Japanese knotweed—a common spring edible and a relative of rhubarb, quinoa and spinach—grows like crazy, so much so that it’s considered an invasive species. Brought here as an ornamental, it’s now better known as a blight; Monsanto even makes a herbicide dedicated to its eradication. On my afternoon jogs, I’ve often wondered what might happen if all my neighbors descended on the rapidly proliferating patches and harvested the tender young shoots for tart, tangy additions to their dinner.

The idea that armies of hungry knife-wielding “invasivores” could eradicate exotic invasive flora and fauna has taken hold in popular culture and among conservation scientists. There are at least two invasive species cookbooks. Fishermen hold tournaments to chase down the Asian carp, which escaped Southern ponds and now threatens to invade the Great Lakes, and biologists have even attempted to re-brand the fish as delicious “Kentucky tuna.”

Eating invasive species might seem like a recipe for success: Humans can devastate a target population. Just take a look at the precipitous decline of the Atlantic cod (PDF). Perhaps Asian carp and lionfish, too, could be sent the way of the passenger pigeon. It’s a simple, compelling solution to a conservation problem. Simply put, “If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em.”

However, as ecologist Martin A. Nuñez cautions in a forthcoming article in Conservation Letters, edible eradication strategies could backfire and might even lead to a greater proliferation of the target species. First off, harvesting plants or animals for food doesn’t always correspond with ecological suppression. (Harvesting knotweed, for example, doesn’t require uprooting the plant, which can easily reproduce even after being picked). While the eat-‘em-to-beat-‘em effort calls attention to unwanted species, in the long run, Nuñez says popularizing an introduced species as food runs the risk of turning invasives into marketable, regional specialties (as with Patagonia’s non-native deer, fish and wild boar).

Before dismissing his cautionary note about incorporating alien flora and fauna into local culture, it’s worth remembering one of America’s cultural icons, a charismatic animal that may help underscore the questionable logic behind the invasivore diet: the Equus caballus, a non-native species originally introduced by Spanish explorers to facilitate transport in the Americas. Now, Nuñez writes, these “wild” horses have become “so deeply rooted in American culture and lore that control of their populations is nearly impossible, and eradication unthinkable.” To say nothing of eating them.

Drawing of Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum)/Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, Volume 106, 1880.

Thanks to Roberta Kwok at Conservation magazine, who brought my attention to the study.

With the political season going full tilt and food fights coming to a head over eating dogs and questionable cookies, there’s another place you might find signs of the nation’s red-state blue-state political divide: the advertising on potato chips bags.

In a study published last year in Gastronomica, student Josh Freedman and linguist Dan Jurafsky of Stanford examined the language found on 12 different brands of potato chips. They discovered that six less expensive brands of chips had fewer words on the bags and that those words emphasized the food’s authenticity through tradition and hominess, making claims like this: “Family-made, in the shadow of the Cascades, since 1921.” (In much the same way politicians aren’t prone to usin’ highfalutin language around down-home audiences.)

More expensive potato chips—the ones you might expect to find at health food stores—tended to distinguish themselves with longer words. Their descriptions focused more on health and naturalness, emphasizing how they were different: “No artificial flavors, no MSG, no trans fats, no kidding.” Indeed, for each additional “no,” “not,” “never,” “don’t,” or “won’t” that appeared on the bag, the price of potato chips climbed an average of four cents an ounce.

In a post about the research (in which he notes readers should take the study “with a grain of salt”), Jurafsky writes: “These models of natural versus traditional authenticity are part of our national dialogue, two of the many ways of framing that make up our ongoing conversation about who we are.”

Perhaps the results are not all that surprising. This is how marketing a President or a potato chip works—you find a target audience and you try to sell them something, using their language, even when your product might not be all that different from its competitors. “No” can tap into yes, indeed.

Many of the food outrages you’ve been reading about recently—pink slime in your hamburgers, insects coloring your Starbucks’ Strawberries and Crème Frappuccino, or the political frenzy over dog-eating—all revolve around revulsion. They’re foods more disgusting than they are dangerous. Similarly, there’s little evidence that low levels of arsenic harms chickens or the people eating them, but it sounds toxic, right? Policy makers wrestle with the popular notion that water recycling—going from toilet water to tap water—sullies otherwise refreshing drinking water.

What do they all have in common? Magical thinking.

