Cooked - A Natural History of Transformat Part 37

Chia-Yu Chen, Rosalind, et al., "Cooking Frequency May Enhance Survival in Taiwanese Elderly," Public Health Nutrition 15 (July 2012): 114249.

I. A GREAT WHITE LOAF

* Hammes, Walter P., et al., "Microbial Ecology of Cereal Fermentations," Trends in Food Science & Technology 16 No. 1-3 (2005): 411.

* Sugihara, T. F., et al., "Microorganisms of the San Francisco Sour Dough Bread Process I. Yeasts Responsible for the Leavening Action," Applied Microbiology 21 No. 3 (1971): 4568. Kline, L., et al., "Microorganisms of the San Francisco Sour Dough Bread Process II. Isolation and Characterization of the Undescribed Bacterial Species Responsible for the Souring Activity," Applied Microbiology 21 No. 3 (1971): 45965.

Candida milleri is sometimes also referred to as Saccharomyces exiguous.

* I would learn later that the dough at Tartine is even wetter than what the published recipe calls for; in the book Robertson reduced the amount of water by 10 percent or so, fearing that home bakers confronting a dough too wet to knead would "freak out."

* What gluten offered human wheat eaters is obvious enough, but what, if anything, did it offer the plant? I've put this question to several wheat breeders and botanists, and the consensus answer seems to be: nothing special. All seeds store proteins for the future use of the new plant by locking up amino acids in stable chains called polymers. The default storage protein in most gra.s.ses is globulin, over which gliadin and glutenin offer no advantages-except, that is, for the one tremendous advantage of happening to gratify the desires of an animal as well traveled and influential as h.o.m.o sapiens.

In his book 1493, Charles Mann suggests that the first bread wheat was planted in the New World in Mexico, after Cortes found three kernels in a bag of rice sent from Spain. He ordered the seeds planted in a plot by a chapel in Mexico City. Two of them took and, according to a sixteenth-century account, "little by little there was boundless wheat"-much to the delight of the clergy, who needed bread to properly celebrate ma.s.s.

* Milton has a beautiful pa.s.sage in Paradise Lost in which he describes humankind's inexorable progress toward ever more ethereal types of nourishment, culminating in the bread of Christ:

So from the root

Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves

More airy, last the bright consummate flow'r

Spirits odorous breathes: flow'rs and their fruit.

Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed,

To vital spirits aspire ...

Time may come when men

With angels may partic.i.p.ate, and find

No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare;

And from these corporal nutriments perhaps

Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit. ...

II. THINKING LIKE A SEED

* John Marchant, Bryan Reuben, and Joan Alc.o.c.k, Bread: A Slice of History (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2009).

* The epidemiologists correct for the fact that, today, people who eat more whole grains also tend to be more affluent and better educated and more health conscious in general.

* Jacobs, David R., and Lyn M. Steffen, "Nutrients, Foods, and Dietary Patterns as Exposures in Research: A Framework for Food Synergy," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 78 suppl. (2003): 508S13S.

* Many products that call themselves "whole grain" turn out to have white flour as their first (and therefore biggest) ingredient. A product may use the Whole Grain Council stamp even if it contains as much as 49 percent white flour. A bread, like Wonder Bread's Soft 100% Whole Wheat is not 100 percent whole wheat-only the part of it that is wheat is, and much of it consists of other ingredients. The idea of whole grain is evidently much more appealing to industry than the reality.

* In so-called baker's math, every ingredient in a recipe is expressed as a percentage of the weight of the flour, which is always expressed as 100 percent. Thus 104 percent hydration means that the dough contains slightly more water by weight than flour-a lot.

* Not that these terms are ironclad guarantees: "Stone milled" is not a government-backed claim, and whole grain, if it's not stone milled, may or may not contain the germ.

FERMENT I. VEGETABLE

* I first encountered the term in a fascinating article on the debate over raw-milk cheeses by MIT anthropologist Heather Paxson: "Post-Pasteurian Cultures: The Microbiopolitics of Raw-Milk Cheese in the United States," Cultural Anthropology 23 No. 1 (2008): 1547.

* Lactobacillus is a genus of common bacteria that convert sugars-including lactose-into lactic acid. A "lactofermentation" is fermentation conducted primarily by this type of bacteria.

* There are no rules here, but I more or less tried to honor the cla.s.sic "flavor principles": an Asian mix of ginger, garlic, coriander, and star anise for the turnips and beets; Indian spices like turmeric, cinnamon, and cardamom for the cauliflower and carrots; garlic, dill, and peppercorns for the cuc.u.mbers and green tomatoes.

* Though you can inoculate it if you want to: Some old-school pickling recipes call for adding some whey to the brine, a liquid teeming with lactobacilli; I tried it once, adding a spoonful of the clear liquid from the top of a yogurt container, and it did seem to speed the process. But what's the rush?

* Biologists use the term "microbiota" to refer to a community of microbes, and "microbiome" to refer to the collective genome of those microbes.

* Robinson, Courtney J., et al., "From Structure to Function."

* This is equally true for the somewhat different bacterial communities found in other locations on the body-the mouth, the skin, the nasal pa.s.sages, and the v.a.g.i.n.a. In the v.a.g.i.n.a, for example, dozens of species of Lactobacillus ferment glycogen, a sugar secreted by the v.a.g.i.n.al lining. The lactic acid produced by these bacteria helps maintain a pH low enough to protect the v.a.g.i.n.a against pathogens.

* Hehemann, Jan-Henrik, et al., "Transfer of Carbohydrate-Active Enzymes from Marine Bacteria to j.a.panese Gut Microbiota," Nature 464 (2010): 90812.

