The Secret History of Food
Page 23
69. eyeliner to paint in grill marks: Shaunacy Ferro, “How Fake Is Food Styling?,” Fast Company, September 9, 2014, www.fastcompany.com/3034644/how-fake-is-food-styling.
70. personal lubricants: Delores Custer, Food Styling: The Art of Preparing Food for the Camera (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2010), 130.
71. vegetable shortening: Chapin, “WD-40 and Microwaved Tampons: Secrets of Food Photography Revealed.”
72. shaving cream: Michael Zhang, “Tricks Food Photographers Use to Make Food Look Delicious.” Petapixel, November 20, 2018, https://petapixel.com/2018/11/30/tricks-food-photographers-use-to-make-food-look-delicious.
73. Scotchgard: Perri O. Blumberg, “16 Secrets a Food Stylist Won’t Tell You,” Reader’s Digest, November 18, 2019, www.rd.com/food/fun/food-stylist-secrets/.
74. might actually be: Zhang, “Tricks Food Photographers Use to Make Food Look Delicious.”
75. lit cigarettes: Chapin, “WD-40 and Microwaved Tampons: Secrets of Food Photography Revealed.”
76. wet, microwaved tampons: Ibid.
77. they’re not pretty enough: Suzanne Goldenberg, “Half of All US Food Produce Is Thrown Away, New Research Suggests,” The Guardian, July 13, 2016, www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/13/us-food-waste-ugly-fruit-vegetables-perfect.
78. “abnormal physical characteristics”: Elysha Enos, “Ugly Fruit and Vegetables Can Now Be Sold in Quebec,” CBC, July 26, 2016, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ugly-fruit-vegetables-quebec-produce-1.3695059.
79. American farmers report: Dana Gunders, “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill,” issue paper IP:12–06-B, Natural Resources Defense Council, August 2012, 8.
80. are often sprayed: P. V. Mahajan et al., “Postharvest Treatments of Fresh Produce,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 372, no. 2017 (2014).
81. spraying too much water: C. Claiborne Ray, “Keeping Greens Green,” New York Times, November 14, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/science/does-spraying-greens-with-water-keep-them-fresh.html.
82. in the 1990s: Peter Applebome, “Mist in Grocery’s Produce Section Is Linked to Legionnaires’ Disease,” New York Times, January 11, 1990, www.nytimes.com/1990/01/11/us/mist-in-grocery-s-produce-section-is-linked-to-legionnaires-disease.html.
83. the real purpose: Jake Rossen, “The Real Reason Grocery Stores Spray Water on Their Produce,” Mental Floss, May 22, 2019, www.mentalfloss.com/article/583777/real-reason-grocery-stores-spray-water-on-their-produce.
84. Seventy percent of the French fries: Paul C. Bethke et al., “History and Origin of Russet Burbank (Netted Gem) a Sport of Burbank,” American Journal of Potato Research 91, no. 6 (2014): 594–609.
85. McDonald’s, the largest buyer: Albala, Food, 619–20.
86. wants their fries: Charles R. Brown, “Russet Burbank: No Ordinary Potato,” Hortscience 50, no. 2 (2015): 157–60.
87. “retention of good fry quality”: Ibid.
88. “Down to World War I”: B. W. Higman, How Food Made History (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 71–72.
89. “Store-bought tomatoes”: Rachel Herz, Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food (New York: Norton, 2017), Kindle ed.
90. “are bulldozed”: Martin Teitel, Rain Forest in Your Kitchen (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1992), 62.
91. McDonald’s is also: Food, Inc., directed by Robert Kenner, Magnolia Pictures, 2008.
92. yet 94 percent: “Do You Know This About Holstein Cattle?,” Holstein Association USA, www.holsteinusa.com.
93. bred for its industrial uniformity: “Holstein Breed Characteristics,” Holstein Association USA, www.holsteinusa.com/holstein_breed/breedhistory.html.
94. “To think that”: Michael Symons, A History of Cooks and Cooking (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 339.
95. “We always knew”: Farrelly, Blubberland, 154.
