their heads a recipe for a spicy fish, pork, or chicken dish historically called pepper pot.... still occasionally prepared in the metro Philadelphia area just to the north of rural Maryland.... Pepper pot is still served in the Caribbean made with the locally available meats of chicken and pork. These dishes seem to be a derivative of the West African dish known as callaloo, a spicy vegetable stew." (Chasing Chiles, pp. 155-156)

The existence of this very interesting painting is one of many things I learned while reading Chasing Chiles, which was published in 2011. The three authors spent a year exploring the regions where a number of very specific chile peppers are grown, searching for evidence of how farmers and local users of chile peppers are adapting to a variety of changes in conditions for growing these rather sensitive crops. Increased or decreased rainfall, violent storms and hurricanes, unexplained pests and plant diseases, advances in industrial agriculture and seed production, and changing demand for their products all affected these small-scale agriculturalists. The book is full of details about various chiles and their history and use, including a few recipes.

American Indian Cookbooks

New Mexico and Arizona have several local cuisines of note, including traditional Native American cuisines, the cooking of early Spanish settlers and ranchers, local versions of Mexican foods, and the cooking of famous restaurants in well-known tourist towns like Albuquerque and Santa Fe. I have several cookbooks and food books reflecting these cuisines. In this post, I will talk about some books and articles that relate to Native American foods and cooking.

Two books from my cookbook collection.

Native American cooking in the Southwest today combines several traditions. The book Native Harvests describes how to cook with little-known herbs, vegetables, and game that were familiar to early native peoples, as well as recipes that are popular now with Indians throughout the country.

Navajo frybread may be the best-known Indian food preparation. The Manataka Indian Council website gives at least 10 recipes for frybread from a number of tribes, using either baking powder or yeast. The use of flour, sugar, and lard or other cooking fat (all unknown before European arrival in the Americas) suggests that the inventors of this dish were making use of the rather poor cooking materials that were provided to reservation Indians as they were deprived of many of their native food traditions.

An article in Smithsonian Magazine (2008) summarized the history of frybread thus:

"Navajo frybread originated 144 years ago, when the United States forced Indians living in Arizona to make the 300-mile journey known as the 'Long Walk' and relocate to New Mexico, onto land that couldn't easily support their traditional staples of vegetables and beans. To prevent the indigenous populations from starving, the government gave them canned goods as well as white flour, processed sugar and lard—the makings of frybread."

The Smithsonian article continues with a discussion of the very complex views that Indian people have about frybread. Controversies abound: "frybread links generation with generation and also connects the present to the painful narrative of Native American history."

Many Southwest Indians, Navajos and others, simply enjoy eating frybread. Some view frybread as a delicious element of their mothers' heritage cooking. Some see frybread as a dangerous and highly caloric contributor to diabetes, obesity, and other health problems among their people. Some activists revere frybread "as a symbol of Native pride and unity."

Here are two pages from my cookbooks with the recipes for frybread:

From Indian Recipes, compiled by United Tribes
Educational Technical Center, Bismarck, ND, 1079

From Native Harvests by Barrie Kavasch, 1979.

Two books that have much more information about Indian and Southwest foods.

Why Some Like it Hot by Gary Paul Nabhan describes the co-evolution of native people and the plants in their environment. He documents the harm that's been done by depriving deeply-rooted agricultural people or hunter-gatherers of the foods that their ancestors were accustomed to. This is a much more nuanced analysis than the discussions of frybread. 

Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky offers descriptions of foods from the Southwest and many other regions based on a WPA oral history project in the 1930s. Both of these books provide interesting insight into the history of foods of the Southwest.

Cookbook Wednesday is inspired by
Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations.

Next week: more Southwest cookbooks from my cookbook collection.

"Cumin, Camels, and Caravans": A Review

Gary Paul Nabhan writes very complex books. His latest, Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey, may be even more complex than the earlier ones I've read. However, I'm finding it very much worth the effort.

Family, identity, travel, political history, cuisine, sensory experience of spices, roles of many ethnic groups, and globalization -- Nabhan covers all these topics in every chapter.

Each chapter begins with a narrative about travel, history, and spice trade. By visiting many locations where ancient spice routes once existed and meeting local contacts, Naban pursued a search for his own identity. His family descended from the ancient Nabateans, a clan that originated in Yemen and now has members worldwide. In each chapter, he searches out other members of his clan when he can, in souks, in run-down neighborhoods, or wherever his guides would take him.

When he finds distant cousins, his interactions are interesting. When he can't find any distant relatives, it's often for a good reason. For example, the possible Nabhan kin he had identified in Tajikistan turned out to be arms dealers working on the Afghan border: not very safe for an American like Nabhan to meet (Kindle location 2929). Despite his affinity for his clan, he's actually a second or third-generation Lebanese American professor, agriculture researcher, and conservationist, and his identity very much reflects these activities and his life in the American Southwest.

