Podcasts

Yes, we have no plantains But we do have bananas, and plantains are bananas

  10

Two bananas, one of which is called a plantain

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Jessica Kehinde Ngo portrait Jessica Kehinde Ngo recently wrote an impassioned piece bemoaning the fact that “the plantain has long been eclipsed by its banana cousin”. That alarmed me a little, as did the question immediately afterwards: “Where can the curious go to learn about its fascinating transnational history?” My problems were, first, that I do not regard plantains and bananas as cousins. Botanically, they are one and the same. Secondly, despite having apparently done lots of research, Jessica Kehinde Ngo seems not to have encountered the mother lode for all the scientific evidence on banana one might want, for example:

Julie Sardos with collection of diverse banana typesThe banana vs plantain dichotomy perpetuates the misconception that banana refers to dessert bananas only, and plantain to all cooking bananas, a distinction that doesn’t exist in countries where the banana is native and that arose in English,

We were coming at the word “plantain” from different standpoints. For Jessica, “[e]ach bite of plantain connects me to my roots, though I am many miles from my father’s homeland”. For me, the inability of my Musa-specialist ex-colleagues usefully to distinguish plantains from bananas was at one time a very sore point.

Time to bring the cultural and the botanical together, by talking to Jessica Kehinde Ngo and Julie Sardos, who collects and classifies bananas at the Musa Germplasm Transit Centre.

Notes

  1. Jessica Kehinde Ngo’s article is Publish the plantain: Why this venerable, global fruit deserves a book of its own.
  2. Julie Sardos’ account of bananas is expanded in two articles. The first explains the difficulty we have in classifying bananas (and the origins of “plantain” versus “banana”) while the second will take you deep into the rabbit hole of banana classification. To identify a true plantain, this page might help.
  3. And here is the transcript, thanks to the show’s supporters.

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Podcasts

Food Philosophy Edo ergo sum

  10

John Paul Sartre smokes a pipe and drinks a coffee in Paris

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:00 — 28.5MB)

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David M KaplanDavid Kaplan calls himself a taste realist. That means he really does think that there’s something there, in food or drink, that enables us to agree on what it tastes like, if only we have the vocabulary. Kaplan is professor of philosophy at the University of North Texas, and aesthetics is only one of the areas of philosophy that he applies specifically to food in his book Food Philosophy: An Introduction. We talked about all of them in this episode.

Notes

  1. Food Philosophy: An Introduction is published by Columbia University Press. David Kaplan directs The Philosophy of Food Project, which contains many more resources at its website.
  2. In case you missed them, here’s a little mini-series I did on taste:
  3. In case you were wondering (I was, but I didn’t want to lose the thread) the Mount Rushmore of Existentialists would be Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heideger and Sartre.
  4. Here’s the transcript.

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Extra Matter

A real Roman bread for Fornacalia

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My visit to Ostia Antica last year, guided by the wonderfully knowledgeable Farrell Monaco, was destined to end in more than a podcast. There was no way I was going to be able to avoid attempting a panis quadratus of my own, and what better time to make the effort than during Fornacalia?

How did it go? You’ll have to head over to my breadsite.

Podcasts

Unconditional cash to improve nutrition Maybe what poor people need is money, not aid

7

Villagers in Malawi learn about Give Directly

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Mobile phone showing cash transfer withdrawal

Despite large investments in aid programmes, poverty and hunger remain persistent problems in many parts of the world. Most aid, though, gives people what the donors think they need. What if you give poor people cash, to spend as they see fit? The leader in this field is a charity called Give Directly, started by students at Harvard and MIT after their research showed that a lot of philanthopy was both very inefficient and not very effective. Unconditional cash has greater impact, at lower cost, than skills training, microcredit, farmer field schools and just about every other form of aid.

Does cash enable people to improve their food security and nutrition? That’s what I wanted to find out from Give Directly staff in Uganda and Malawi.

Portraits of Miriam Laker-Oketta and Esnatt Gondwe-Matekesa
Miriam Laker-Oketta (left) and Esnatt Gondwe-Matekesa (right)

Notes

  1. The impact of unconditional cash is seen in many areas, not just health and nutrition. Give Directly’s research on cash transfers provides summaries of evidence.
  2. The specific study Miriam Laker-Oketta referred to is Benchmarking a WASH and Nutrition Program to Cash in Rwanda.
  3. Photos taken from the Give Directly website.

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Podcasts

Ten thousand years of yoghurt It’s all a matter of culture

  22

stacked yoghurt pots at a market in Beijing

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:56 — 22.0MB)

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June Hersh
June Hersh
The story is that way back when, Neolithic people discovered that they could eat milk that had gone sour with impunity, even though ordinary milk upset their digestion. The sour milk allowed them to get the nutritional benefit of milk, and also favoured anyone who could actually tolerate a little lactose. And thus was the culture of yoghurt born, helping those Neolithic farmers to move into northern Europe. Fast forward 10,000 years or thereabouts, and the bacteria that soured milk were held to be responsible for the extreme longevity of Bulgarian peasants. That theory gave birth to a craze for Lactobacillus bulgaricus, as it was known, and yoghurt.

All this and more I learned from Yoghurt: A Global History, a recent book by June Hersh. What I still don’t know is why those Neolithic people were even trying to drink milk, if it upset their stomachs. They were keeping sheep and goats, sure, but why were they milking them?

Notes

  1. Yoghurt: A Global History is available from Reaktion Books, and for a discount enter Yoghurt21 at checkout.
  2. Metchnikoff is a pretty fascinating character quite apart from his role in the rise of yoghurt. His Nobel biography is an interesting starting place, which naturally leads to a book extract about his public lecture.
  3. It really is very easy to make your own yoghurt at home, though not as easy as kefir.
  4. Here is the transcript

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  5. Banner photo from Nikolaj Potanin on Flickr.

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