by John McQuaid
154 “Teheran ape-child”: Lucien Malson, Wolf Children and the Problem of Human Nature (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972). Also contains the text of Itard’s “The Wild Boy of Aveyron.”
157 Fame shopwindow: Laudan, Cuisine and Empire, location 295.
159 predictable and reliable: William H. Brock, Justus von Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 216–29.
Chapter 7: Quest for Fire
163 more vivid and pleasurable: McGee, On Food and Cooking, 394–95.
163 obscures these sensations: Bernd Nilius and Giovanni Appendino, “Tasty and healthy TR(i)Ps: The human quest for culinary pungency,” EMBO Reports 12, no. 11 (2011): 1094–101, doi:10.1038/embor.2011.200.
165 bland chilies than to hot ones: David C. Haak, Leslie A. McGinnis, Douglas J. Levey, and Joshua J. Tewksbury, “Why are not all chilies hot? A trade-off limits pungency,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 279 (2011): 2012–17, doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.2091; Joshua J. Tewksbury, Karen M. Reagan, Noelle J. Machnicki, Tomas A. Carlo, David C. Haak, Alejandra Lorena Calderon Penaloza, and Douglas J. Levey, “Evolutionary ecology of pungency in wild chilies,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, no. 33 (2008): 11808–11, doi:10.1073/pnas.0802691105.
167 jalapeño, ancho, serrano, and tabasco peppers: Linda Perry and Kent V. Flannery, “Pre-Columbian use of chili peppers in the valley of Oaxaca, Mexico,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 29 (2007): 11905–9.
167 ancient craze to rival the modern one: Linda Perry, Ruth Dickau, Sonia Zarrillo, Irene Holst, Deborah Pearsall, Dolores R. Piperno, Richard G. Cooke, Kurt Rademaker, Anthony J. Ranere, J. Scott Raymond, Daniel H. Sandweiss, Franz Scaramelli, and James A. Zeidler, “Starch fossils and the domestication and dispersal of chili peppers (Capsicum spp. L.) in the Americas,” Science 315, no. 5814 (2007): 986–88, doi:10.1126/science.1136914.
168 “loaded each year with it”: Christopher Columbus, The Log of Christopher Columbus, trans. Robert H. Fuson (Camden, ME: International Marine Publishing, 1987).
169 the name “calicut” pepper: Jean Andrews, Peppers: The Domesticated Capsicums (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), 5.
169 ports of call around the world: Michael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), 170.
169 wrote a song: Ibid., 172.
170 25 times the size it was fifty years ago: UN Food and Agriculture Organization data.
170 That number has more than doubled: USDA Economic Research Service data.
173 it’s broad and flat: Paul Bosland, interview.
175 chili burn was a form of pain: T. S. Lee, “Physiological gustatory sweating in a warm climate,” Journal of Physiology 124 (1954): 528–42.
176 serve the emperor’s court as eunuchs: Arpad Szallasi and Peter M. Blumberg, “Vanilloid (capsaicin) receptors and mechanisms,” Pharmacological Reviews 51, no. 2 (1999): 159–212; Mary M. Anderson, Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1990), 15–18 and 307–11.
176 “(available at a low price)”: Sigmund Freud, Cocaine Papers, ed. Robert Byck (New York: Plume, 1975), 123.
177 bodies literally overheated: Narender R. Gavvaa, James J. S. Treanor, Andras Garami, Liang Fang, Sekhar Surapaneni, Anna Akrami, Francisco Alvarez, Annette Bake, Mary Darling, Anu Gore, Graham R. Jang, James P. Kesslak, Liyun Ni, Mark H. Norman, Gabrielle Palluconi, Mark J. Rose, Margaret Salfi, Edward Tan, Andrej A. Romanovsky, Christopher Banfield, and Gudarz Davar, “Pharmacological blockade of the vanilloid receptor TRPV1 elicits marked hyperthermia in humans,” Pain 136, nos. 1–2 (2008): 202–10, doi:10.1016/j.pain.2008.01.024.
