Eating and Healing: Traditional Food as Medicine »

Discover neglected wild food sources—that can also be used as medicine!

The long-standing notion of “food as medicine, medicine as food,” can be traced back to Hippocrates. Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine is a global overview of wild and semi-domesticated foods and their use as medicine in traditional societies. Important cultural information, along with extensive case studies, provides a clear, authoritative look at the many neglected food sources still being used around the world today. This book bridges the scientific disciplines of medicine, food science, human ecology, and environmental sciences with their ethno-scientific counterparts of ethnobotany, ethnoecology, and ethnomedicine to provide a valuable multidisciplinary resource for education and instruction.

Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine presents respected researchers’ in-depth case studies on foods different cultures use as medicines and as remedies for nutritional deficiencies in diet. Comparisons of living conditions in different geographic areas as well as differences in diet and medicines are thoroughly discussed and empirically evaluated to provide scientific evidence of the many uses of these traditional foods as medicine and as functional foods. The case studies focus on the uses of plants, seaweed, mushrooms, and fish within their cultural contexts while showing the dietary and medical importance of these foods. The book provides comprehensive tables, extensive references, useful photographs, and helpful illustrations to provide clear scientific support as well as opportunities for further thought and study.

Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine explores the ethnobiology of:

• Tibet—antioxidants as mediators of high-altitude nutritional physiology
  
• Northeast Thailand—“wild” food plant gathering
  
• Southern Italy—the consumption of wild plants by Albanians and Italians
  
• Northern Spain—medicinal digestive beverages
  
• United States—medicinal herb quality
  
• Commonwealth of Dominica—humoral medicine and food
  
• Cuba—promoting health through medicinal foods
  
• Brazil—medicinal uses of specific fishes
  
• Brazil—plants from the Amazon and Atlantic Forest
  
• Bolivian Andes—traditional food medicines
  
• New Patagonia—gathering of wild plant foods with medicinal uses
  
• Western Kenya—uses of traditional herbs among the Luo people
  
• South Cameroon—ethnomycology in Africa
  
• Morocco—food medicine and ethnopharmacology

Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine is an essential research guide and educational text about food and medicine in traditional societies for educators, students from undergraduate through graduate levels, botanists, and research specialists in nutrition and food science, anthropology, agriculture, ethnoecology, ethnobotany, and ethnobiology.

Library Journal

In the specialized fields of ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, and ethnomedicine, food and medicine have traditionally been considered separate realms of study. Recently, the two have begun to be studied in conjunction, as this book demonstrates. Editors Pieroni (pharmacognosy, Univ. of Bradford, U.K.) and Price (sociology of consumers and households, Wageningen Univ., the Netherlands) have compiled primary research from 26 contributors on wild and semidomesticated foods and their use as medicine in traditional or indigenous cultures in Africa, Asia, North and South America, Europe, and the Caribbean (the South Pacific/Australia and Arctic regions are not represented). Each chapter is, in essence, a scientific paper documenting the overlap of medicine and food in one region (e.g., northern Spain, New Patagonia). Although the book's scope is broad, each paper is quite specific-readers should not anticipate an overview of the field. Pieroni and Price have produced what would be an excellent accompaniment to a course textbook in applicable university settings. Recommended for academic libraries.-Andy Wickens, King Cty. Lib. Syst., Seattle Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

About the Editors

Contributors

Introduction (Andrea Pieroni and Lisa L. Price)

Asia

Europe

North America

The Caribbean

South America

Africa

Chapter 1. Edible Wild Plants As Food and As Medicine: Reflections on Thirty Years of Fieldwork (Louis E. Grivetti)

Introduction

Genesis

Three Decades of Ethnobotanical Research

Reflections and Potential Research Areas

Coda

Chapter 2. Tibetan Foods and Medicines: Antioxidants As Mediators of High-Altitude Nutritional Physiology (Patrick L. Owen)

Introduction

Adaptations to Altitude

Oxidative Stress and Antioxidants

Tibetan High-Altitude Food Systems

Tibetan Medicine

Summary

Chapter 3. Wild Food Plants in Farming Environments with Special Reference to Northeast Thailand, Food As Function and Medicinal, and Social Roles of Women (Lisa Leimar Price)

