Better than Bonk

Well,one could argue that my literary output has been sluggish.  Mary Roach's Gulp moves things along.  Actually, I preferred her observations about the alimentary canal when laid side to side against her odyssey of all things reproductive.  So much of those experiments were resurrected in the recent film Hysteria; but apparently now that scientists have decided they know what women want, now they are dead set on discovering how she goes about enjoying what she wants -- witness the blind tests of something called Lybrido which an entire sector of the world dreads will turn women into nymphomaniacs.

But I digress.  That is not to say that there is not an absence of fulfilling the senses.  Starting with a vaguely Rolling Stones' reminiscent craving mouth, Roach documents the importance of smell in tasting food, why internal organ meat repulses many and the qualities of saliva.  Articles I've read in the past few weeks on the Internet now are touting the benefits of mothers cleaning their children's pacifiers with a quick spit and polish maneuver in mom's mouth.  Duh, Roach spends quite some time describing that an infant's first bacterial intestinal bioreme is acquired through the messy exit of birth.

I personally am fascinated by the concept of bacterial symbiosis.  As someone who has ingested horrible chemicals to fight bouts of cancer, Lyme disease and other raging infections, I know firsthand that those side effect warnings really do great harm on the lower digestive tract.  I believe as much as the health care industry wants to prescribe by genotype, knowing what kinds of critters keep you alive and healthy given their "undying" role in your body, should hopefully redirect or cause to run in parallel experiments on improving our internal flora.

Once again, Roach brazenly authors satiric footnotes zeroing in like a middle schooler to point out the irony of a person's chosen profession given their name:  Sleeter Bull wrote Meat for the Table; and in a longer footnote:

"In a more perfect world, Whitehead would be a dermatologist, just as my gastroenterologist is Dr. Terdiman, and the author of the journal article Gastrointestinal Gas is J. Fardy, and the headquarters of the International Academy of Proctology was Flushing, New York."

And another on folks who unfortunately are employed in the manure pits and sewage tank industry - where a couple of breaths can cause respiratory paralysis and suffocation:  "Workers die this way often enough that a pair of physicians ... coined a name for it - dung lung.  (FN One of the physicians was a Dr. Crapo, who would, you'd think, have long ago ceased to find that sort of thing amusing.)"

One of my personal favorites:  "Kissing is a less aggressive form of bacterial transplant.  Studies of three different disease causing bacteria have documented migration ... periodontically speaking, an affair might be viewed as a form of bacteriotheraphy." 

Roach also flaunts her love of punning and slightly risque readings:  "... the soft palate - home turf of the uvula, that queer little oral stalactite (FN It's full medical name, and my (Roach) pen name should I ever branch out and write romance novels, is palatine uvula) ..."  When debunking Jonah and the whale in her chapter about How to Survive Being Swallowed Alive, she writes and footnotes:  "...While a seaman might survive the suction and swallow, his arrival in a sperm whale's stomach would seem to present a new set of problems."  True enough and to the point about a watery death at sea, until I read Roach's footnote when I laughed out loud on the train to DC:  "I challenge you to find a more innocuous sentence containing the words, sperm, suction, swallow and any homophone of seaman.  And then call me up on the homophone and read it to me."

Read Gulp to find out more about professional wine tasters, how the folks at Purina come up with a dog food formula and appearance that meets the needs of pet owners; and how Elvis really died.

To end at a less vulgar note, Roach writes about human food preferences;  "In reality, the average person eats no more than about thirty foods on a regular basis ... Most people ran through their entire repertoire in four days."  Hence my dinner menu last night of rib eye buffalo steaks, poached fiddle head ferns, and baked rhubarb pudding.  Image is everything and venturesomeness is its fellow traveler.