179 a heat receptor: Arpad Szallasi, “The vanilloid (capsaicin) receptor: Receptor types and species specificity,” General Pharmacology 25 (1994): 223–43.
181 soldiers in the Himalayas: Sudha Ramachandran, “Indian Defense Spices Things Up,” Asia Times Online, July 8, 2009, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KG08Df01.html.
181 precursor to diabetes: Celine E. Riera, Mark O. Huising, Patricia Follett, Mathias Leblanc, Jonathan Halloran, Roger Van Andel, Carlos Daniel de Magalhaes Filho, Carsten Merkwirth, and Andrew Dillin, “TRPV1 pain receptors regulate longevity and metabolism by neuropeptide signaling,” Cell 157, no. 5 (2014): 1023–36, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2014.03.051.
181 but sometimes they die: Peter Holzer, “The pharmacological challenge to tame the transient receptor potential vanilloid-1 (TRPV1) nocisensor,” British Journal of Pharmacology 155, no. 8 (2008): 1145–62, doi:10.1038/bjp.2008.351; Peter Holzer interview, March 2012.
182 raises metabolic rates: Keith Singletary, “Red Pepper: Overview of potential health benefits,” Nutrition Today 46, no. 1 (2011): 33–47.
182 the slaking of thirst: R. Eccles, L. Du-Plessis, Y. Dommels, and J. E. Wilkinson, “Cold pleasure: Why we like ice drinks, ice-lollies and ice cream,” Appetite 71 (2013): 357–60, doi:10.1016/j.appet.2013.09.011.
183 always chose the mild cracker first: 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.
184 was razor-thin: Ibid., 97.
185 the two closely overlap: Siri Leknes and Irene Tracey, “A common neurobiology for pain and pleasure,” Nature Reviews: Neuroscience 9, no. 4 (2008): 314–20, doi:10.1038/nrn2333.
186 weren’t expecting the pain to end: Siri Leknes, Michael Lee, Chantal Berna, Jesper Andersson, and Irene Tracey, “Relief as a reward: Hedonic and neural responses to safety from pain,” PloS One 6, no. 4 (2011): e17870, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017870.
Chapter 8: The Great Bombardment
190 mispronunciation of the word: “Tayto’s Place in World History,” The Independent, May 6, 2006, http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/taytos-place-in-world-history-26383239.html.
190 around the same time: Herr’s company website, http://www.herrs.com; Frito-Lay history on Funding Universe website, http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/frito-lay-company-history/.
191 a sense of tradition and ritual: Laudan, Cuisine and Empire, location 958.
192 potatoes, sugary beverages, and red meat: Dariush Mozaffarian, Tao Hao, Eric B. Rimm, Walter C. Willett, and Frank B. Hu, “Changes in diet and lifestyle and long-term weight gain in women and men,” The New England Journal of Medicine 364, no. 25 (2011): 2392–404, doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1014296.
193 Chilies were often used to flavor it: Ellen Messer, “Potatoes (White),” chapter II. B.3 in Cambridge World History of Food, eds. Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, http://www.cambridge.org/us/books/kiple/potatoes.htm.
194 somebody’s back room, garage, or barn: Dirk Burhans, Crunch!: A History of the Great American Potato Chip (Madison, WI: Terrace Books, 2008), Kindle location 322.
194 powerful rush to the brain’s pleasure centers: Kent C. Berridge, “The debate over dopamine’s role in reward: The case for incentive salience,” Psychopharmacology 191, no. 3 (2007): 391–431, doi:10.1007/s00213-006-0578-x.
195 attention became more focused and acute: Clare E. Turner, Winston D. Byblow, Cathy M. Stinear, and Nicholas R. Gant, “Carbohydrate in the mouth enhances activation of brain circuitry involved in motor performance and sensory perception,” Appetite 80 (2014): 212–19, doi:10.1016/j.appet.2014.05.020.
