The Secret History of Food

by Matt Siegel

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  * Note that Brillat-Savarin wasn’t exactly svelte himself; however, he reconciled his own weight struggles—according to him—by having nice legs: “although I carry around with me a fairly prominent stomach, I still have well-formed lower legs, and calves as sinewy as the muscles of an Arabian steed.”

  * Note that amniotic fluid is a lot more challenging to collect, for obvious reasons, so its diversity is, perhaps, underreported, meaning that it could taste like cigarettes, too.

  * The concern regarding too pendulant breasts wasn’t so much that they would produce bad milk but that “extremely pendulous (large and flabby) breasts may suffocate the child by covering its mouth and nostrils.” (The parenthetical here comes from the source.)

  * In fact, just the name McDonald’s itself has, rather ironically, become a modern safety signal; research has shown, for example, that children describe milk and carrots as tasting better when they’re served from paper bags with McDonald’s logos, which speaks not only to our materialistic nature but also to an instinctual suspicion of new and unfamiliar food sources.

  * At least, not about pie’s historical importance; he was probably wrong about pie and longevity, and we can only surmise that his ideas led a lot of people to an early death from diseases such as pie-stimulated diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

  * When the English travel writer Thomas Coryat introduced forks to England in 1608 after observing their use in Italy, he was nicknamed “Furcifer” and mocked for being effeminate; ironically, he would later die of dysentery, which might have been prevented by the fork’s widespread adoption. Several decades later, in 1633, John Winthrop, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, is believed to have owned the only fork in America, but forks were slow to take off there as well, largely because clergymen demonized them as sinful, fearing both their resemblance to the devil’s pitchfork and their implication that God’s food was too unclean to touch with fingers.

  * In addition to Lawson’s detailed food menus, he recorded his close observations of Native American culture, select subtopics of which include “Naked Indians,” “Civiliz’d Indians,” “Fleas,” “Indian Wives,” “Indians buy their wives,” “Selling Wives,” “Indian Women handsome,” “Night Rambles,” “Indians not afraid to die,” “Indians not afraid of spirits,” “Drunkenness in Indians,” “Indians make Maps,” “Indian Robbery,” “No hard Workers,” “Indian Men not vigorous,” “Indians learn of the Europeans,” and “Indians Aversion to Christianity.”

  * Burgoo was a sort of stew; frumenty, a porridge; and bawm, an antiquated name for lemon balm.

  * Fittingly, apple pie was McDonald’s first dessert, added to their menu in 1968.

  * Note that colonists did the same thing with muffins, transforming the nooks and crannies of crumpetlike “English” muffins into the blueberry or cranberry muffins we know today, known as “gems” in the 1800s.

  * Pie, obviously, wasn’t the only nutritional factor in this size difference, but it certainly played a role.

  * According to The Atlantic, flower workers in both countries commonly suffer from health problems, including birth defects and miscarriages, owing to the use of pesticides restricted in the United States and Europe.

  * In the 1400s, Europeans called it galine de Turquie (“chicken of Turkey”) after Turkish traders.

  * Similarly, once you make it to the cereal aisle, you’ll find the children’s cereals stocked on the lower shelves and adult cereals stocked on the upper shelves—which not only ensures that brands are seen by their target demographics but also influences consumer choice; studies have shown that customers are statistically more likely to choose Trix over Fruity Pebbles, for example, when the boxes are aligned so that the Trix rabbit (“Tricks”) appears to make eye contact with them, as, instinctually, eye contact tends to foster trust and social connection. Similarly, brand-name cereals are usually on higher shelves than generics because people are lazy and willing to pay more if it means they don’t have to bend down to grab something.

  * This is similar to the “cheerleader effect” among people, so named because a person, say a cheerleader, tends to appear more attractive when part of a group than by herself, as our brains essentially average the sum of the faces (and presumably the other parts).

  * In 2014, Kellogg’s Honey Smacks contained more than 55 percent sugar by weight (15 grams in a 27-gram suggested serving size). The company has since updated the recipe and reduced the ratio to an even 50 percent—but also increased the serving size, so you now actually get even more sugar (18 grams in a 36-gram serving size).

  * Though it is named after him, the modern “graham cracker” is more of an insult to Graham’s legacy than a tribute; created decades after his death and first sold nationally by the National Biscuit Company (now Nabisco), it violates most of his life’s work preaching against the dangers of sugar, refined flour, cinnamon, and commercial bakeries.