Chapter 9: Forbidden Berries (or Appetite for Distraction)
1. “Healthy, sane humans”: Jason G. Goldman, “On Capsaicin: Why Do We Love to Eat Hot Peppers?,” Scientific American, November 30, 2011.
2. botanically they’re fruits: Maricel E. Presilla, Peppers of the Americas (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2017), 13.
3. Sanskrit pippali: John F. Mariani, The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 388.
4. called capsaicinoids: Shane T. McDonald, David A. Bolliet, and John E. Hayes, eds., Chemesthesis: Chemical Touch in Food and Eating (West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 32–33.
5. also eliminates: Presilla, Peppers of the Americas, 18.
6. nearly 400 percent better odds: Evan C. Fricke et al., “When Condition Trumps Location: Seed Consumption by Fruit‐Eating Birds Removes Pathogens and Predator Attractants,” Ecology Letters 16, no. 8 (2013): 1031–36.
7. can sense capsaicin: Jeff Potter, Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Cooks, and Good Food, 2nd ed. (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2015), 59.
8. the human threshold: Ibid.
9. our trigeminal or chemical sense: McDonald et al., Chemesthesis, 268.
10. the same pain sensor: Michaeleen Doucleff, “Sriracha Chemistry: How Hot Sauces Perk Up Your Food and Your Mood,” NPR, February 24, 2014, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/02/24/281978831/sriracha-chemistry-how-hot-sauces-perk-up-your-food-and-your-mood.
11. trigger a series: McDonald et al., Chemesthesis, 268.
12. “The traditional view”: Personal interview with Gary K. Beauchamp, September 17, 2019.
13. “Anyone who has”: Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste; or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, translated by M.F.K. Fisher (New York: Knopf, 2009).
14. Capsaicin is an effective: Joshua J. Tewksbury et al., “Evolutionary Ecology of Pungency in Wild Chilies,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 33 (2008): 11808–11.
15. no match for elephants: Matthew Mutinda et al., “Detusking Fence-Breaker Elephants as an Approach in Human-Elephant Conflict Mitigation,” PLOS ONE 9, no. 3 (2014): e91749.
16. some farmers in Africa: Shreya Dasgupta, “How to Scare Off the Biggest Pest in the World,” BBC, www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141204-five-ways-to-scare-off-elephants.
17. burn bricks: Rachael Bale, “How Chili Condoms and Firecrackers Can Help Save Elephants,” National Geographic, June 23, 2016, www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/06/elephant-conflict-deterrent-chili-condoms-firecrackers.
18. Ranchers smear capsaicin: Rebecca Rupp, “Peppers: Can You Take the Heat?,” National Geographic, November 3, 2014, www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/hot-hotter-hottest.
19. manufacturers have put it: Alexandra W. Logue, The Psychology of Eating and Drinking, 4th ed. (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2015), 266.
20. some carmakers have started: Bob Weber, “Squirrels Love the New Chevy Traverse, But There’s a Way to Stop Them,” Chicago Tribune, January 3, 2019, www.chicagotribune.com/autos/sc-auto-motormouth-0102-story.html.
21. keep mussels from attaching: Maj-Britt Angarano et al., “Exploration of Structure-Antifouling Relationships of Capsaicin-like Compounds That Inhibit Zebra Mussel (Dreissena Polymorpha) Macrofouling,” Biofouling 23, no. 5 (2007): 295–305.
22. natives of the San Blas Islands: Jean Andrews, Peppers: The Domesticated Capsicums (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 79.
23. numerous attempts: José I. Castro, “Historical Knowledge of Sharks: Ancient Science, Earliest American Encounters, and American Science, Fisheries, and Utilization,” Marine Fisheries Review 75, no. 4 (2013): 1–26.
24. help of Julia Child: “Julia Child: Cooking Up Spy Ops for OSS,” Central Intelligence Agency, March 30, 2020, https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/julia-child-cooking-up-spy-ops-for-oss/.
25. In the 1960s: Stuart Casey-Maslen and Sean Connolly, Police Use of Force Under International Law (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 161.
26. to their breasts: Paul Bloom, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like (New York: Norton, 2010), 28.
27. or to children’s thumbs: Andrews, Peppers, 78.