Introduction

Wild Plant Foods in the Farming Environment

Women's Roles, Women's Work, and Women's Knowledge

Consumption and Nutrition

Overlaps: Medicinal and Functional Food

Medicinal and Functional Food Wild Plants of Northeast Thailand

Gathered Food Plants of Northeast Thailand with Medicinal Value

Investigations of Wild Plant Foods As Functional/Medicinal Foods in Thailand

Multiple Use Value, Rarity, and Privatization

Conclusions

Chapter 4. Functional Foods or Food Medicines? On the Consumption of Wild Plants Among Albanians and Southern Italians in Lucania (Andrea Pieroni and Cassandra L. Quave)

Introduction

Ethnographic Background

Field Methods

Wild Food and Medicinal Plants in Lucania

Pharmacology of Wild Functional Foods Consumed in Southern Italy

Conclusion

Chapter 5. Digestive Beverages As a Medicinal Food in a Cattle-Farming Community in Northern Spain (Campoo, Cantabria) (Manuel Pardo de Santayana, Elia San Miguel, and Ramón Morales)

Introduction

Changes in Food and Health Habits and Conditions

Medicinal Food: Digestive Beverages

Conclusions

Chapter 6. "The Forest and the Seaweed": Gitga'at Seaweed, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Community Survival (Nancy J. Turner and Helen Clifton)

Introduction

Seaweed Use Worldwide

Gitga'at Seaweed Use

The Forest and the Seaweed

Back Home in Hartley Bay

Conclusion

Chapter 7. Medicinal Herb Quality in the United States: Bridging Perspectives with Chinese Medical Theory (Craig A. Hassel, Christopher A. Hafner, Renne Soberg, and Jeff Adelmann)

Context from a Biomedical Perspective

Context from a Chinese Medical Theory Perspective

Dilemma of "Integrating" Two Divergent Epistemologies

Founding a Medicinal Herb Network

Chapter 8. Balancing the System: Humoral Medicine and Food in the Commonwealth of Dominica (Marsha B. Quinlan and Robert J. Quinlan)

Introduction

Setting

Methods

Results and Discussion

Conclusion

Chapter 9. Medicinal Foods in Cuba: Promoting Health in the Household (Gabriele Volpato

and Daimy Godinez)

Introduction

Results and Discussion

Conclusions

Chapter 10. Healthy Fish: Medicinal and Recommended Species in the Amazon and the Atlantic Forest Coast (Brazil) (Alpina Begossi, Natalia Hanazaki, and Rossano M. Ramos)

Introduction

Methods

Results and Discussion

Conclusions

Chapter 11. Edible and Healing Plants in the Ethnobotany of Native Inhabitants of the Amazon and Atlantic Forest Areas of Brazil (Natalia Hanazaki, Nivaldo Peroni, and Alpina Begossi)

Introduction

Study Site and Methods

Results and Discussion

Conclusions

Appendix

Chapter 12. Food Medicines in the Bolivian Andes (Apillapampa, Cochabamba Department) (Ina Vandebrook and Sabrino Sanca)

Introduction

Study Area

Ethnographic Data

Methodology

Results and Discussion

Conclusion

Chapter 13. Gathering of Wild Plant Foods with Medicinal Use in a Mapuche Community of Northern Patagonia (Ana H. Ladio)

Introduction

Study Area

Methods

Results

Discussion

Chapter 14. Dietary and Medicinal Use of Traditional Herbs Among the Luo of Western Kenya (Charles Ogoye-Ndegwa and Jens Aagaard-Hansen)

Introduction

Materials and Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion

Chapter 15. Ethnomycology in Africa, with Particular Reference to the Rain Forest Zone of South Cameroon (Thomas W. Kuyper)

Introduction

Mycophilia versus Mycophobia

Overview of Mushroom Use in Africa

Mushroom Knowledge and Utilization by Bantu and Bagyeli in South Cameroon

Mushrooms: Meat of the Poor

Chapter 16. Aspects of Food Medicine and Ethnopharmacology in Morocco (Mohamed Eddouks)

Introduction

Food Medicine

Phytotherapy

Conclusions

Index

Reference Notes Included