Carol Nemeroff is a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the University of Southern Maine who has, among other things, studied how we react to drinks in which a dead, sterilized cockroach has been dipped or how we react to fudge in the shape of dog feces. These studies, she suggests, demonstrate two kinds of magical thinking. The law of contagion describes how, in the absence of any perceptible differences, we get grossed out by a food’s history of contact. The law of similarity describes how we get grossed out when something benign resembles something disgusting. I talked with her recently about how we think about eating.

Food & Think: Despite the proliferation of exposés and shocking facts about our food—say, how barbaric slaughterhouses seem to those of us far removed from the process—we’re somehow persuaded at the supermarket that meat is pure and clean and perfectly acceptable to eat.

Nemeroff: In order to undo the connection, what we can do is to frame certain things out of awareness. Framing is a technical term from cognitive psychology. The supermarket is a great example: You see neatly packaged hamburger, you do not see dead muscle tissue from a previously living cow. The way that it’s presented is divorced from its history. This is exactly what we want to figure out how to do with recycled water because in the water’s case, it would be a good thing to do. With the case of meat, when people go to the Middle East or Europe and they go to a meat market, they’re shocked because they see a whole cow or a whole chicken, with feet, beak and head. The response they experience is revulsion because it highlights—no, simply, it doesn’t hide the fact—that this is a previously living animal, or sometimes even a still-living animal. So you can frame out of awareness all those elements that interfere with people’s desire to buy it and eat it. We have to do that. If you couldn’t do this, you would end up with a version of OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]—if we were to think about contagion every time we touch a doorknob or we’re in an elevator breathing someone else’s air or we think about how many hands touched our money. We frame naturally, but by manipulating the framing you can determine what things people focus on and what things they don’t.

Photo of dog stew (cc) by Flickr user avlxyz

Adam Bernbach making drinks with organic local gin.

From guest blogger Jeanne Maglaty

Earlier this month, Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery unveiled a new portrait of Alice Waters, the legendary owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, and pioneer of the farm-to-table movement.

In the photographic portrait, a mulberry tree looms over Waters, looking chic in black in the Edible Schoolyard, her organic teaching garden and kitchen project in Berkeley that connects kids to “real” food and encourages healthy eating.

“The thing that I love most is that I’m very small and nature is very big,” said Waters as she stood beside the portrait, teary-eyed.

Waters’ acolytes gathered around her as she spoke in the museum’s Kogod Courtyard, some as teary-eyed as she. But hundreds of other hungry guests dared not move closer and risk losing their place in line for the food at the event.

Washington, D.C, culinary celebrities had prepared edible innovations for a glittery reception.  Here’s who and what you missed if you weren’t there:

Chef Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve: Rappahannock River oysters with coriander migonette and green goddess vinaigrette

Chef Haidar Karoum of Proof and Estadio: Roasted winter vegetables with wheat berries and garlic and anchovy dressing

Chef-owner José Andrés of ThinkFoodGroup: Jamón Ibérico de Bellota Fermin—Acorn-fed, free-range Ibérico ham; Selecciónes de Embutidos Fermin—Selection of cured Spanish sausages

Chef-owner Mike Isabella of Graffiato: Crudo of wild striped bass with kumquats, cranberries and arugula

Chef-owner Nora Pouillon, Restaurant Nora: Winter root vegetable & Mushroom gratin with Ecopia Farms microlettuces

Chef-founder Todd Gray of Equinox Restaurant: Lightly smoked duck breast with savory fig chutney and French baguette crostinis

Owners Sue Conley and Peggy Smith of Cowgirl Creamery: Mount Tam cheese—bloomy, rinded triple crème, mushroomy, buttery; Red Hawk cheese—washed rind, triple crème, unctuous, aromatic; Wagon Wheel cheese—pressed and aged cow’s milk cheese, medium strength, semi-firm

Bar manager Adam Bernbach of Proof and Estadio: Catoctin Creek Gin with Tarragon-Pear Soda

Who could resist a single morsel? My daughter and I went back for seconds.

Waters has espoused her culinary philosophy based on using fresh, local products for 40 years. I asked cheesemonger Adam Smith of Cowgirl Creamery if it was difficult to decide what to serve at a reception for such a prominent person in his field.

Not at all, he answered.  He selected three cheeses that the Petaluma, California, creamery made from organic milk purchased from a neighboring dairy.

Nearby, Bernbach mixed cocktails using gin that was distilled (from organic rye grain) only 50 miles away from the nation’s capital in Purcellville, Virginia.

Dave Woody’s selection as the portrait’s artist came with his first-prize win in the gallery’s Outwin Boochever competition in 2009. You can see the new portrait of Waters on the museum’s first floor near the G Street NW entrance.