As Nabhan visits and follows the spice routes, he presents their history in chronological order. Each chapter advances the historic record of trade and interaction of various ethnic people. Fascinating: as early as ancient Egyptian times, groups who engaged in long-distance trade transformed from rooted agriculturalists to long-distance travelers. Their religions changed, maybe, from beliefs rooted in a locale to belief in more universal deities; especially those of Jews and later Arabs. And skillful spice dealers over time learned to tell tales to make their products more appealing. Nabhan explores many obscure locations in China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere.

Nabhan's consciousness of Jewish role in spice trade especially interested me, for example his references to early Jewish caravan traders in the Middle East, Europe, and China; to medieval travelers like Benjamin of Tudela at the end of the twelfth century; and to the secret Jews after 1492, especially enormously wealthy business woman Dona Gracia Nasi during the sixteenth century. A search for secret Jews descended from Spanish colonialists in the Southwestern US is another line of inquiry in the book.

Following the historic and travel narratives, every chapter includes one or more information boxes about a single spice. Nabhan includes a description of how the spice looks, how it tastes, where it originated, how it spread to various parts of the world, how it grows, and its uses. And spices have so many uses including, obviously, to flavor foods, but also to cure or prevent illness, to add to incense, and to be used in perfume, hair products, or body oil. To illustrate the level of detail: at the end of Chapter 8, "The Crumbling of Convivencia and the Rise of Transnational Guilds," there's a box titled "Coriander - Cilantro" which describes the flavor of coriander leaves as having:

"a citruslike aroma complemented by notes of sage and freshly cut grass. Their pyrazine-rich flavors are warm and somewhat nutty, with floral undertones that have been likened to lemon or orange blossoms. Although the flat parsleylike leaves of the coriander plant are known as cilantro in much of the world today, they have an entirely different flavor, which some people, perhaps by genetic disposition, find agreeable and others repugnant." 

Nabhan continues with the history of coriander, which was first mentioned as "a medical plant in an Egyptian papyrus dating from 2500 to 1550 BCE." He discusses the words used for coriander in various language, and what these words tell us. And concludes by mentioning that "Today, coriander seeds are essential ingredients in Indian curries and garma masala, Yemeni zhoug, Ethiopian berbere, Moroccan ras el hanout, and baharat mixes throughout the Arab world." So much information about just one of the 25 spices he describes in these text boxes! (Kindle location 4076 to 4106)

After the spice descriptions, at the end of every chapter is a recipe chosen for its relation to the themes of history and globalized spice in cuisine. The recipe at the end of the first chapter is particularly a tour de force. This lamb and garbanzo bean stew, he says, "may have emerged at different times in multiple places, but it clearly spread with Arab and Persian influence as far east as Mongolia, and with Jewish and Arab-Berber influence as far west as the Hispanic communities of Mexico."  Nabhan found nearly identical versions of this recipe in two incredibly separated places. The first version he cites was collected in 1939 in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, and elaborated by Paula Wolfert in connection with Moroccan cuisine. The second version he cites was included in a set of medical dietary recipes written down in China by Hu Szu-hui in the early 1300s. Nabhan's introductory chapter presents a number of reasons why the same recipe in two seemingly unrelated times/places was not a coincidence, but a result of the worldwide spice trade that he's exploring. (Kindle location 473)

To summarize my experience: I had to read Nabhan's book Why Some Like it Hot twice to figure out what it was about as I wrote here. I did that with this book too.

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 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.

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.

What I've been reading

Books that cover the topics of agriculture and its effect on food ways include these: Chilies to Chocolate: Food the Americas Gave the World, a collection of essays edited by Foster and Cordell; The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred Crosby; and Gardens of New Spain: How Mediterranean Plants and foods changed America by William Dunmire.

More of what I've been reading

In the epilogue to Chilies to Chocolate 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."

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.

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: America's First Cuisines and The True History of Chocolate.

I reviewed this book here.

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. 

An important element of several essays in Chilies to Chocolate 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, new 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.

Van Gogh "The Potato Eaters"
Native American food that became a European staple

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.

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.

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! (Chilies to Chocolate p. 35 and p. 4)

Early West-Indian sugar mill -- old-world crop, new world resources, African slave labor (Smithsonian, no artist named)

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 Gardens of New Spain 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.

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.

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.

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.

Diego Rivera, "The Maize Festival" (Wiki Paintings)

Books books books! An important work on the relationship of new and old world food is Crosby's The Columbian Exchange, 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 The History and Social Influence of the Potato by Redcliffe N. Salaman; Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent by John Reader;  Potato: A Global History by Andrew F Smith; and The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World 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, Tomatoland. I could go on and on.

