Eat This Newsletter 283: Odious
Hello
I am reliably informed I showed no aversion to stinky cheeses as an infant. Apologies in advance if you find any of this issue’s items revolting, repellent, repulsive, nauseating, unpalatable, unappetising, uninviting or unsavoury.
“What They Ate Was Disgusting, Filthy, and Backward”
An earlier paper from John Speth helps to flesh out last week’s episode on Neanderthal diets. With colleague Eugène Morin, the paper assembles extensive evidence that putrid meat, maggots and all, was relished by people in hot, humid, tropical regions as much as it was among circumpolar Inuit and, in all likelihood, Neanderthals.
The key message is that, notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary, the supposed universal human triggers of disgust are nothing of the sort. They are the legacy of Western cultural hegemony that started some 3–4000 years ago with ancient Egyptian beliefs about “a dangerous substance or ‘principle’ seated in the intestines, and especially in the colon, that was associated with rot and evil smells”. Learning that at their mother’s knee robbed untold millions of people of good nutrition and foisted a prejudice (along with many others) on the people Europeans conquered and colonised.
I’m not going to offer any examples — there are more than 20 pages of small type to delight you — but I do want to note a key point. This obsession with cleanliness and hygiene actually cost lives; cases of botulism increased after Westerners introduced “safer” methods of preserving meat and vegetables. Speth and Morin also argue, convincingly, that putrefied meat and fat gave early human ancestors many of the nutritional benefits of cooking long before they mastered the use of fire.
I also find myself wondering about the British aristocracy’s fondness for well-hung game. I can remember at least one discussion among aficionados of how long to leave a pheasant. “Until it falls off the hook,” seemed to be the dominant view. Is this a taste that has to be re-acquired after Nanny has impressed upon her charges the Godliness of cleanliness? Or do the grownups somehow instil a love of the gamey by slipping the youngsters a morsel or two? Someone, please enlighten me.
“A Cabal of Dark Forces”
When I was putting together last year’s episode on insectivory I toyed with using an illustration of a meme generally referred to as I will not eat the bugs. I didn’t, not least because the images are gross and the fundamental conceit of the meme (surprise, surprise) is somewhat dumb. Imagine my consternation, then, to discover that BBC Future had devoted a long article to How Eating Insects Became a Conspiracy Theory. Turns out, it is yet more Western cultural hegemony, obviously.
The piece is an interesting history of the conspiracy theory and accompanying meme that expands upon Know Your Meme’s account (though perhaps wisely it does not repeat the notion that Sir Charles Geoffrey Cox of blessed memory might have been an inspiration). The piece also goes beyond history to try and understand the importance of conspiracy theories and those who believe in them.
“Conspiracy theories fill an emotional need [and] tend to emerge from an inclination to make sense of the world.”
So that's OK then.
The strange thing is that while decrying the “utter nonsense” of conspiracy theories, the article stresses that insect protein is sustainable and climate friendly. Sure, it is better than beef and most other macro-livestock, but will it ever replace them?
“An Increasingly Landless Agricultural System”
Like the legendary London busses that travel in packs, BBC Future has another fine story, on the decline in land devoted to agriculture. Hannah Ritchie of the marvellous Our World in Data and her colleagues say that we have passed “peak farmland,” although they are cautious to remind us that the trend could easily reverse if biofuels scramble for territory or if objections to food processing prevent Nu-foods (lab meat, microbial goop, insects etc.) from further growth.
Various trends contribute to the loss of farmland. Primary is probably increased productivity and efficiency. Synthetic alternatives, like nicotine for tobacco, synthetic fibres for wool, and artificial sweeteners for cane and beet sugar, have apparently spared twice the area of Spain. However, I find it hard to believe that “farming crops such as vanilla takes significant land,” and even if “synthetic alternatives are increasingly popular” that does not address the plight of people who once made a living growing vanilla. Then there are changed diets as people move from beef and lamb to pork and chickens, which need less land and are better at converting their feed into our meat. There’s an ethical dimension to this, as we need to kill a lot more chickens than cows for the same amount of meat (and several times more insects), but on the whole that doesn’t seem to bother people.
So yes, the drop in land used for farming is potentially good news for the environment, although the article also identifies several problems that might arise, from failing farmers to animal welfare to widening food inequalities. Still, “we could be living in the first century in recent times where we leave the planet with more nature than it had before”.
“Bad News for Farmers”
Punditry on economic affairs in the US and beyond is all too available, so I tend to restrict my intake. One who is invariably interesting and approachable is Edward Lotterman, who writes a column that often pops up in my feeds. A recent example is worth sharing because it details the crisis farmers in the US are currently staring at, which goes way beyond finding somewhere to store their soybeans.
As Lotterman explains, at least for commodity crops the huge number of buyers and sellers makes agriculture a near-perfect market economy, inevitably subject to boom and bust cycles. He summarises a few of the cycles of the 20th century and then moves on to explain the difference between variable costs, like seed, fertiliser, energy and so on, and fixed costs, like interest payments, insurance, and depreciation. At the moment, exacerbated by tariffs and as a result of reduced exports, the profits from actual farming, where variable costs remain roughly the same, are too low to pay the fixed costs.
So farmers want big subsidies. The trouble is that any time crop subsidies are raised, farmers bid up land prices. There is a ratcheting effect that, whenever the economy pauses, leaves farmers unable to cover the cost of production.
I believe some farmers are beginning to understand that the person they voted for is the source of their troubles, but if he also grants them the relief they are begging for, they will forget that, and everything else.
“Health Honeys”
Mānuka is the Māori name for Leptospermum scoparium, the tree from which bees collect the nectar that they transform into mānuka honey, which is believed to have very special properties, which sells for a high price, and which as a result is frequently adulterated or counterfeited. Mānuka trees also grow in parts of Australia, which produces honey that is as tempting to fakers as that from New Zealand. Sweet news, then, from the University of the Sunshine Coast, which has developed a new test that can identify premium honeys quicker and at lower cost.
The test looks at an array of phenolic compounds that “contribut[e] to anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-diabetic and anti-carcinogenic properties, as well as flavour.” The specific mix of compounds can help to identify the flowers from which the honey was made, enabling the test to identify honeys made from a single species. That could result in some Australian honeys approaching New Zealand mānuka’s premium price, “because consumers generally will pay higher prices”. And if that happens, the need for effective tests of authenticity will become even greater.
Take care
