num_pages: 244
description: In Why Some Like It Hot, an award-winning natural historian takes us on a culinary odyssey to solve the puzzles posed by "the ghosts of evolution" hidden within every culture and its traditional cuisine. As we travel with Nabhan from Java and Bali to Crete and Sardinia, to Hawaii and Mexico, we learn how various ethnic cuisines formerly protected their traditional consumers from both infectious and nutrition-related diseases. We also bear witness to the tragic consequences of the loss of traditional foods, from adult-onset diabetes running rampant among 100 million indigenous peoples to the historic rise in heart disease among individuals of northern European descent.
language: English
title: Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity
titlecomplete: Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity
genres: History, Cultural, Food, Food and Drink, Nutrition, Science, Genetics, Food History, Nonfiction, Anthropology
ratings_count: 291
publisher: Island Press