Paula Johnson installs Julia Child's copper pots in 2009 at the National Museum of American History. Photograph by Hugh Talman/NMAH

We will not say goodbye but merely au revoir to the kitchen that once belonged to the grand dame of French cuisine, Julia Child. After Child donated her kitchen—complete with gadgets, cabinets and even the sink—to the American History Museum, the master chef’s culinary workspace was transplanted from her Cambridge, Massachusetts home to the museum, where it has been on view since 2002. It’s one of those exhibits you can go through with kid-in-a-candy-store awe, checking out the tools she used to ply her craft, from blow torches to an arsenal of cookbooks. Personally, I love seeing how she organized her space like a workshop, using the robin’s egg blue pegboard to hang her pots and pans so they’re always at the ready. And she kept a copy of the 1975 edition of the Joy of Cooking on her shelf.

But more than a simple assemblage of utensils and kitchen furnishings, the exhibit impresses on visitors the extent to which this one chef managed to have such a huge impact on American culture. In an age when prefab convenience foods were gaining in popularity, she not only showed people how to cook, but demonstrated that it’s OK to make mistakes along the way—and carry on with humor and resolve. (If you don’t believe me, watch her flipping a mass of mashed potatoes in a frying pan.) Unpretentious and equipped with an insatiable sense of curiosity, she was someone you could relate to through your television screen.

January 8, 2012 will be your last chance to see Bon Appetit! Julia Child’s Kitchen at the Smithsonian for a while, so hurry by the American History Museum if you can. It is scheduled to be re-exhibited in a show on American food and wine slated to open in the summer. Can’t stand to live sans Julia for a few months? There’s always the online version of the exhibition, and the bloggers over at the American History Museum have a few ideas to help you get your Julia Child fix. My favorite ideas of theirs involve diving into some of Child’s books and learning to make a few culinary creations from someone who was at the top of her craft.

Miracle berries. Image courtesy of Flickr user roboppy

If you’re Jewish—and maybe even if you’re not—there’s an excellent chance that you will eat latkes sometime before the end of Hanukkah next week (it starts tonight). I fully support this: Latkes are delicious. It wouldn’t be Hanukkah without them. (I’m going with a zucchini-potato version this year to fit in with my low-carb pregnancy diet.) But are you going to eat them all eight nights of the festival of lights? Probably not.

I’ve been thinking it’s time to throw some new food traditions into the Hanukkah mix. I have a few ideas to propose:

Have a fryapalooza. The reason latkes are so associated with the holiday is that they’re fried, evoking the miracle of the oil that was supposed to last no more than one night but lasted for eight. So why stop at shredded potatoes? Have a fried-food fest that would put the Iowa State Fair to shame.

There are at least two ways you could go here. One is down-home, with fried pickles from Homesick Texan; corn dogs from Average Betty (using Hebrew National wieners, of course); Paula Deen’s Southern fried chicken; and don’t forget your veggies—Grit magazine’s fried zucchini, perhaps. For dessert, if you and your guests aren’t doubled over with stomachaches by this time, may I suggest funnel cakes, those crispy fried dough treats dusted with powdered sugar? Moms Who Think shows you how to make them.

Another way to go would be a world tour of fried food. Mediterranean appetizers could include Spanish-inspired smoky fried chickpeas from Food52 or Italian fried olives from Giada De Laurentiis. Japanese tempura vegetables have a lighter, more delicate flavor than their Western counterparts; Leite’s Culinaria shares a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi’s new vegetable cookbook Plenty (which I’m hoping Hanukkah Harry brings me). And, though less famous than the cheesy Swiss version, fondue bourguignonne, where pieces of meat are speared on a fondue fork and cooked in hot oil, lets your guests get interactive. Make your final stop in Israel for a dessert that really is a Hanukkah tradition, the jelly doughnuts called sufganiyot; Chow shows how it’s done.

Whichever way you decide to go, this fatty menu should probably be followed by a juice cleanse. Of course, you could always space these recipe ideas out over the course of the holiday instead of eating them all in one go. But where’s the fun in that?

Dip it, don’t fry it. There’s no rule that says oil is only for frying. In fact, as Italians and other people from around the Mediterranean have long known, some oil is just too delicious to waste by heating away its flavor. You could host an olive oil tasting party with quality oils and slices of good bread, then follow the tasting with a meal of salads and other dishes that highlight the star ingredient. Kim Vallée and Fine Cooking magazine both offer suggestions for pulling it off.