195 the richer it tastes: Marta Yanina Pepino, Latisha Love-Gregory, Samuel Klein, and Nada A. Abumrad, “The fatty acid translocase gene, CD36, and lingual lipase influence oral sensitivity to fat in obese subjects,” Journal of Lipid Research 53, no. 3 (2012): 561–66, doi:10.1194/jlr.M021873.
196 they loved it: Amy J. Tindell, Kyle S. Smith, Susana Peciña, Kent C. Berridge, and J. Wayne Aldridge, “Ventral pallidum firing codes hedo
nic reward: When a bad taste turns good,” Journal of Neurophysiology 96, no. 5 (2006): 2399–409, doi:10.1152/jn.00576.2006.
196 fusion of these two bad tastes: Yuki Oka, Matthew Butnaru, Lars von Buchholtz, Nicholas J. P. Ryba, and Charles S. Zuker, “High salt recruits aversive taste pathways,” Nature 494 (2013): 472–75, doi:10.1038/nature11905.
197 literally addicted to salt: Michael J. Morris, Elisa S. Na, and Alan Kim Johnson, “Salt craving: The psychobiology of pathogenic sodium intake,” Physiology & Behavior 94, no. 5 (2008): 709–21, doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2008.04.008.
198 over time, they gained weight: Jacques Le Magnen, Hunger (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 42.
198 fights, assaults, and disorderly conduct: Eliza Barclay, “Food As Punishment: Giving US Inmates ‘The Loaf’ Persists,” Morning Edition, NPR, January 2, 2014, http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/02/256605441/punishing-inmates-with-the-loaf-persists-in-the-u-s.
199 keeping it alive for others: Barbara J. Rolls, Edmund T. Rolls, Edward A. Rowe, and Kevin Sweeney, “Sensory specific satiety in man,” Physiology & Behavior 27 (1980): 137–42.
200 “ham and motherfuckers”: Robert E. Peavey, Praying for Slack: A Marine Corps Tank Commander in Vietnam (Minneapolis: Zenith Imprint Press, 2004), 189.
203 vision, memory, and knowledge: Kathrin Ohla, Ulrike Toepel, Johannes le Coutre, and Julie Hudry, “Visual-gustatory interaction: Orbitofrontal and insular cortices mediate the effect of high-calorie visual food cues on taste pleasantness,” PloS One 7, no. 3 (2012): e32434, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032434.
203 makes pink yogurt taste worse: Vanessa Harrar and Charles Spence, “The taste of cutlery: How the taste of food is affected by the weight, size, shape, and colour of the cutlery used to eat it,” Flavour 2, no. 21 (2013), doi:10.1186/2044-7248-2-21.
204 saltier from a blue bowl: Charles Spence, Vanessa Harrar, and Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, “Assessing the impact of the tableware and other contextual variables on multisensory flavour perception,” Flavour 1, no. 7 (2012), doi:10.1186/2044-7248-1-7.
204 wine is more expensive, it tastes better: Hilke Plassmann, John Doherty, Baba Shiv, and Antonio Rangel, “Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, no. 3 (2008): 1050–54.
204 “chicory,” “coal,” and “musk”: Gil Morrot, Frederic Brochet, and Denis Dubourdieu, “The color of odors,” Brain and Language 79, no. 2 (2001): 309–20, doi:10.1006/brln.2001.2493.
205 bringing experience to bear on flavor: Samuel M. McClure, Jian Li, Damon Tomlin, Kim S. Cypert, Latane M. Montague, and P. Read Montague, “Neural correlates of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks,” Neuron 44, no. 2 (2004): 379–87, doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2004.09.019.
206 The volume of choices was a deterrent: Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper, “When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, no. 6 (2000): 995–1006.
206 during the moment of decision: Hilke Plassmann, John O. Doherty, and Antonio Rangel, “Orbitofrontal cortex encodes willingness to pay in everyday economic transactions,” The Journal of Neuroscience 27, no. 37 (2007): 9984–88, doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2131-07.2007.
209 on the website Gawker: Hamilton Nolan, “Americans Will Be Drugged to Believe Their Soda Is Sweeter,” Gawker, December 3, 2013, http://gawker.com/americans-will-be-drugged-to-believe-their-soda-is-swee-1475526047.
