Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity

I was hoping for a really thoroughly researched, encyclopedic book about all sorts of different flavors and their genetic, historic and anthropologic rationales. In retrospect, that was a really tall order, so the fail to meet expectations needs to be put in that context.

And the book isn't bad. Parts are quite good: the conversation about the diversity of human diet and evolution since paleolithic times and the hypothesis that dependent on different genetic makeup people need different foods in order to be healthy (although he seems to view this in a very prescriptive fashion, leaving those of us with mixed genetic ancestry, which, I mean, is nearly everyone these days, to wonder if we need to whole genome sequence ourselves just to answer “what's for dinner?”)

I also really enjoyed the chapter on different tasters. I knew that I was a bitter taster from high school bio taste tester strips, but I like many classically bitter foods – cruciferous vegetables, very dark chocolate, etc., so I had always discounted the idea of chemical tasters, but the chapter really helped explain the spectrum of phenotype and expand it to things that I am averse to (grapefruit, orange pith).

The chapter on G6PD is decent. Anyone who reads popular science with any avidity already knows G6PD, but the speculation about its coincidence not just with regions with malaria but also the timing of the fava season to the malaria season expanding the discussion.


There was a very long discussion at the beginning about Native Americans, alcoholism and diabetes. These topics have been covered at length and certainly Dr. Nabhan explores his personal ties to these issues, but this part is not very scientifically interesting.

His section on MTHFR is probably the poorest – people are at a cardiac disadvantage if they carry the polymorphism and don't ingest enough folate, and then he concludes that the polymorphism flourished in Northern Europe because it encouraged folate dependence and therefore encouraged selective mating (i.e. mates who did not have access to folate would become sick, allowing people of mating age to select only those with access to folate.) However, that is a pretty flimsy explanation for why there would be a selection advantage for the mutation (versus the wildtype, which would appear fit regardless of access to folate.) It's clear Nabhan is not a geneticist!

Another complaint is that he is obsessed with the idea that we have nutritional diseases. He keeps alluding to the fact that food intolerances are growing and that we as a population are increasingly unhealthy (and hypothesizes it's because we don't eat our specific ancestral food, which, see above re: genelogical prescriptivism.) This is just a pet peeve of mine – people are mostly getting healthier as time passes.

My biggest complaint overall, though, is how thin the volume is: it includes the chapters I mentioned and another exploring why we eat spicy food and why different people tolerate it more than others and that's it.