by Matt Siegel
23. in his 1820 book: Fredrick Accum, A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons (London: Mallett, 1820), 131–46.
24. flavoring wine with oak sawdust: Ibid., 96.
25. adding molten lead: Ibid., 110.
26. boiling various types of leaves: Ibid., 240.
27. recycling used tea leaves: Reay Tannahill, Food in History (New York: Stein and Day, 1973), 344.
28. “sham-coffee”: Accum, A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons, 244.
29. powdered oyster shells: Ibid., 204.
30. fish skin or hartshorn shavings: Pamela Sambrook, Country House Brewing in England, 1500–1900 (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), 105.
31. opium or nux vomica: Accum, A Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons, 205.
32. also known as poison nut: “Nux vomica,” Science Direct, www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/nux-vomica.
33. “The Industrial Revolution”: Unabomber, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” Washington Post, September 22, 1995, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm.
34. Graham believed that: Graham, Lectures on the Science of Human Life, 252–53.
35. the evils of feather beds: Ibid., 626.
36. the horrors of masturbation: Sylvester Graham, A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity, 4th ed. (Boston: Light, 1838), 78–79.
37. Grahamites: Graham, Lectures on the Science of Human Life, 11.
38. “Sometimes this general”: Graham, A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity, 120–21.
39. “If he attempts”: Ibid., 122–23.
40. Graham’s biggest impact: John F. Mariani, The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink (New York: Bloomsbury, 1983), 232.
41. he believed white flour: Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, eds., The Cambridge World History of Food, vol. 2 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1489.
42. the bran and germ contain: “Whole Grains,” The Nutrition Source, Harvard School of Public Health, www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/whole-grains/.
43. Called granula: Marty Gitlin and Topher Ellis, The Great American Cereal Book (New York: Abrams, 2012), 12–14.
44. Born in 1852: Mariani, The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, 120.
45. saw little need: Howard Markel, The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek (New York: Penguin Random House, 2017), Apple Books ed.
46. spent most of his childhood: Smith, Food and Drink in American History, vol. 1, 496.
47. “anything that was fun”: Markel, The Kelloggs.
48. He was also plagued: Ibid.
49. “cycle of bleeding”: Ibid.
50. In 1876: Ibid.
51. a humble two-story farmhouse: Ibid.
52. the luxurious Battle Creek Sanitarium: Ibid.
53. vibrotherapy: John Harvey Kellogg, The Battle Creek Sanitarium: History, Organization, Methods (Battle Creek, MI: Battle Creek Sanitarium, 1913).
54. more than fifty types: Markel, The Kelloggs.
55. at least one of which: Kellogg, The Battle Creek Sanitarium, 81.
56. “walk and trot around”: Ibid., 99.
57. chopping wood in a loincloth: Ibid., 23, 99, 103, 136.
58. “to combine with”: Ibid., 5.
59. Guests could have: Ibid., 44.
60. take an aerobics class: Markel, The Kelloggs, 2017.
61. receive Kellogg’s thoughts: Kellogg, Plain Facts for Old and Young.
62. he mansplains such topics: John Harvey Kellogg, Ladies’ Guide in Health and Disease: Girlhood, Maidenhood, Wifehood, Motherhood (Battle Creek, MI: Modern Medicine Publishing Company, 1898), v–xviii.
63. he was a strong advocate: Markel, The Kelloggs.
64. a chemical used: “Material Safety Data Sheet, Klean-Strip Naked Gun Spray Gun Paint Remover,” Klean-Strip, April 17, 2014.
65. “covering the organs”: Kellogg, Plain Facts for Old and Young, 383–84.
66. Jack the Ripper: “Who Was Jack the Ripper?,” National Geographic, October 29, 2008; Markel, The Kelloggs.
67. “school-girls are”: Kellogg, Plain Facts for Old and Young, 88–89.
68. kept a separate bedroom: Markel, The Kelloggs.
69. “it is difficult”: Ibid.
70. Initially, the sanitarium’s offerings: Ibid.
71. made, ideally: E. E. Kellogg, Science in the Kitchen (Battle Creek, MI: Health Publishing Company, 1892), 289.
72. which he eventually renamed: Smith, Food and Drink in American History, 161.
73. complaints of broken teeth: Markel, The Kelloggs.
74. Among his lesser-known creations: Sanitas Nut Food Company, Sanitas Nut Preparations and Specialties.
75. Nuttolene: Sanitas Nut Food Company, Sanitas Nut Preparations and Specialties.
76. Granose: Gitlin and Ellis, The Great American Cereal Book, 14–18.
77. Kellogg poured his first bowl: Markel, The Kelloggs.
78. followed by dozens more: Gitlin and Ellis, The Great American Cereal Book.
79. who allegedly stole: Jonathan Black, Making the American Body: The Remarkable Saga of the Men and Women Whose Feats, Feuds, and Passions Shaped Fitness History (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 8.
80. “scientific health food”: Smith, Food and Drink in American History, vol. 1, 1351.