Eat a miracle (fruit). Unlike the Passover story, which requires the whole Haggadah to explain, the Hanukkah story is told succinctly by the dreidel, the spinning top with four sides spelling out in Hebrew, “A great miracle happened there.” Although the name has more to do with marketing than divine intervention, so-called miracle fruit is pretty neat anyway. Miracle fruit is a West African berry that temporarily alters the way you perceive flavors, turning everything sweet—even something as sour as a lemon—for a while. It’s similar, though much more dramatic, to what happens when you eat an artichoke. The berries are available frozen, dried or in tablet form, or you can buy seedlings and grow your own. You could turn the evening into a game, serving an array of foods, some with bitter or sour flavors, and asking blindfolded guests to guess what they are.

The foamy head of a Ramos gin fizz. Image courtesy of Flickr user ReeseCLloyd.

It’s the holiday season, and for many that’s reason enough to indulge (responsibly) in a mixed drink at a holiday gathering. But as you’re convivially tossing one back, do you ever wonder why a drink looks and tastes the way that it does? Harvard University physicist David A. Weitz and grad student Naveen Sinha offer a unique look at the science behind mixology, including techniques for building a better cocktail.

According to Weitz and Sinha’s report in Physics World magazine, our sensation of a mixed drink can be broken down into three elements: flavor, appearance and texture. Ethanol, also known as pure alcohol, is the delivery mechanism for flavor. On the molecular level, ethanol does a great job of trapping aromatic molecules in an aqueous solution (i.e. your cocktail) in addition to extracting flavors from flowers, spices and fruits. (Think infusions: if you’ve ever tried flavoring vodkas by adding in whatever tickles your fancy, after letting it set for a few days you get a flavorful spirit.) Some bartenders are even utilizing lab equipment such as rotary evaporators, which can distill a liquid’s aroma molecules to attain more potent flavors.

It also turns out that when it comes to creating the look of a drink, the method of mixing can make all the difference. For example, a Manhattan—composed of whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters—is clear when stirred but cloudy when shaken. This happens because shaking introduces air bubbles, which scatter light and produce an opaque drink. Shaking also impacts texture and produces more viscous drinks. While 12 minutes may sound a little extreme to create a Ramos gin fizz, the air bubbles in the drink progressively divide into smaller bubbles during the mixing process, with the end result being the drink’s signature stiff layer of foam strong enough to support a metal straw. Some chefs have taken the element of texture to extremes to create drinks that have chewy or even solid consistencies. With an understanding of how cocktails work on a molecular level, it will be interesting to see what new concoctions mixologists will offer us.

Political cookbooks come from all sides of the spectrum.

Feminists popularized the phrase “the personal is political” in the late 1960s, and that principle could be interpreted to include how or what people choose to eat. So it’s not surprising that Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is selling a cookbook on his campaign website.

The Ron Paul Family Cookbook isn’t the first collection of recipes from the Texas congressman. He has sold earlier editions in previous campaigns and given out copies to constituents for the holidays. In a play on the candidate’s libertarian ideals, New York magazine’s Daily Intel blog posted a satirical version of the cookbook that omits actual instructions or ingredients for recipes, reasoning that “any intrusion into your private decisions, whether by the federal government or by seemingly harmless recipe books, is odious and un-American!”

Of course, the real cookbook does include recipes, instructions and all, for dishes like cheese soup, Reuben dip and easy Oreo truffles, according to Slate’s XX Factor blog. Aside from a patriotic family biography, there’s no apparent political agenda within—other than, perhaps, that you should be free to clog your arteries unfettered by government regulation.

The cookbook as campaign tool is not as novel as it might seem, nor is it exclusive to any one political party. In fact, in 2008, The Obama Campaign Family Cookbook was available to contributors on his website. Though it’s not directly connected to her husband’s reelection campaign, Michelle Obama’s American Grown: How the White House Kitchen Garden Inspires Families, Schools and Communities will be released in April, just months before voters will decide if the First Lady gets to keep her White House garden for another four years.

As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2008, there is a long tradition of political cookbooks, including the drolly titled Many Happy Returns: The Democrats’ Cookbook, or How to Cook a G.O.P Goose, from the campaign season that resulted in John F. Kennedy’s narrow victory. It contained an introduction from Frank Sinatra and recipes from Jacqueline Kennedy—the article shares her secret to good waffles.

