A food book to put you off your feed

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, food, history

On occasion I eat alone. When I do, I read while eating. If you do the same, I suggest you accompany your meal with something other than The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat, by Matt Siegel.

The book gets into the background of many—but by no means all—different kinds of foods, from pies, to the ubiquitous corn ("maize" across the pond), honey, and nightshades such as potatoes and tomatoes. (Fun fact, not from this book: you can cut a plug from a potato and graft a tomato plant into the hole; put the combined plant in a large container or raised bed with loose soil, and you'll have a harvest above ground all summer, and below ground in the fall.) However, the background the book gets into leans strongly toward the unpleasant bits, such as the amount of bee parts you are likely to ingest with your honey, or the relationship between "holiday season" feasting and the gluttonous "conspicuous consumption" debaucheries hosted by medieval and earlier "nobles". "Turducken" is a modern, pale shadow of the squab-pullet-goose-lamb-hog barbecues that were accompanied by inedible "desserts" garnished with gold dust.

Remember the nursery rhyme about "four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie"? Today, pies are mainly desserts, with flaky crusts you actually enjoy eating. Pies used to be quickly-baked meat-and-veggie concoctions (again, the chicken pot pies I hated as a child are a pale shadow), with very heavy crusts that were either thrown away or used as makeshift plates. 

It is a bit interesting to learn how many products, including a huge number that have nothing to do with food, are made from or include corn or corn oil or corn starch. But then we read of the back-and-forth "recommendations" of various authorities about eggs, or meats, or almost anything (today it'll kill you; two years later, it's superfood); all have a germ of truth, but little useful guidance.

Our ancestors survived all kinds of noxious things. The plants we eat, of course, don't "want" to be eaten, so they produce insecticides and other chemicals to deter herbivory. We call them spices. Animals also don't want to be eaten, but they tend to fight back more directly, although, for example, the puffer fish and other sea "foods" that contain tetrodotoxin are deadly to eat. We can survive a lot, and we thrive. I remember being told the difference between an American mother and an Italian mother. The one said, "Eat this, it's good for you," and the other says, "Eat it, it's good!" Is it good? Eat it.

Aaand, that's plenty, because I frankly don't recommend this book. The author writes well enough, but I wouldn't want to invite him for dinner.