210 into the right kind of muscle tissue: Nicola Jones, “A taste of things to come? Researchers are sure that they can put lab-grown meat on the menu—if they can just get cultured muscle cells to bulk up,” Nature 468 (2010): 752–53.
210 “a bit like cake”: Davide Castelvecchi, “Researchers Put Synthetic Meat to the Palate Test,” Nature News Blog, August 15, 2013, http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/08/researchers-put-synthetic-meat-to-the-palate-test.html.
211 “meal in a glass”: Rob Rhinehart, “How I Stopped Eating Food,” Mostly Harmless (blog), February, 13 2013, http://robrhinehart.com/?p=298.
213 share it with the world: Nimesha Ranasinghe website, http://nimesha.info/projects.html; Nimesha Ranasinghe, Ryohei Nakatsu, Nii Hideaki, and Ponnampalam Gopalakrishnakone, “Tongue-mounted interface for digitally actuating the sense of taste,” Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (June 2012): 80–87, doi:10.1109/ISWC.2012.16, ISSN: 1550-4816; Nimesha Ranasinghe, Kasun Karunanayaka, Adrian David Cheok, O. N. N. Fernando, Hideaki Nii, Ponnampalam Gopalakrishnakone, “Digital Taste and Smell Communication,” Proceedings of International Conference on Body Area Networks, BodyNets 2011 (November 2011): 78–84; Nimesha Rana-singhe, A. D. Cheok, O. N. N. Fernando, H. Nii, and G. Ponnampalam, “Electronic taste stimulation,” Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (2011): 561–62, doi:10.1145/2030112.2030213.
Chapter 9: The DNA of Deliciousness
215 a strong umami signature: McGee, On Food and Cooking, 237.
218 had both been wrong: René Dubos, Louis Pasteur: Free Lance of Science (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950), 41, 116–34.
220 the skin remained crispy: Hervé This, “Modelling dishes and exploring culinary ‘precisions’: The two issues of molecular gastronomy,” supplement, British Journal of Nutrition 93, no. 1 (2007): S139–S146, doi:10.1079/BJN20041352.
221 “new techniques and dishes”: “Cooking Statement,” The Fat Duck website, http://www.thefatduck.co.uk/Heston-Blumenthal/Cooking-Statement/.
224 “traditional fermentative processes”: Daniel Felder, Daniel Burns, and David Chang, “Defining microbial terroir: The use of native fungi for the study of traditional fermentative processes,” International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science 1, no. 1 (2011): 64–69, doi:10.1016/j.ijgfs.2011.11.003.
230 “what goes on inside our soufflés”: Leo Hickman, “Doctor Food,” The Guardian, April 19, 2005, http://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/apr/20/food.science.
232 Western Europe and North America: Yong-Yeol Ahn, Sebastian E. Ahnert, James P. Bagrow, and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, “Flavor network and the principles of food pairing,” Scientific Reports 196, no. 1 (2011): 1–7, doi:10.1038/srep00196.
232 foie gras with jasmine sauce: Hickman, “Doctor Food.”
234 forged a creative bond: Chris Nay, “When Machines Get Creative: The Virtual Chef,” Building a Smarter Planet (blog), December 12, 2013, http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2013/12/virtualchef.html. “Cognitive Cookbook,” IBM website, http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/cognitivecooking/food.html.
235 set out to isolate it: Kenzo Kurihara, “Glutamate: From discovery as a food flavor to role as a basic taste (umami),” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 90, no. 3 (2009): 719S–722S, doi: 10.3945/ajcn.2009.27462D.
243 grapes in Bordeaux: Gregory V. Jones, “Climate change: Observations, projections and general implications for viticulture and wine production,” Whitman College Economics Department Working Paper, 2007.
243 for more global warming: John McQuaid, “What Rising Temperatures May Mean for World’s Wine Industry,” Yale Environment 360, December 19, 2011, http://e360.yale.edu/feature/what_global_warming_may_mean_for_worlds_wine_industry/2478/.
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