* Margulis theorized that both photosynthesis and cellular metabolism in animals began when bacteria took up residence in the evolutionary ancestors of plant and animal cells, contributing their metabolic expertise; eventually these invaders became the chloroplasts in plant cells and the mitochondria in the cells of animals.

* Turnbaugh, Peter J., et al., "An Obesity-a.s.sociated Gut Microbiome with Increased Capacity for Energy Harvest," Nature 444 (2006): 102731; Turnbaugh, P. J., et al., "A Core Gut Microbiome in Obese and Lean Twins," Nature 457 (2009): 48084; Turnbaugh, Peter J., et al., "The Human Microbiome Project," Nature 449 (2007): 80410.

This particular probiotic is found in some kinds of yogurt. (Bravo, J. A., et al., "Ingestion of Lactobacillus Strain Regulates Emotional Behavior and Central GABA Receptor Expression in a Mouse via the Vagus Nerve," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 No. 38 [2011]: 1605055).

* It has long been recognized that people with autism and schizophrenia often suffer from gastrointestinal disorders, and some recent work suggests there may be anomalies in their microflora. It's important to remember that correlation is not causation, and if there is causation, we don't know which way it goes. But evidence is acc.u.mulating that certain microbes in our bodies can affect our behavior and do so for their own purposes. Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite found in more than one billion people worldwide, has been shown to inspire neurotic self-destructive behavior in rats. The protozoa's reproductive cycle depends on infecting cats, which it does by getting them to eat the rats and mice in whose brains the parasite commonly resides. When the parasite infects a rat or mouse, it increases dopamine levels in its host, inspiring it to wander around recklessly in a way more likely to attract the attention of cats; the mice and rats also become attracted to the smell of cat urine, an odor that, under normal circ.u.mstances, causes them to flee or freeze. "Fatal feline attraction" is the name for this phenomenon. In people, the presence of Toxoplasma gondii has been linked to schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, poor attention and reaction times, and a greater likelihood of car accidents. (House, Patrick K., et al., "Predator Cat Odors Activate s.e.xual Arousal Pathways in Brains of Toxoplasma gondii-Infected Rats," PLoS ONE 6 No. 8 (August 2011): e23277 and Benson, Alicia, et al., "Gut Commensal Bacteria Direct a Protective Immune Response Against the Human Pathogen Toxoplasma Gondii," Cell Host & Microbe 6 No. 2 [2009]: 18796.)

* The PARSIFAL (Prevention of AllergyRisk Factors for Sensitization Related to Farming and Anthroposophic Lifestyle) study, conducted with nearly fifteen thousand children in five European countries between 2000 and 2002, compared rates of asthma, allergies, and eczema in children attending Rudolf Steiner Waldorf schools, children living on farms, and control groups. The children living on farms (where they were regularly exposed to dirt, microorganisms, and livestock) and the children in Waldorf schools (who ate more fermented vegetables and who received fewer antibiotics and fever-reducing medications) had lower rates of allergic diseases. Douwes, J., et al., "Farm Exposure in Utero May Protect Against Asthma," European Respiratory Journal 32 (2008): 60311; Ege, M. J., et al., "Prenatal Farm Exposure Is Related to the Expression of Receptors of the Innate Immunity and to Atopic Sensitization in School-Age Children," Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 117 (2006): 81723. Alfven, T., et al., "Allergic Diseases and Atopic Sensitization in Children Related to Farming and Anthroposophic Lifestyle-the PARSIFAL Study," Allergy 61 (2006): 41421. Perkin, Michael R., and David P. Strachan, "Which Aspects of the Farming Lifestyle Explain the Inverse a.s.sociation with Childhood Allergy?," Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 117 (2006): 137481. (Floistrup, H., et al., "Allergic Disease and Sensitization in Steiner School Children," Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 117 [2006]: 5966.)

* Blaser, Martin,. "Antibiotic Overuse: Stop the Killing of Beneficial Bacteria," Nature 476 (2011): 39394.

Consider the saga of the once-common stomach bacteria Helicobacter pylori. Long considered the pathogen responsible for causing peptic ulcers, the bacterium was routinely attacked with antibiotics, and as a result has become rare-today, less than 10 percent of American children test positive for H. pylori. Only recently have researchers discovered it also plays a positive role in our health: H. pylori helps regulate both stomach acid and ghrelin, one of the key hormones involved in appet.i.te. People who have been treated with antibiotics to eradicate the bacterium gain weight, possibly because the H. pylori is not acting to regulate their appet.i.te. See Blaser, Martin J., "Who Are We? Indigenous Microbes and the Ecology of Human Disease," EMBO Reports 7 No. 10 (2006): 95660.

* Zivkovic, Angela M., J. Bruce German, et al., "Human Milk Glycobiome and Its Impact on the Infant Gastrointestinal Microbiota," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 No. suppl 1 (2011): 465358.

1 Isolauri, E., et al., "Probiotics: A Role in the Treatment of Intestinal Infection and Inflammation?," Gut 50 Suppl 3 (2002): iii54iii59.

2 Leyer, Gregory J., et al., "Probiotic Effects on Cold and Influenza-like Symptom Incidence and Duration in Children," Pediatrics 124 No. 2 (2009): e17279.

3 Vrese, Michael de, and Philippe R. Marteau, "Probiotics and Prebiotics: Effects on Diarrhea," Journal of Nutrition 137 No. 3 (2007): 803S11s.

4 Quigley, E. M., "The Efficacy of Probiotics in IBS," Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology 42 No. Suppl 2 (2008): S8590.

5 Michail, Sonia, "The Role of Probiotics in Allergic Diseases," Allergy, Asthma, and Clinical Immunology: Official Journal of the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 5 No. 1 (2009): 5.