Tag: Food
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What the elders fed us
Caleb WamangaKakamega, Kenya Before the rain starts, the vine creeps across the yard. Mboga ya kienyeji (traditional vegetable), the green leaf that rounded off a meal, was what we called them. It is a gift that is never announced, never wrapped, but always there when a child seems pale or a woman staggers back from…
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Eating goat
The goat was among the first animals to be domesticated, around 10,000 years ago, in Western Iran and the Euphrates River valley, reflecting its importance as a reliable source of meat and milk. It is primarily eaten in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and it is particularly popular in India, Nigeria, and Mexico, where it…
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More than a meal: How school lunch became a lifelong lesson
Scarlett SaittaJonesboro, Arkansas, United States I first began to question the US food system when my friend’s father died of a heart attack in his late thirties. A few days after the funeral, my friend’s mother kindly served us boxed mac and cheese stamped “low sugar.” She was grieving, overwhelmed, and trying her best to…
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The cow in culture and history
Cows are domesticated bovine animals that have been used in human agriculture for thousands of years. As ruminants they have a four-chambered stomach system that allows them to digest grass and other plant materials that humans cannot process. There are hundreds of cattle breeds worldwide, ranging from dairy breeds like Holstein and Jersey to beef…
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Famines throughout history
Since times immemorial there have been numerous famines in the world. Droughts, floods, and crop failures have claimed millions of lives, often the consequence of wars, injudicious policies, repressive measures, but frequently described as inevitable or attributed to supernatural causes. The earliest famines recorded in history occurred during the first dynasties of ancient Egypt,…
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Wine in disease and health
In ancient times The history of wine as medicine dates to ancient Egypt and its Ebers Papyrus (circa 1550 BCE), which mentions mixing wine with herbs as an antiseptic and a vehicle for delivering medicines. Physicians in Mesopotamia used wine to dissolve and administer drugs, and Hippocrates (c. 460–370 BCE) recommended it for treating wounds,…
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Wasps, bees, and honey
Bees, wasps, and honey play a potentially important role in the medical world. Only bees make honey, but both bees and wasps are of interest because their bites, though usually trivial, can cause allergic reactions ranging from mild swelling and itching to life-threatening anaphylaxis. These biting insects belong to the order Hymenoptera and need to…
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Cultural taboos, Marvin Harris, and The Abominable Pig
Zachary SorensenChicago, Illinois, United States Many ancient cultural traditions persist through religious practice to this day. They are particularly evident in the taboos surrounding food. In The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig, anthropologist Marvin Harris explores the food taboos of the ancient world, particularly focusing on the prohibition of pork in Judaism and Islam.…
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Olives now and then
Olives in their natural state are exceedingly bitter. I made that discovery by the roadside between Granada and Madrid when I reached up and plucked an olive from a tree. I later learned that olives are made edible by leaching out a bitter phenolic compound called oleuropein. This is done by pickling or curing techniques…
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The organic food movement
The word organic in the context of chemistry refers to a substance built around a skeleton of carbon (unlike an inorganic substance that most often has no carbon in its formula.) In the world of food, however, organic means that the produce was grown under “natural” conditions, without antibiotics, growth hormones, pesticides, fertilizers, sewage sludge,…