Page 9 - Martin Downs Bulletin - September '22

Martin Downs, Page 9

Book revieW

The Secret History Of Food: almost anyone who has ever Siegel has written
Strange But True Stories lived considered unattainable about food and culture for
delicacies and died without
such publications as The
About The Origins Of tasting.” Atlantic, Fast Company,
It is an interesting point
and The Paris Review.
Everything We Eat most of us never even think He is a former English
about. And by the time you professor who lives with
By Nils A. Shapiro reach that paragraph in this his dog, Waffles. Having
On Page 141 of this month’s selection, author Matt 270-page book, (193 of text now read The Secret
Siegel connects comments by two other writers to make plus 77 of Notes and Index), History of Food, I would
an interesting point: you will already have learned unhesitatingly place him at
“Average Americans and Europeans not only live better many hundreds of surprising, the top of my list of ideal
than more than 99 percent of the human beings who have ever even shocking, facts about a subject that consumes us every dinner companions.
existed, they live better than most of the royalty of history... day of our lives. It is clear that the
gas-station minimarts now sell cabernets and chardonnays Even better, the whole is served up deliciously by a writer author has done a great
‘far superior in quality to the wines once drunk by the kings of with a sense of humor that prompted one reviewer to describe deal of research in the
France.’ Today supermarkets offer at low cost dozens of items this as “a laugh-out-loud funny read.” development of this book. He covers an impressive range of
topics related to this one subject, taking us on a journey that
extends from mankind’s earliest days on this planet to the
present day – and includes both the ways in which humans have
altered the very nature of the foods we eat and the impact that
foods have had on us, physically and psychologically.
As just one example of human intervention, here is an
excerpt from the chapter on corn (originally called teosinte);
some of the text has been omitted for lack of space:
“We’re not even sure what the people who first ate teosinte
actually did with it; for starters, an ear of it contained only five
to twelve kernels compared to the five to twelve hundred on an
ear of corn today, and each of them was only around one-tenth
the weight of a modern kernel. So an entire ear of teosinte
would have been about the size of a cigarette, though probably
shorter. And there wasn’t a central cob, so you couldn’t eat the
whole thing ... You could eat only the tiny kernels, which were
individually wrapped in an almost impenetrable outer casing
... Yet for some reason our ancestors saw potential in this lowly
grass and kept replanting it, choosing only the seeds with the
most attractive traits – say, height, girth, tenderness, and disease
resistance – until it grew into a tall and dependable grain they
could live on. So it was a lot like dating in high school.”
Those of us of a certain age will remember the ubiquitous
chain of Howard Johnson restaurants, 1,000 of which lined
the nation’s highways and dotted big cities during and after
the World War II era, a new location opening every nine days.
They were famous for their giant outdoor signage advertising
28 flavors of ice cream. This book’s chapter, “The Vanilla of
Society,” points out among its many tasty facts that Mr. Johnson
himself once admitted that most people simply preferred vanilla.
Of course, while the author does not claim this as the
reason for the flavor’s overwhelming popularity, he does
point out the following:
“ ... vanilla is one of the few ice cream flavors to be
named after genitalia, thanks to Spanish conquistadors
who ‘discovered’ it in the sixteenth century and called it
vainilla, a Spanish derivative of the Latin vagina, because of
its resemblance when spread open to harvest its seeds (and
probably because they hadn’t seen their wives in a long time).
They then brought the plants back home to Europe and spent
three hundred years trying in vain to pollinate them because
they couldn’t find the rostellum. (Insert clitoris joke here.)”
One of the things we learn in the chapter, “Attack of the
Killer Tomatoes,” is that it took six years of escalating court
battles before the U.S. Supreme Court took the case that led
to a key decision in 1893: “Supreme Court justices read from
various dictionaries and heard testimony from expert witnesses
before ultimately ruling that tomatoes were vegetables because
they ‘are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets,
cauliflower, celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner...and
not, like fruits generally, as dessert.’”
Such other chapter titles as “A History of Swallowing,” “Pie,
Progress, and Plymouth Rock,” “Breakfast of Champions” and
“Honey Laundering” further attest to the variety of topics and
the author’s sense of humor.
One doesn’t often find on a literary menu a tasty smorgasbord
of hearty information, served with a generous helping of sweet
wit. I strongly recommend that you place your order for The
Secret History of Food as soon as possible.

Thursday,
September 22nd

See answer in this paper.