Abstract
Many of us interested in the intersection between food and medicine in ethnobiology have to thank the pioneering works of Nina Etkin, dated already 25 years ago, who first explored the fascinating biocultural domain of the complex interface between nutrition, health, cultural anthropology, and what we would call nowadays in the biosciences “preventive medicine.”
The overview that Nina Etkin offers us in this new book is unique, since for the first time a theoretical framework for understanding this “inextricable link” between food and medicine is proposed.
In the introductory chapter Etkin provides in fact a theoretical framework for the subject, addressing the issue of a so called “coevolutionary perspective” (allelochemicals in plant defense, chemical mediation of mutalistic relationships, subsistence systems analyzed from an evolutionary and cross-cultural perspective, sensory botany and anthropology).
The other chapters include:
food in the history of biomedicine; the pharmacology of spices; fermented foods and beverages; the lives of social plants; medicinal qualities of animal foods; health in the market place: complementary and alternative medicine, functional foods, and more
While the chapter on spices addresses issues related to the cultural history, physiology and ethnopharmacology of these food-medicinal plants, the very interesting part dedicated to the fermented food offers a fantastic overview on this quite neglected ethnobiological domain. Etkin shows in particular with her field data from the work conducted among the Hausa in Nigeria the meaning of these preparations in both the ethnopharmacology and the social life of local people.
To the social aspects related to the ingestion of food-medicines is dedicated also the following chapter, which deals with the cultural history and ethnobiology of social plants (coffee, gums, kava, khat, maté, cacao, tea, betel, cola nuts) and points out how our understanding of the human-food relationships is informed also by political and economical asymmetries: mercantile capitalism, Euromonopolies, colonialism, and wars.
The section on the animal foods is a very original one in the book and presents an exhaustive overview of worldwide examples on zoopharmacognosy (self-healing among animals), animal derived food-medicines, entomophagy, and apitherapy.
The last chapter connects all these “classical” ethnopharmacological and ethnobiological issues around edible medicines to the new interest that affluent Western societies have shown during the last years for functional and “healthy” foods (i.e., noni), and edible CAMs. These new trends show us clearly how the use of food-medicines (or medicinal foods) is culturally constructed, and how actually we will never be able to achieve deep understanding of these human phenomena without looking at their “social” meanings.
The book is definitely a “must” for many ethnobiologists, ethnopharmacologists and medical anthropologists, and it is particularly suitable as reference text for a number of undergraduate and postgraduate university courses and programs in ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, nutritional and medical anthropology.
The book raises many open scientific questions, that have fascinated and are still fascinating most of us and suggests to us too that from whatever perspective we will decide to start or to continue to find decent answers (historical, bio-pharmacological, nutritional, cultural, social), only a truly holistic trans-disciplinary attempt will probably help us to enlighten them.