Former Louisiana Congressman Billy Tauzin served for 25 years, switching from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party midway through his political career, and also found time to co-author Cook and Tell: Unique Cajun Recipes and Stories in 1999. Martha Stewart had him on her show to prepare barbequed shrimp; he returned the favor a few years later by leading the ImClone investigation that led to her being sent to prison.

The Suffrage Cook Book, compiled by L.O. Kleber in 1915 (and re-released in 2008), contained recipes from big names in the movement, including Shrimp Wriggle from Helen Ring Robinson, one of the first female state senators, and short political passages from the likes of Jane Addams. Kleber wrote in her note from the “editress” that the recipes should be served “alike to best friend as well as worst enemy—for I believe in the one case it will strengthen friendship, and in the other case it will weaken enmity.”

In other words, as her sisters a few generations later would say, the personal is political—even when it comes to food.

Licorice. Image courtesy of Flickr user Luca Zappa.

It’s first day of November and kids everywhere are sitting down with stashes of goodies they earned the night before by dressing up, knocking on doors and rattling off the three magic words that win them a treat. And for adults, the leftover Halloween goodies are all on sale, so the time is right to enjoy a treat or two as well. Personally, I love my Good and Plenty, the licorice treats with pink and white sugary shells that spokesperson Choo Choo Charlie uses to make his locomotive zip down the track. But it turns out that Charlie should consider cutting back on his candy habit. According to a consumer awareness update published by the FDA, overindulging in licorice can cause health problems.

In Western medicine, licorice root has been used for hundreds of years as an herbal remedy to treat conditions from common colds to hepatitis. Clinical evidence of its effectiveness, however, is decidedly mixed. While it may soothe your symptoms, licorice more than likely isn’t curing what ails you. But licorice—the root as well as the black-colored iterations of the candy—can potentially do you harm, due to a chemical called glycyrrhetinic acid. When consumed in large quantities, it can cause your body’s potassium levels to fall to the point that some people experience arrhythmia, a rise in blood pressure, swelling and even congestive heart failure. People taking diuretics or medications for high blood pressure should be especially wary as the licorice may inhibit the effectiveness of the drugs. How much is too much? According to the FDA, a diet including 2 ounces of black licorice a day for two weeks might merit a trip to the hospital to have an irregular heart beat checked out. And consuming one to two pounds of licorice candy in one go may cause the blood vessels in your eyes to spasm, causing temporarily impaired vision. Though predominately a concern for persons over 40, it is recommended that everyone should moderate a high licorice intake.

That said, it pays to be an avid label reader. Some licorice products don’t contain extracts from the actual root and instead use anise to achieve a similar flavor. Packaging language such as “licorice-flavored” might serve as a tip-off that you’re not getting the real deal, but take a second to read the fine print on the ingredients list. Furthermore, licorice can also be processed so that the trouble-causing acid is removed, so you can keep an eye out for products marked DGL, or de-glycyrrhizinated licorice.

These artifacts are thought to have been offerings from the earliest farming communities that lived in this area. Chemical analysis of charred food residues preserved inside a number of vessels shows they were used for processing freshwater fish, which supplemented their fledgling agricultural economy. Image courtesy of Anders Fischer.

When humans made the switch from being hunter-gatherers to farmers, it was a revolutionary transition. Archaeologists have linked the change to population growth and a wider variety in diet. Traditionally, archaeologists saw this as a relatively instantaneous changeover, with societies adopting livestock and cereal cultivation as well as the use of ceramic containers to process and store foodstuffs. But using pots as an indicator of when this shift took place is problematic, especially given evidence that even foraging societies used vessels. Now a new study of pots paints a different picture of this pivotal point in human history and suggests that the shift to farming was not as rapid as previously thought.

Researchers from the University of York and the University of Bradford focused their attentions on potsherds from inland and coastal settlements around the Baltic. Farming has been practiced there since about 4,000 B.C. Human remains from before this point in time show a diet heavy in marine life, while later remains indicate a diet heavy in land-based foods. So if anything, it’s also a region that could support the rapid change view. In an analysis of lipids (fats and other molecules) on 133 potsherds, the researchers found that even after the practice of domesticating plants and animals was well in place, people still continued to forage for food in nearby waterways. So even though the know-how was there, the cultural shift to relying on farmed foodstuffs was much more gradual.

A male Atlantic salmon. Image courtesy of Flickr user U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region

Salmon farming has received its share of criticism for being detrimental to the environment. Many salmon are raised in net pens, which allow fish waste, chemicals and farming byproducts to spread into the wild. There’s also the threat of pathogens that could thrive in crowded pens and escape to harm natural fish populations. One disease, infectious salmon anemia, was once thought to be a problem exclusive to farmed Atlantic salmon. A new study by a group of researchers from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia has found that this influenza-like virus is infecting naturally ocurring salmon populations.