Jean-Étienne Liotard, "The Chocolate Girl," 1745
One more artist's illustration of new-world food's success in Europe.

17th Century Herbal

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.

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 their bodies actually "need" -- they should read Salt Sugar Fat! 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.

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.

First, I thought about a book that's really not about food at all: Thinking, Fast and Slow 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 Salt Sugar Fat. OOPS.

Next, a very frequently quoted book: Mindless Eating 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.

The book Why Some Like it Hot 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)

The Omnivore's Dilemma 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.

Science applied to nutrition is not new. Perfection Salad 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.

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. (Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism by Sarah Conly as reviewed here sounds as if it has a lot of relevant material, but I haven't read it yet.)

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 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.

"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)

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.

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:

The second image is of Mayahuel, Aztec goddess of agave, mentioned at various points in the book:

I'm looking forward to a lively discussion of the book in my culinary book club next week.

Food Bookshelves, Second Part

On this shelf:

• Delos, The World of Cognac
• Parker, Wine Buyer’s Guide
• Larousse, Wines and Vineyards of France
• Parker, Wine Buyer’s Guide
• Wine Album (filled in with wine we drank long ago)
• Johnson, Pocket Encyclopedia of Wine, 2000
• Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
• Water, Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook
• Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant
• Laszlo, Citrus
• Wechsberg, Blue Trout and Black Truffles
• Clark, The Oysters of Locmariaquer
• Corson, The Secret Life of Lobsters
• Bestor, Tsukiji
• Six Haggadahs
• Reichl, The Gourmet Cookbook

On this shelf:

• Lying on its side: Lee, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles
• Standage, A History of the World in Six Glasses
• Wansink, Mindless Eating
• Nabhan, Why Some Like it Hot
• Lee, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (proof copy)
• Pollan, In Defense of Food
• Pollan, The Botany of Desire
• Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
• Jordan & Brady, eds, The World is a Kitchen
• Barnes, The Pedant in the Kitchen
• Simieti & Grammatico, Bitter Almonds
• Ortiz, The Book of Latin American Cooking
• Moosewood Collective, Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home
• Palermo Tourist Bureau, Palermo Provincia: Cooking History and Traditions
• Hsiung, Chinese Regional Cooking
• Roden, A Book of Middle Eastern Food
• Stacey, Consumed: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear Food
• Hobhouse, Seeds of Change
• Sahni, Moghul Microwave
• Jaffrey, World Vegetarian
• Singh, Indian Cookery
• McGee, On Food and Cooking
• Algar, Classical Turkish Cooking
• Yazgan, ed. Specialities of Turkish Cuisine
• Riley, Painters & Food: Renaissance Recipes
• Barry, Old English Recipes, Classic Recipes from English Country Houses

And on this shelf:

• In front: Hannah Montana Valentine from Miriam
• Sideways: Westervelt, Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes
• Argyriou et. al. eds: The 200 years History of Australian Cooking
• Isaacs, Bush Food: Aboriginal Food and Herbal Medicine
• Yood, Feasting: A Celebration of Food in Art
• Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food
• Child, Baking with Julia
• Child, Julia Child & Company
• Child et. al. Mastering the Art of French Cooking
• Child et. al. Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. Two
• Child, From Julia Child’s Kitchen
• Child, My Life in France
• Child, The French Chef Cookbook
• Johnston, The Cuisine of the Sun
• Beck, Simca’s Cuisine
• Oliver, La Cuisine
• Toklas, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook
• Poilane, Guide de l’amateur de Pain
• Clayton, The Breads of France
• Claiborne, The New York Times Cookbook

Book Review: Why Some Like it Hot

Here are my thoughts about Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity by Gary Paul Nabhan. The information in this book is very dense. Though it’s well written, I had to read it twice. The central point of the book is that dietary traditions interact with or cause specific genetic profiles -- he gives a list of the exact genes and their consequences.

Nabhan provides a new analysis and new context to a number of facts that I was already aware of. Here are a few examples from his wide-ranging points:

