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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
With 21st-century science promising better living through genetic engineering, and myriad diet fads claiming to be the answer to obesity and disease, this exploration of the coevolution of communities and their native foods couldn't be more timely. Ethnobiologist Nabhan (Coming Home to Eat) investigates the intricate web of culture, food and environment to show that even though 99.9% of the genetic makeup of all humans is identical, "each traditional cuisine has evolved to fit the inhabitants of a particular landscape or seascape over the last several millennia." Sardinians are genetically sensitive to fava beans, which can give them anemia but can also protect them from the malaria once epidemic in the region. Navajos are similarly sensitive to sage. In both cases, traditional knowledge allows safe interactions with these powerful medicine/poisons through cooking methods or food combinations. Nabhan questions the wisdom of genetic therapy, which "normalizes" the "bad" genes that can cause sickness but also enhance immunity. Most inspiring in this bioethnic detective story are Cretans, maintaining their health for centuries through traditional living, and Native Americans and Hawaiians, whose communities, devastated by diabetes, find an antidote by returning to their traditional foods, customs and agriculture. Mixing hard science with personal anecdotes, Nabhan convincingly argues that health comes from a genetically appropriate diet inextricably entwined with a healthy land and culture.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
The question posed by the title of Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity (Island Press, $24) doesn't produce a terribly interesting answer. To oversimplify, some (like author Gary Paul Nabhan himself) prefer their food hot because they have taste buds very different from those of other people (like one of Nabhan's hapless old flames -- their romance might have gone further if he had offered her flowers rather than a home-cooked meal.)
With 21st-century science promising better living through genetic engineering, and myriad diet fads claiming to be the answer to obesity and disease, this exploration of the coevolution of communities and their native foods couldn't be more timely. Ethnobiologist Nabhan (Coming Home to Eat) investigates the intricate web of culture, food and environment to show that even though 99.9% of the genetic makeup of all humans is identical, "each traditional cuisine has evolved to fit the inhabitants of a particular landscape or seascape over the last several millennia." Sardinians are genetically sensitive to fava beans, which can give them anemia but can also protect them from the malaria once epidemic in the region. Navajos are similarly sensitive to sage. In both cases, traditional knowledge allows safe interactions with these powerful medicine/poisons through cooking methods or food combinations. Nabhan questions the wisdom of genetic therapy, which "normalizes" the "bad" genes that can cause sickness but also enhance immunity. Most inspiring in this bioethnic detective story are Cretans, maintaining their health for centuries through traditional living, and Native Americans and Hawaiians, whose communities, devastated by diabetes, find an antidote by returning to their traditional foods, customs and agriculture. Mixing hard science with personal anecdotes, Nabhan convincingly argues that health comes from a genetically appropriate diet inextricably entwined with a healthy land and culture.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
The question posed by the title of Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity (Island Press, $24) doesn't produce a terribly interesting answer. To oversimplify, some (like author Gary Paul Nabhan himself) prefer their food hot because they have taste buds very different from those of other people (like one of Nabhan's hapless old flames -- their romance might have gone further if he had offered her flowers rather than a home-cooked meal.)
An ethnobiologist who heads the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, Nabhan addresses fascinating issues: why half the world's population can tolerate lactose while the other half can't, why it's beneficial that teenage boys in Sardinia develop an anemia-like malaise every spring, why some ethnic groups have a predisposition to alcoholism, how genes can mutate due to changes in diet.
To explain how a culture's choice of food affects -- and is affected by -- its genetic characteristics, the author went to the highlands of Crete to sample the supposedly super-healthful Mediterranean diet. There Nabhan, winner of a MacArthur "genius" award in 1990, learned firsthand that many modern people just aren't equipped to digest so much olive oil.
Nabhan writes compassionately about indigenous groups -- like Native Americans and ethnic Hawaiians -- that are threatened by globalization. Our Fast Food Nation is overwhelming these cultures; just as important, it is jeopardizing their health. But for those of us whose genes have been stewing for generations in the American melting pot, what's the point?
One of the points is that we all should be wary of gene therapy, of genetically modified foods, of even the now-common fortification of foods with nutrients like folic acid. Although all of these interventions have real or promised benefits, such tinkering can be risky.
Nabhan's overall message is that while we are what we eat, we are also what our forebears ate, and that some don't like it hot because too much heat can be deadly.
You Are What You Eat
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
See all Editorial Reviews
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