Infectious salmon anemia was first observed 1984 and occurs most often in overcrowded, filthy salmon pens. As the name suggests, the virus causes anemia, the condition in which a body doesn’t have enough healthy red blood cells to deliver oxygen to its tissues. Infected fish may exhibit symptoms—such as pale gills and loss of appetite—or they may outwardly seem perfectly fine. While the disease doesn’t pose any risks to humans, it can wipe out upwards of 70 percent of a farmed salmon population.

This is the first time the disease has been found in wild fish off the coast of North America. After observing a decline in the salmon population off the British Columbia coast, researchers collected 48 specimens for study and discovering two juvenile fish infected with the disease. While there is currently no evidence to definitively link fish farming to the presence of salmon anemia in wild populations, there could be devastating ramifications, not just for the fishing industry, but for the wildlife that depends on salmon for food. “It’s a disease emergency,” James Winton, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s fish health section, told the Associated Press. “We’re concerned. Should it be introduced, it might be able to adapt to Pacific salmon.”

A food distribution line at the Occupy Wall Street protests in Manhattan. Image courtesy of Flickr user Mat McDermott

Donation appeals from the Occupy Wall Street protests suggest ordering food to be sent to Zucotti Park, requesting that “vegan and vegetarian options” be emphasized. There’s been no official count of how many of the protesters shun meat, but there is a long history of association between vegetarianism and social activism in the United States.

The first vegetarian organization in the country, the American Vegetarian Society (AVS), was founded in 1850 by William A. Alcott, a physician and relative of Little Women author Louisa May Alcott, along with Sylvester Graham, of Graham cracker fame, and Rev. William Metcalfe of the Philadelphia Bible Christian Church. William Alcott’s disdain of meat was ostensibly for health reasons. His 1838 book, Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men and by Experience in All Ages, included dozens of letters testifying to the superiority of a vegetarian diet for maintaining health and recovering from disease.

But by the time of the first American Vegetarian Convention, held in New York in May 1850, the justifications for avoiding meat had broadened to include moral considerations. Among the resolutions adopted at that first meeting were, “That flesh-eating is the key-stone to a wide-spread arch of superfluous wants, to meet which, life is filled with stern and rugged encounters, while the adoption of a vegetarian diet is calculated to destroy the strife of antagonism, and to sustain life in serenity and strength,” and, “That cruelty, in any form, for the mere purpose of procuring unnecesary food, or to gratify depraved appetites, is obnoxious to the pure human soul, and repugnant to the noblest attributes of our being.”

According to The Cultural Encyclopedia of Vegetarianism, edited by Margaret Puskar-Pasewicz, the AVS published a journal that connected vegetarianism to a number of other reform movements, including women’s rights and the abolition of slavery. The suffragist Susan B. Anthony and the abolitionist and New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley were among the famous reformers who attended AVS events.

Greeley spoke at a vegetarian banquet sponsored by the New York Vegetarian Society, a spinoff from the national group. Press coverage of the event was lukewarm. A New York Times writer sniffed, “The display of vegetables was not tempting. The viands were poorly dressed, and the meat-eating public gained no especial knowledge of the delights of a Graham life; but, after all the evening cannot be called a failure. The speakers, and there were plenty of them, did their best to entertain, and really succeeded very well.”

The menu, included in the article, gives some idea of why the writer was unimpressed: “moulded farina,” “moulded wheaten grits” and “stewed cream squashes” were among the bland-sounding dishes on offer, with only “pure cold water” listed as a beverage. (Many society members were also proponents of temperance).

Within a few years, the AVS had lost steam, and by 1865—coincidentally, the year slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment—had disbanded. But in 1886, former AVS member Henry S. Clubb founded the Vegetarian Society of America. Clubb was a savvy publicist; his new group published a vegetarian magazine with recipes and personality profiles of famous meat abstainers, invited celebrities as keynote speakers at its conventions and exposed millions of visitors to vegetarian ideas at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

But after Clubb died, in 1921, so did the Vegetarian Society of America. It took four decades for another national organization, the American Vegan Society, to form. Like its predecessors, the vegan society connects a meat-free diet to a number of other causes, including moral and environmental considerations. Among the reasons for veganism the group’s website lists are: health; “an equitable, ethical relationship between human and other living creatures”; “spiritual development”; and “practical solutions to the population explosion.”

