November 22–29, 2001

loose canon

Eat Me, Change You

by Bruce Schimmel

After reading The Botany of Desire, I’ve come to view food somewhat as Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have. "Eat me," "Drink me," plead the little tags attached to tempting goodies — which, when consumed, transform the little girl in some unexpected ways.

That’s the premise behind Michael Pollan’s new book, subtitled "A plant’s-eye view of the world." As humans, Pollan argues that we have been changed by the plants we eat, drink and smoke in ways we never intended, or possibly ever wanted. The plants we’ve domesticated have made us unwitting partners in a kind of high-speed co-evolution.

A sobering thought, as we scarf down Thanksgiving dinner.

Through four personal essays, meticulously researched, Pollan describes how plants have cultivated us by becoming objects of human desire.

Consider the apple, for instance, which Pollans argues exploited the deep human desire for sweetness.

Until Prohibition, most apples were not eaten, but turned into something to be drunk, and to get drunk from. The seeds that Johnny sowed so prodigally were in fact sour "spitters," good only for making hard apple cider.

The ax that Carrie Nation wielded was aimed trunks of apple trees. After Prohibition, in order to survive, argues Pollan, the apple led humans to change the fruit into something sweet.

It’s a wacky, Alice in Wonderland premise, where critters have consciousness and plants bid us to do their wills.

Pollan then tells the story of the tulip, how its beauty, and the lust it inspired in us to possess it, nearly bankrupted the Dutch economy in the 17th century. Tulip "futures" were the Internet stock of the time.

In his third and most speculative chapter, Pollan argues that our desire for intoxication has been manipulated by marijuana. The plant it’s become has changed human consciousness in subtle ways to ensure its continued survival.

In a final and most disturbing chapter, Pollans documents how the potato grown for fast food is forcing us into using genetic engineering. Here’s a case where the human desire for control has snuck the potato across genetic borders — a clear violation of the laws of natural and artificial selection, making the lowly potato a likely poster-thing of unintended consequences.

Hungry for more? Read the book, and check out the upcoming conference, "Spreading the Bounty, Safeguarding the Future," sponsored by the Farmer’s Market Trust, Nov. 29 and 30. For more info: www.foodfarm.org.