81. Collier’s magazine: Smith, Food and Drink in American History, vol. 1, 1351–54.
82. “It am suttenly wunnerful”: The Delineator: A Magazine for Woman 69, no. 1 (January 1907): 151.
83. “So-Hi the Chinese Boy”: Gitlin and Ellis, The Great American Cereal Book, 163.
84. he ate oysters: Markel, The Kelloggs.
85. the chemical equivalent: John Harvey Kellogg, The Health Question Box: Or, a Thousand and One Health Questions Answered (Battle Creek, MI: Modern Medicine Publishing Company, 1920), 144.
86. little pay, little vacation time: Markel, The Kelloggs.
87. “as sweet as those”: George Howe Colt, Brothers: On His Brothers and Brothers in History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 162.
88. to begin manufacturing: Markel, The Kelloggs.
89. the industry’s first free prizes: Gitlin and Ellis, The Great American Cereal Book, 26.
90. endowed in 1979: Amy Trang, “Giving Back,” Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, December 21, 2010, www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news_articles/2010/giving-back.aspx.
91. Will won the legal right: Markel, The Kelloggs.
92. now known for such creations: “Our Brands,” Kellogg’s, www.kelloggs.com/en_US/ourfoods.html.
93. nearly 90 percent: Marion Nestle, What to Eat (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), Apple Books ed.
94. General Mills, which started out: Andrew F. Smith, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 80.
95. magically delicious cereals: “Cereal,” General Mills, www.generalmillscf.com/products/category/cereal.
96. Quaker Oats, which began: Smith, Food and Drink in American History, vol. 1, 248.
97. is now owned by PepsiCo: “About Quaker,” Quaker Oats Company, https://contact.pepsico.com/quaker/about-us.
98. has gone on to make: “Products,” Quaker Oats Company, www.capncrunch.com.
99. Post, founded in 1895: Smith, Food and Drink in American History, vol. 1, 162.
100. now responsible: “Explore Our Cereals,” Post Consumer Brands, https://www.postconsumerbrands.com/explore-our-cereals/.
101. “A short list of aphrodisiacs”: MacClancy, Consuming Culture: Why You Eat What You Eat, 77.
102. olisbokollix: Peter James and Nick Thorpe, Ancient Inventions (New York: Ballantine, 1994), 183.
103. baking loaves in the shape: MacClancy, Consuming Culture, 78–79.
104. “Those, therefore, who”: Plato, The Republic, translated by Desmond Lee (New York:
Penguin Classics, 2003), 327.
105. “an acceptance and appreciation”: Beth Kempton, Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life (New York: Harper Design, 2019), Kindle ed.
106. “Men who stuff themselves”: Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste; or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, translated by M.F.K. Fisher (New York: Knopf, 2009), Apple Books ed.
107. “To whom a little”: Quoted in William Wallace, Epicureanism (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1880), 48.
108. “I am thrilled”: Quoted in Cyril Bailey, Epicurus: The Extant Remains (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), 131.
109. “We ought to be”: Quoted in Wallace, Epicureanism, 48–49.
Chapter 4: Children of the Corn
1. “And thus it is”: Arthur C. Parker, “Iroquois Uses of Maize and Other Food Plants,” New York State Museum Bulletin 144, no. 482 (1910): 15.
2. up until roughly: Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, eds., The Cambridge World History of Food, vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 100.
3. and neither was farming: Martin Elkort, The Secret Life of Food: A Feast of Food and Drink History, Folklore, and Fact (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1991), 11.
4. foraging for things: Ken Albala, Food: A Cultural Culinary History, transcript book, The Great Courses, 2013, 20.
5. breed animals in dark: “Animals Used for Food,” PETA, www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food.
6. generally led to a decline: Albala, Food, 19.
7. farming returned only about: Ibid., 20.
8. Jack Rodney Harlan: Theodore Hymowitz, “Dedication: Jack R. Harlan Crop Evolutionist, Scholar,” in Plant Breeding Reviews, vol. 8, edited by Jules Janick (Portland, OR: Timber Press, 1990), 1–6.
9. “the equivalent of more”: Ibid.
10. “Instead of being”: Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Food: A History (New York: Macmillan, 2001), 93.
11. the first instances of farming: Albala, Food, 33–34.
12. “people were impelled”: B. W. Higman, How Food Made History (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 9.
13. stockpiling them: Kristen J. Gremillion, Ancestral Appetites: Food in Prehistory (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 45.
14. discovery of fermentation: Tom Standage, A History of the World in Six Glasses (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006), 14–15.
15. dug pits for food: Gremillion, Ancestral Appetites, 45.
16. rice in Asia: Gregory McNamee, Movable Feasts: The History, Science, and Lore of Food (New York: Praeger, 2007), 66.
17. teosinte bears almost no resemblance: Sherry A. Flint-Garcia, “Kernel Evolution: From Teosinte to Maize,” in Maize Kernel Development, edited by Brian A. Larkins (Oxfordshire, UK: CABI, 2017), 1–15.