  * Someone really ought to look into him as a candidate for Jack the Ripper, the infamous and still unidentified Victorian serial killer best remembered for mutilating London prostitutes in 1888, as there’s reason to believe the killer was a surgeon (at least three of the victims had their organs removed) and, according to the only surviving witness, a foreigner. Kellogg, an American who would have been thirty-six at the time, would certainly have had the means and motive—and perhaps the opportunity—having traveled to London in the 1880s to study surgery.

  * Writing, for example, that “school-girls are often very negligent” in “the necessity of attending promptly to the demands of nature for relief of the bowels and bladder” and that “ladies who desire a sweet breath—and what lady does not—should remember that retained feces are one of the most frequent causes of foul breath. The foul odors which ought to pass out through the bowels find their way into the blood and escape at the lungs.” He then quotes a Scottish physician: “Keep in the fear of the Lord, and your bowels open.”

  * “It is difficult for even the most intrepid medical historian to decipher just what exactly Dr. Kellogg was treating with pelvic massages,” writes Howard Markel, an intrepid medical historian.

  * In 1905, Collier’s magazine refused to print these health claims in the interest of not killing off readers; Post fought back by publishing ads in competing papers accusing them of yellow journalism, blackmail, and journalistic prostitution, but Collier’s successfully sued for libel and Post was forced to pay damages of $50,000 after a ten-day jury trial.

  * Regrettably, this wouldn’t be the last time racism was used to promote breakfast cereal; in the 1960s, Post advertised Sugar Rice Krinkles using a squinty-eyed mascot named “So-Hi the Chinese Boy,” who carted the rice cereal around in a rickshaw.

  * A relative of C
arp, so named for the mustache-like barbs that hang from its mouth.

  * Ginseng.

  * A European flatfish.

  * Baby corn, as the name suggests, is just ordinary corn that’s been harvested early; however, it’s actually harvested before being pollinated, so calling it “unfertilized corn ovaries” might be more accurate, if less appealing.

  * Other notable examples of human interference with natural selection include black-and-white moth populations becoming predominantly black over time to better blend in with industrial soot; modern owls becoming increasingly brown instead of white in response to climate change and decreased snowfall; urban birds developing shorter wingspans to aid them in dodging traffic (after behaviorally adapting to build nests under bridges and highways in lieu of available trees); Atlantic cod becoming smaller and reproducing earlier in response to commercial fishery; and mice developing larger jaws in response to the local dominance and unnaturally large kernel size of corn.

  * Note that a lot of developing countries couldn’t do this, as corn is still the primary source of calories in areas of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.

  * If you’re thinking this story belongs in a comic book, you’re right; it was covered in Real Life Comics in July 1943: “Meanwhile—a slow death inched across America’s southland!”

  * Note that honey can crystallize or become cloudy over time, particularly if it’s kept between 50° and 70°F or comes from floral sources that yield higher glucose ratios, such as alfalfa. However, crystallized honey is still perfectly good to eat—and is sometimes preferred, as in the case of creamed honey—and you can always return it to normal by gradually heating it in a water bath to between 140° and 149°F.

  * Note that erythritol is generally recognized as safe for human consumption by the FDA, and O’Donnell is currently evaluating its use as a human- and pet-safe insecticide.

  * Some scholars believe that sugar of lead played a significant role in the fall of the Roman Empire by causing rampant lead intoxication among the Roman elite. Similarly, the use of lead acetate as a sweetener in Colonial bread making alongside lead equipment in the distillation of Colonial rum and cider may explain some of the strange behaviors described in the Salem witch trials—as behaviors such as violent contortions, hyperirritability, and aggression are all symptomatic of lead poisoning. (Another explanation is ergot, a precursor of LSD that comes from the fungal contamination of rye and can also cause muscle convulsions, hallucinations, and violent fits.)

  * Today, of course, we know that honey is mass-produced by enslaved insects who live in geometrically complex houses and break down the nectar of flowers by chewing it, vomiting it into each other’s mouths, and fanning it with their wings—and that all of this is coordinated by dancing and enforced by guards who chew off the legs of troublemakers (bees who continually drink too much fermented nectar and show up to work drunk, for example), all of which probably sounds more like make-believe than Aristotle’s idea that honey is a liquid that falls from the sky.

  * Other remedies of note include rubbing the head with the womb of a cat warmed in oil with the egg of the gabgu bird to revitalize gray hair; rubbing the teeth with honey and pebbles to strengthen them; and rubbing the skin with honey and bat’s blood to prevent ingrown hairs, particularly ingrown eyelashes.