Brown rice. Image courtesy of Flickr user ayayan.s

This year’s Nobel Prize winners were honored for, among other things, discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace; their work on women’s rights and peace-building in Liberia; and advances in the understanding of immunity. But in years past, a number of winners have been recognized for food-related achievements—making food safer, more available or just increasing our knowledge of it. Here are five notable cases:

1904: Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Better known for his research with canines to explain conditioned responses—training dogs to salivate when they heard a sound they had come to associate with food—Pavlov won the Nobel for his earlier work on the digestive systems of mammals. Before he devised a way of observing the digestive organs of animals, there was only a limited understanding of how the stomach digests food.

1929: Christiaan Eijkman, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Eijkman and his co-awardee, Sir Frederick Hopkins, were honored for discovering of the importance of vitamins in health and disease prevention. In the 1890s, Eijkman, of the Netherlands, studied the disease beriberi in the then–Dutch colony of Java, where he made the connection between a diet lacking rice bran (the bran had been removed to make the rice last longer) and high rates of beriberi. This was an important milestone in the eventual formation of the concept of vitamins, though the word itself wasn’t coined until 1911.

1945: Lord John Boyd Orr, Nobel Peace Prize
Orr, of Scotland, devoted much of his life to improving world nutrition and to the equitable distribution of food. After helping shape Britain’s wartime food policy, Orr became director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a World Food Board in 1947. Two years later, by which time he had retired to a lucrative business career, his efforts were recognized by the Nobel committee.

1970: Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize
Possibly no one on this list had as great an effect on so many people as Borlaug, the American considered the father of the “Green Revolution” for his development of methods that vastly improved yields and disease-resistance in crops. Although some of his methods were later criticized for having a negative environmental impact, they greatly increased food security in poor countries such as India and Pakistan. The debate over how to balance environmental concerns with the food needs of a growing world population continues today.

Bound. Image courtesy of Flickr user Tarter Time Photography.

I’m somewhat shocked and appalled that human behavior allows for recurring blog posts on criminal behavior involving food. Not that I’m one to complain about my muse. The month of September alone was rife with new shenanigans, and a couple of convictions, from society’s dark underbelly.

September, 2011. Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The raw food movement?

On the afternoon of Monday, September 12, Wal-Mart security officers saw a man opening packages of raw hamburger and stew beef and eating some of the contents before putting the items back on the shelf. Police were contacted and arrested Scott Shover, 53, at taser point and charged him with felony theft. While only about $25 worth of meat was involved in this particular incident, Shover received the felony charge as this was his fifth retail theft offense.

September, 2011. Mount Prospect, Illinois. A Late Night Snack.

When most people get hungry in the middle of the night, they make a beeline for the kitchen. Hachem Gomez, 19, preferred to make a 3:00 a.m. trip out to Mr. Beef and Pizza. No matter that the restaurant was closed and the drive-through window was barred: Gomez broke through the security grating to gain access to the kitchen, where he began to prepare himself chicken tenders and fries in the microwave. Officers arrived on the scene at 3:30, and when asked if he worked there, Gomez simply said no and that he was just hungry. He was arrested and charged with burglary.

August, 2011. Denver, Colorado. Bring out your dead.

In the 1989 movie comedy Weekend at Bernie’s, two men, promised a ritzy weekend at their boss’ weekend home, arrive to find their boss dead, but decide to tote the corpse around so that they can enjoy the few days of luxury they felt entitled to. According to police reports, on the evening of August 27, Robert Young, 43, arrived at the home of Jeffrey Jarrett, only to find the man unresponsive. In lieu of calling 911, Young, along with friend Mark Rubinson, 25, piled the corpse into a car and went to Teddy T’s Bar and Grill. Jarrett was left in the car while the other two enjoyed libations charged to his card. Next stop was Sam’s No. 3, a diner, before they returned Jarret’s corpse to his house. Young and Rubinson next made a pit stop at a strip club, using Jarrett’s ATM card to withdraw $400, and before the night was over, they flagged down a police officer notifying him that they suspected their buddy was dead in his home. The pair was later arrested, and while they are not suspected of causing Jarrett’s death, they stand charged with abusing a corpse, identity theft and criminal impersonation. Both men were released on bail. Young has an arraignment date set for October 6. Rubinson has since been arrested again for drunk driving. He also happened to be driving in a stolen vehicle, but whether he was the one who snatched it has yet to be determined.