28. in the 1980s: Ari L. Goldman, “Youths Stealing Subway Tokens by Sucking on Turnstile Slots,” New York Times, February 7, 1983, www.nytimes.com/1983/02/07/nyregion/youths-stealing-subway-tokens-by-sucking-on-turnstile-slots.html.
29. about thirty hours: “History of the General Hourly Minimum Wage in New York State,” New York State Department of Labor, https://labor.ny.gov/stats/minimum_wage.shtm.
30. Repeated attempts to induce: Paul Rozin, Leslie Gruss, and Geoffrey Berk, “Reversal of Innate Aversions: Attempts to Induce a Preference for Chili Peppers in Rats,” Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 93, no. 6 (1979): 1001–14.
31. “One cannot fail”: Ibid.
32. space peppers: C. M. Wade, “China Grows Green Peppers from Outer Space,” UPI, December 25, 2000.
33. if we count a greenhouse: “Record Harvest and Instructive Challenges,” EDEN-ISS, September 13, 2018, https://eden-iss.net/index.php/2018/09/13/record-harvest-and-instructive-challenges.
34. roughly a third: Goldman, “On Capsaicin.”
35. six thousand years after: Brendan Borrell, “What’s So Hot About Chili Peppers?,” Smithsonian, April 2009, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/whats-so-hot-about-chili-peppers-116907465.
36. up to four hundred times: Chris Malloy, “Flavor Tripping on the Pepper So Spicy It’ll Give You Visions of the Cosmos,” Saveur, September 15, 2017, www.saveur.com/carolina-reaper-hottest-chile-pepper.
37. They revered chilies: Ken Albala, Food: A Cultural Culinary History, The Great Courses, transcript book, 2013, 297.
38. used them medicinally: Heather Arndt Anderson, Chillies: A Global History (London: Reaktion, 2016), Apple Books ed.
39. rubbing chilies on the genitals: Albala, Food, 297.
40. holding their children over piles: Rupp, “Peppers.”
41. Other Aztec punishments: “Disciplining Children—Codex Mendoza [Painting],” Children & Youth in History, Item 277, http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/items/show/277.
42. “The majority of adults”: Paul Rozin and Deborah Schiller, “The Nature and Acquisition of a Preference for Chili Pepper by Humans,” Motivation and Emotion 4, no. 1 (1980): 77–101.
43. the latter of which: Earl Carstens et al., “It Hurts So Good: Oral Irritation by Spices and Carbonated Drinks and the Underlying Neural Mechanisms,” Food Quality and Preference 13, no. 7 (2002): 431–43.
44. chilies also happen: Logue, The Psychology of Eating and Drinking, 268.
45. spicy foods tend to be: Anderson, Chillies.
46. they found that the number: Jennifer Billing and Paul W. Sherman, “Antimicrobial Functions of Spices: Why Some Like It Hot,” The Quarterly Review of Biology 73, no. 1 (1998): 3–49.
47. inhibiting around 67 percent: Ibid.
48. compared to 80 percent: Logue, The Psychology of Eating and Drinking, 268.
49. Surprisingly, sour acids: Billing and Sherman, “Antimicrobial Functions of Spices.”
50. has a cooling effect: McDonald et al., Chemesthesis, 228.
51. akutuq: Zona Spray Starks, “What Is Eskimo Ice Cream?,” Smithsonian, July 25, 2016, www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/eskimo-ice-cream-atlas-of-eating-native-cuisine-food-eats-smithsonian-journeys-travel-quarterly-180959431.
52. described by Anthony Bourdain: “10 Questions for Anthony Bourdain,” Time, October 31, 2007, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1680149,00.html.
53. another low-tech way: John D. Speth, “Putrid Meat and Fish in the Eurasian Middle and Upper Paleolithic: Are We Missing a Key Part of Neanderthal and Modern Human Diet?,” PaleoAnthropology, 2017, 44–72.
54. It could also be: Morten L. Kringelbach and Kent C. Berridge, Pleasures of the Brain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 325–27.
55. feel-good chemicals: Bloom, How Pleasure Works, 51–52.
56. “Only hot water”: John Launer, “The Itch,” QJM: An International Journal of Medicine 97, no. 6 (2004): 383–84.