• Fava beans cause severe anemia in some individuals whose origins are in the Eastern Mediterranean. Nabhan examines the genes that cause this reaction, and explores the results:
• Fava-bean sensitive families are more malaria resistant.
• Bio-active elements in herbs and plants (for example, sage) used in cooking the beans contribute to the positive aspect of this genetically-based sensitivity.
• Diabetes affects large numbers of Native Americans, Hawaiians, and Austrailians when they give up their traditional way of life. Nabhan provides evidence about this:
• Desert plants, a major part of the traditional diet, contain slow-release carbohydrates, which protect the plants themselves in times of drought. Diabetes-prone individuals, in eating these plants, received protection from their weakness until introduction of a western diet.
• The change was much too rapid for any genetic adaptation to respond: “half a century ago, … more Indians were dying each year of accidental snake bite than of diabetes.” (p. 163)
• Herdsmen used cattle for meat and dairy products in northern Europe. In part animal food compensated for the lack of vegetation due to the short growing season. Variations between this and other populations resulted:
• Development of a genetic ability to digest lactose conferred benefits on these groups: their herds became a more effective year-round food supply. (Outside of Europe far fewer people are able to digest lactose.)
• The northern diet lacks greens because of the short growing season. A high level of heart attacks (compared to Mediterranean peoples) may be the result, as greens provide folic acid and other heart protectives.
• Domestic animals polluted the water supply, making it favorable to develop alcoholic beverages. Specific genes make some individuals less susceptible to alcoholism: these genes are more common in descendants of northern Europeans. Because alcohol consumption reduced bacterial disease, the alcohol-resistance genes conferred an advantage to members of this society -- another complicated adaptation of genes interacting with diet.
• Strong, bitter flavors – like chili pepper and some types of greens – are tasted more prounouncedly by some individuals whose tongues have more taste receptors. In contrast, less sensitivity may enable some population groups to use hot seasoning and greens more. Advantages of using hot spice may be to preserve food from bacterial contamination, and to profit from the high vitamin content.

Each chapter is focused on a different group and the interaction of their genetic makeup with the foods in their traditional diet. Obviously, it’s easier to look at groups who were most recently living in the traditional way, like people on islands in the Mediterranean or Southwestern Indian tribes. On the whole, the book makes a really interesting point about how people adapt to their environment.

Reading about food

I've been reading or re-reading several food books. Here are some quotations that I found especially interesting.

“Your stomach can’t count…. and what’s more, we get no help from our attention or our memory. We don’t register how many pieces of candy we had from the communal candy dish at work, and whether we ate 20 French fries or 30….It’s not necessarily that we’re trying to fool ourselves, or that we’re living in blissful, snug-clothing denial. We’re just not designed to accurately keep track of how much we’ve consumed.” (Brian Wansink, Mindless Eating, New York, 2006, p. 36-37)

“Increasing the variety of a food increases how much everyone eats. … what would happen if we gave two people huge bowls of M&M’s to snack on while they watched a video? The only difference between the bowls is that one has 7 colors of M&M’s and the other has 10 colors. Most people know that all M&M’s taste alike… The person with 10 colors will eat 43 more M&M’s (99 versus 56) than his friend with 7 colors.” (Wansink, p. 73-74)

“This reverence for, or indeed, worship of bread is strange to us, being accustomed to a post-industrial diet wich is unique in lacking a basic carbohydrate staple. To the Aztecs, the Maya, the Inca, and the Europeans of the sixteenth century bread was the all-important carbohydrate source the lack of which meant famine and the presence of which, even alone, meant that one was fed and contented…. Modern ignorance of this concept of the basic carbohydrate staple has led to numerous misinterpretations of the sources [about pre-Columbian diet] which would have been impossible had the reader been brought up in a society which depended on a single staff of life.” (Sophie D. Coe, America’s First Cuisines, Austin, 1994, p.9)

“There is compelling evidence in Jeffrey Steingarten's iconoclastic book The Man Who Ate Everything that the more tedious and unvariegated each plateful is, the less likely we are to overeat. But really, who wants to be bored as a way of avoiding obesity?” (Zoe Williams, “Chuck out the spag bol!”, The Guardian online, Tuesday March 20, 2007)

“Yes, genes matter, but diverse diets and exercize patterns matter just as much. And when the positive interaction among all three of these factors is reinforced by strong cultural traditions, our physical health improves, as does our determination to keep it that way…. When the persistence of traditional foods is more widely recognized as a source of both cultural pride and as an aid to physical survival and well-being, I doubt that many Native American communities will abandon what many of them feel to be a true gift from their Creator.” (Gary Paul Nabhan, Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity, Washington, D.C, 2004, p. 185)

The three books treat a variety of food topics: history, eating behavior, detailed interaction of genes and diet, and social contexts. Each one offers a fascinating look into its author's area of expertise. Each one (as well as the Guardian article) stresses the contrast between modern urban life and the life of a variety of people in the past.

Some books I want to read or cook from

• The Pedant in the Kitchen by Julian Barnes
• The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa by Marcus Samuelsson
• Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India by Madhur Jaffrey
• Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon by Claudia Roden
• Havana Salsa: Stories and Recipes by Viviana Carballo
• The World Is a Kitchen: Cooking Your Way Through Culture by Michele Anna Jordan and Susan Brady
• Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink
• Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity by Gary Paul Nabhan