  * During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong did something similar by rigging jungle beehives with firecrackers, allegedly prompting the US military to fire back with a top-secret program to target enemies with bee-attracting pheromones.

  * Note that rhododendrons aren’t the only source of hallucinogenic honey; some historians say the Mayans laced honey with peyote, morning glory, or magic mushrooms to calm victims prior to sacrifice, while others say that these sort of practices planted the seeds for ritual sacrifice by causing drug-induced mayhem and widespread hallucinogenic madness, not unlike the aforementioned theories of ergot and lead poisoning in Rome and Salem.

  * Wilson also points out that the same beeswax venerated by the Church as a symbol of virginity was simultaneously “used by brothel-keepers to reseal the hymens of prostitutes wishing to offer their clients a virgin experience of an altogether different kind.” Meanwhile, honey itself has been used as both a lubricant and an aphrodisiac.

  * Authorities differ on the etymology of mon chou. Some say it comes from chou à la crème (“cream puff”), while others trace it to the verb choyer (“to pamper”).

  * Vanilla is second in price only to saffron—the dried stigmas of saffron crocus flowers—a kilo of which can sell for as much as $30,000 because harvesting it requires handpicking the stigmas of 150,000 to 200,000 flowers (at three stigmas per flower).

  * Avocado is another, from the Nahuatl ahuacatl (“testicle”).

  * Separately, the word orchid comes from the Greek órχis (also “testicle”), owing to the shape of the tubers in its root structure, so vanilla is sort of a double whammy in terms of sexual innuendo.

  * “French vanilla” refers not to vanilla from French Polynesia (i.e., Tahiti) but rather to the French style of making ice cream with egg yolks, which is what gives authentic French vanilla ice cream its traditional yellow hue. (In lower-quality ice creams, this look is often imitated by adding coloring from caramel, annatto, or turmeric—and sometimes specks of ground uncured vanilla beans, which don’t actually add any flavor but look as though they do and simultaneously allow manufacturers to claim that their ice cream is “made with real vanilla beans.”)

  * Defeated.

  * An inner canister that was kept on ice and hand turned inside a wooden bucket.

  * Others, such as Pabst Blue Ribbon, turned instead to cheese.

  * Pies such as these date back at least to the 1800s and were made mostly when apples were out of season; however, they surged in popularity during the Great Depression, due in large part to the debut of Ritz Crackers in 1934 and the recipe for Ritz Mock Apple Pie printed on the back of the box.

  * Still, Johnson confessed, most people preferred vanilla.

  * Other wartime substitutes included mock fudge made from mashed potatoes.

  * Isn’t it poignant that we still call Christmas a season, by the way?

  * Unless you were wealthy, of course.

  * That’s not counting the ability to order many of these drinks heated to your own perfect temperature.

  * This is not to suggest that clean actually means clean; remember all those agricultural pesticides and fertilizers we said are being added to soil? Well, those chemicals tend to make their way into water systems. And although the EPA does limit the contamination levels in public drinking water to certain maximums, there are a lot of chemicals it doesn’t or can’t regulate, such as pharmaceuticals, and studies have found everything from antidepressants and antibiotics to caffeine and pseudoephedrine in treated tap water, coming largely from human waste and sweat as well as improper disposal methods, such as flushing drugs down toilets.

  * Getting rid of the storefront clerks not only empowered customers to make their own selections but also streamlined the shopping process—not unlike what McDonald’s did—and made it easier for self-service grocery stores to lower their prices, putting mom-and-pop stores out of business.

  * The “stuf” inside Oreos doesn’t actually contain any dairy products, so it can’t legally be called “cream”; in fact, in 2016, two Oreo flavors were recalled because they were manufactured with equipment that was also used to process dairy, causing fears that they could pose a risk to customers with milk allergies.

  * Right now this is done primarily agriculturally, giving us foods such as higher-yield soybeans, bruise-resistant potatoes, apples that resist browning, and herbicide- and pest-resistant corn, but scientists have also edited the genetic structure of animals to create extra-large pigs, faster-growing salmon, hornless cattle, and cows that produce “human” breast milk—all of which could be heading to grocery stores soon.

  * A branch of psychology that deals with t
he study and measurement of sensations in response to physical stimuli, e.g., taste and texture.

  * Although chilies meet the grocery store definition of a spice or vegetable (both culinary terms), botanically they’re fruits—berries, to be specific—named after the Sanskrit pippali (“berry”), which, confusingly, is also the origin of the names of the spices long pepper and black pepper, both of which are of no relation to the chili pepper, which, also confusingly, is interchangeably written as “chilli” or “chile” pepper.