18. five to twelve hundred: Sergio O. Serna-Saldivar, ed., Corn: Chemistry and Technology, 3rd ed. (Duxford, UK: Elsevier, 2018), 150.
19. one-tenth the weight: Flint-Garcia, “Kernel Evolution.”
20. there wasn’t a central cob: Ibid.
21. Baby corn: “The Selective Science of Baby Corn,” All Things Considered, NPR, April 8, 2006, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5332519.
22. the first farmers popped: Flint-Garcia, “Kernel Evolution.”
23. choosing only the seeds: Kiple and Ornelas, The Cambridge World History of Food, 101.
24. The French bulldog: Kat Eschner, “The Evolution of Petface,” Smithsonian, January 31, 2018, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evolution-petface-180967987.
25. upward of 80 percent: Katy M. Evans and Vicki J. Adams, “Proportion of Litters of Purebred Dogs Born by Caesarean Section,” Journal of Small Animal Practice 51, no. 2 (2010): 113–18.
26. interference with natural selection: William Feeney, “Natural Selection in Black and White: How Industrial Pollution Changed Moths,” The Conversation, July 15, 2015; Helen Thompson, “Ten Species That Are Evolving Due to the Changing Climate,” Smithsonian, October 24, 2014; Beth Marie Mole, “Swallows May be Evolving to Dodge Traffic,” Nature, March 18, 2013; Cornelia Dean, “Research Ties Human Acts to Harmful Rates of Species Evolution,” New York Times, January 12, 2009; John W. Doudna and Brent J. Danielson, “Rapid Morphological Change in the Masticatory Structures of an Important Ecosystem Service Provider,” PLOS ONE, June 10, 2015.
27. the lack of a central cob: Flint-Garcia, “Kernel Evolution.”
28. would naturally separate and fall: Andrew F. Smith, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 341–44.
29. The Iroquois planted corn: Marcia Eames-Sheavly, The Three Sisters: Exploring an Iroquois Garden (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 3.
30. that would convert: Robert Flynn and John Idowu, “Nitrogen Fixation by Legumes,” Guide A-129, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, New Mexico State University, https://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_a/A129.
31. the squash would provide: Bill Price, Fifty Foods That Changed the Course of History (New York: Firefly, 2014), 51.
32. eating their own dogs: James Trager, The Food Chronology: A Food Lover’s Compendium of Events and Anecdotes, from Prehistory to the Present (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 113.
33. 350,000-square-mile belt: Smith, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 341–44.
34. we now have to inject: Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal (New York: Grove Press, 1986), 28.
35. “chemicals of interest”: “Appendix A: Chemicals of Interest (COI) List,” The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) Chemicals of Interest List, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, 2019.
36. a key ingredient: “Anhydrous Ammonia Thefts and Releases Associated with Illicit Methamphetamine Production—16 States, January 2000–June 2004,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 54, no. 14 (2005), 359–61.
37. spreading lab-created STDs: Katie Pratt, “UK Researchers One Step Closer to Corn Earworm Control,” University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, March 26, 2016, https://news.ca.uky.edu/article/uk-researchers-one-step-closer-corn-earworm-control.
38. seeding croplands: Serna-Saldivar, Corn, 12.
39. 93 million acres of cropland: Brooke Barton and Sarah Elizabeth Clark, “Water & Climate Risks Facing U.S. Corn Production: How Companies & Investors Can Cultivate Sustainability,” Ceres, 2014, 15.
40. spread across states: Ibid., 8.
41. consuming more fertilizer: Ibid., 45.
42. about 19 billion pounds: Ibid., 9.
43. roughly 400,000 gallons of water: Ibid., 34.
44. 140 gallons of fuel: “Ethanol Fuel from Corn Faulted as ‘Unsustainable Subsidized Food Burning’ in Analysis by Cornell Scientist,” Cornell Chronicle, August 6, 2001, https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2001/08/ethanol-corn-faulted-energy-waster-scientist-says.
45. pollute the groundwater: Barton and Clark, “Water & Climate Risks Facing U.S. Corn Production,” 44.
46. primary source of calories: Serna-Saldivar, Corn, 436.
47. more than a third: Ibid., 19.
48. 49.1 pounds per person: “Corn Sweeteners: Per Capita Availability Adjusted for Loss.” “Loss-Adjusted Food Availability: Sugar and Sweeteners (Added),” US Department of Agriculture, January 5, 2021, https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-per-capita-data-system.
49. cornstarch and corn flour: “A Tale of Two Corns,” National Corn Growers Association, January 2018.
50. which rely on corn: Serna-Saldivar, Corn, 447.
51. a lot of beers: Ibid., 461.
52. nonfermented soy sauce: “Commercial Item Description, Soy Sauce,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, April 28, 2006.
53. anything that contains: “Corn Allergy,” American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, March 8, 2019.
54. pot
ential food allergens: Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004, Pub. L. 108–282, Title II, 20 August 20, 2004, US Food and Drug Administration, www.fda.gov/food/food-allergens-and-gluten-free-guidance-documents-and-regulatory-information/food-allergen-labeling-and-consumer-protection-act-2004-falcpa.