September, 2010. Denver, Colorado. Playing chicken.

To some, like The New York Times, raw chicken evokes l’amour in a big way. But 58-year-old lobbyist Ronald Smith was feeling less than amorous when he placed raw chicken in the heating ducts of his ex-wife’s home. (Other non-food-related acts of vandalism included wiping the hard drive of her computer, pouring bleach on her grand piano and marring her hardwood floors with mountain bike cleats.) Michelle Young, the former Mrs. Smith, discovered the damage on returning from a California vacation. It was allegedly the culmination of months of harassment, and while prosecutors could not produce eyewitnesses to definitively place Smith at the scene, they were, however, able to illustrate that the blue duct tape used to package the chicken pieces matched the roll of duct tape found in Smith’s home. Jurors deliberated for about six hours before arriving at their decision. Smith was convicted in September 2011 of second degree burglary and criminal mischief and is awaiting sentencing. He could face up to 18 years in prison.

January 2010. Leeds, England. A big break.

On the evening of January 30, Hussein Yusuf had been drinking at a local pub when he asked the chef, Roger Mwebiha, to cook him a meal. After repeatedly entering the kitchen asking if his food was ready yet, Mwebiha got fed up to the point where he returned Yusuf’s money. At 3:00 a.m. the following morning, Yusuf again asked the chef to prepare him some food and the two began to argue. Mwebiha went to take out the trash when he was confronted outside by Yusuf, who kicked the chef’s right shin, shattering both lower leg bones. Yusuf fled the scene while Mwebiha spent months recuperating from the injury. But about a year later, in a logic-defying move, Yusuf returned to the restaurant. The chef recognized his attacker and notified police. Yusuf, 23, admitted to the crime and was sentenced in September 2011. He is currently serving a 15-month prison term.

Braised shark's fin soup with fresh crab meat. Image courtesy of Flickr user Sifu Renka.

California is on the road to becoming the fourth state in the union to ban shark fin soup on account of the ecological impact that rising demand is having on shark populations. A bill nixing the sale, trade or possession of shark fins passed the state senate on September 6 and is awaiting governor Jerry Brown’s signature to be passed into law. The namesake ingredient for this Asian delicacy is harvested by fishermen who catch sharks, remove the fins and dump the carcasses back in the ocean. While other parts of the shark are edible or can be used for other purposes, it makes more financial sense for the fishermen to haul back the fins because they are the most valuable: they can sell (depending on size and the species of shark) for upwards of $880 per pound on the Hong Kong market. (In 2003, a fin from a basking shark sold for $57,000 in Singapore.) It is estimated that between 26 and 73 million sharks are killed worldwide each year for their fins, and with sharks unable to reproduce at such a rate to meet human demand, sustainable shark fishing is a bit unrealistic.

So what’s the big to-do over this dish? It’s certainly not the fin’s flavor—which has been described as being relatively tasteless—but rather it’s unique, rubbery texture. Once dried, processed and incorporated into the soup, the fin looks like fine, translucent noodles whose culinary value is in their mouthfeel—all the flavor has to come from the other soup ingredients. Some chefs have tried using gelatin-based substitutes, but, for those intimately familiar with the dish, imitation shark falls short of capturing the feel of the real deal.

“This is the most stunning aspect of the entire economic empire that has arisen around shark’s fin soup” environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin writes of the soup in her book Demon Fish. “It is, to be blunt, a food product with no culinary value whatsoever. It is all symbol, no substance.” Indeed, with some iterations costing upwards of $100 a bowl, it’s a dish that, if nothing else, displays one’s social status.

The dining tradition that dates back to the Song Dynasty (960 to 1279 A.D.), becoming a mainstay of formal dining during the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644 A.D.), and it continues to be a popular dish at Chinese weddings. Opponents see the ban as an act of cultural discrimination, with the language of the bill singling out shark fin soup and giving no mention of other shark-based products, such as steaks or leather goods.

But shark populations are declining. In the 1980s, Hong Kong’s local shark populations were overfished to the point that its fishing market went bust. In the U.S., dusky shark numbers have declined by roughly 80 percent since the 1970s, with conservationists estimating that it would take upwards of 100 years for those populations to rebuild. In western Atlantic waters, hammerhead sharks have declined by up to 89 percent over the past 25 years. And in spite of cultural traditions, the international community—with the exceptions of Japan, Norway and Iceland—has placed bans on whaling because humans put such a strain on those populations. Should the same reasoning be applied to sharks?