BOOKS ON PLANTS AND FOOD
Page Navigation Buttons---Recommended from the American Botannical Council Bookstore, via their web pages or
800/373-7105 for credit-card orders. or send check or money order to: ABC Books, Box
201660, Austin, TX 78720-1660. No indications about school PO's. They publish
Herbalgram an excellent, well-illustrated magazine for $25/year.
Traditional Plant Foods of Canadian Indigenous Peoples: Nutrition, Botany, and
Use, Harriet Kuhnlein and Nancy Turner, Gordon and Breech, 1991, hardcover, 633
pp. Covers 1050 species, Canada and northern U.S. states. $88, available from
American Botannical Council Books, #B030
Ironically, this expensive book was "primarily intended as a resource for
native peoples, botanists, nutritionists, and other health care professionals who
may be working with native peoples." The authors are pros in ethno-nutrition. This
book is No. 8 in the series "Food and nutrition in history and anthropology.".150
pages of tables try to cover nutrient values of traditional plant foods. There'san
outline overview of plants by Latin name, so you can look them up in other
botannical sources. Toxicities are also noted. What's most noteworthy, though, is
that most of the traditional foods really haven't been given much analysis. Wild rice
-- whose analysis I publish at the end of my story about it just before the recipes --
was analyzed by University of Minnesota largely at the urgings of several Indian
people, but that analysis -- done in the late 1970's -- can now be seen to be
incomplete in that nutrients which have now come to be seen as vital (such as
soluble and insoluble fiber) are ignored. The situation is much worse for most
traditional native plant foods. It is too bad this book is so expensive that most
native groups, schools, individuals, etc. will not be able to afford it.lA Handbook of Edible Weeds, Dr. James A. Duke, 1992, 246 pp, $44. 100 plants with
detailed field ID pix, descriptions, parts used, preparation, habitat, region, safety
precautions, historical use` (including native uses), current uses. Much more
thorough than similar books by Euell Gibbons and others. but not much on the
recipes for good eating.lEating on the Wild Side: The Pharmacologic, Ecologic, and Social Implications of
Using Non Cultigens, ed. Nina Etkin, 1994, 305 pp, $40. A collection of essays and
research by anthros, paleontologists, ethnobiologists that explores issues such as
consumption of "famine time" foods. Comparison of aboriginal, colonial, and
modern diets. The so-called "caveman diet" (most food from plant sources) is
discussed here, with the argument that diets of this family are what human beings
have been genetically blueprinted to survive on.lAmerican Botannical Council has sponsored seminar- visits to Ix Chel, a Belize
botannical study area bringing together traditional and modern scientific healers.lNative Foods/Plants: Recommended Books
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