57. a common ingredient: Rachel Herz, Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food (New York: Norton, 2017), Kindle ed.
58. the Aztecs used chilies: Anderson, Chillies: A Global History.
59. “Quæ fuit durum”: W. Gurney Benham, Cassell’s Book of Quotations, rev. ed. (London: Cassell, 1914), 645.
60. “The evolutionary advantages”: Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan, Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food: Taming Our Primal Instincts (New York: Perseus, 2000), 116.
61. research shows a correlation: Laurent Bègue, “Some Like It Hot: Testosterone Predicts Laboratory Eating Behavior of Spicy Food,” Physiology and Behavior 139 (2015): 375–77.
62. personality constructs associated: Nadia K. Byrnes and John E. Hayes, “Personality Factors Predict Spicy Food Liking and Intake,” Food Quality and Preference 28, no. 1 (2013): 213–21.
63. Back in Aztec times: Elizabeth Morán, Sacred Consumption: Food and Ritual in Aztec Art and Culture (University of Texas Press, 2016), 26.
64. “Mardudjara aboriginal boys”: Chip Brown, “Making a Man,” National Geographic Magazine 231, no. 1 (2017): 75–103.
65. the intercollegiate goldfish-swallowing competitions: Laura Clark, “The Great Goldfish Swallowing Craze of 1939 Never Really Ended,” Smithsonian, February 27, 2015, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/great-goldfish-swallowing-craze-1939-180954429.
66. “the seeking of varied”: Marvin Zuckerman, Behavioral Expressions and Biosocial Bases of Sensation Seeking (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 27.
67. This would explain: Talia Mindich, “In Space, ‘Take Your Protein Pills’ and Get Your Sriracha On,” PBS, May 21, 2014, www.pbs.org/newshour/science/astronauts-crave-tabasco.
68. boredom likely plays: “Even Astronauts Get the Blues: Or Why Boredom Drives Us Nuts,” NPR, March 15, 2016, https://www.npr.org/transcripts/470416797.
69. canned biscuits: Charles Perry, “MREs: Meals Really Edible?,” Los Angeles Times, July 1, 1998.
70. Many soldiers found Spam: Carolyn Wyman, SPAM: A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1999), 23.
71. rations included things: Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 141.
72. Today’s MREs: “MRE 39 (2019),” Defense Logistics Agency, www.dla.mil/TroopSupport/Subsistence/Operationalrations/mre.aspx.
73. It’s also why Tabasco sauce: Caitlin Kearney, “Tabasco and the War Against Bland Military Meals,” National Museum of American History Behring Center, April 30, 2015, https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/tabasco-and-war-against-bland-military-meals.
74. jalapeño ketchup: Julian E. Barnes, “Army Orders Up MREs with Kick in the Pesto,” Chicago Tribune, June 16, 2006, www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2006-06-16-0606160092-story.html.
75. benign masochism: Kendra Pierre-Louis, “Mayonnaise Is Disgusting, and Science Agrees,” Popular Science, October 31, 2017, www.popsci.com/mayonnaise-disgust.
76. “initially negative experiences”: Paul Rozin et al., “Glad to be Sad, and Other Examples of Benign Masochism,” Judgment and Decision Making 8, no. 4 (2013): 439–47.
77. “Some teenage girls”: Bloom, How Pleasure Works, xi.
78. “It’s not that we like”: Ibid., 51.
79. “We watch movies”: Burnham and Phelan, Mean Genes, 84.
80. “descended from the humans”: Ibid., 88.
Chapter 10: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
1. “There are known knowns”: “Donald Rumsfeld,” Oxford Essential Quotations, 5th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
2. three hundred years after: Andrew F. Smith, The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery (Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2001), 17.
3. it took the US Supreme Court: Nix v. Hedden, 149
U.S. 304, 1893.
4. this argument was contested: Smith, The Tomato in America, 151.
5. “are, like potatoes”: Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304, 1893.
6. “without cheese is”: Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste; or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, translated by M.F.K. Fisher (New York: Knopf, 2009).
7. tomato dessert recipes: Smith, The Tomato in America, 187–88.