By Adam Rabiner
How can you not be delighted by a film that begins with a close-up of Nigella Lawson answering the question, “What’s the weirdest piece of meat you have ever had?” Without any hesitation she proffers testicle, coated with eggs and fried up with bread crumbs it tastes like a mild, white liver: gentle, delicate, melting flesh, similar to brain or bone marrow. That description might not get you salivating but it’s sure to pique your interest, amuse, or disgust you. Eat: The Story of Food, produced by National Geographic for cable television (Carnivores is episode two of this six part series), views food through a historical, cultural, and anthropological lens. It touches on serious issues such as feed lots and over-reliance on industrial food production, but in its essence, Eat is celebratory and humorous. It is education made fun.
The central message of the film is “we are what we eat,” including deep fried rat from southern China, caterpillars, spiders and crickets, chicken feet and various other animal parts including head and tail. Meat is what our species needed to become human (we cook, other animals don’t). The discovery of fire - a “eureka moment” - unleashed stores of energy, literally fueling our evolution. Man has been grilling for a million years. Barbeque is a universal concept. It is believed BBQ derives from “barabicu” - the sacred fire pit - of the Taino Indigenous Nation of the Caribbean and Florida.
Eat is for foodies, especially meat lovers. It’s fast paced, lively, and fun. Everyone is doing their best to entertain and the food is the star, including the often maligned New York City dirty water dog, the humble sausage, and the common hamburger. There are regional differences too. In NYC you are likely to eat your hot dog on a simple white bread bun perhaps with a flourish of sauerkraut, tomato/onion mix, mustard or ketchup. In Chicago you’ll eat it on a poppy seed bun with green fluorescent pickle relish and ketchup is verboten.
There’s plenty else to be learned from Eat. Here are a few. The ancient Romans held an annual sausage festival, slash orgy, called Lupercalia, where men chased down women striking them with leather thongs, a blow from which was supposed to render them fertile. And while 1 in 200 men are thought to be direct descendants of Genghis Khan, apparently he’s also the father of the hamburger. While there are several competing claims about whom or where the hamburger was invented, ranging from Hamburg, Germany where steak tartar was popular to Hamburg, New York, where Frank and Charles Menches claim to have sold a ground beef sandwich at the Erie County Fair in 1885, it is thought to have its origins with thirteenth century Mongolians who tenderized their meat by placing it under their saddles during forays onto the steppes.
Eat does delve into such serious issues as animal feed lots, the unsustainability of the current food system, and the future of meat. Not long ago a beef patty was grown in a laboratory at a cost of $325,000. According to the three lucky people who got to try it, the burger packed the sizzle and flavor of the real thing.
But more than anything else, Eat wants to make you laugh or at least smile. If you like your educational content served with a dollop of cheer, Eat may just be your cup of tea. And as the New Yorker might say, “Block that Metaphor.”
How can you not be delighted by a film that begins with a close-up of Nigella Lawson answering the question, “What’s the weirdest piece of meat you have ever had?” Without any hesitation she proffers testicle, coated with eggs and fried up with bread crumbs it tastes like a mild, white liver: gentle, delicate, melting flesh, similar to brain or bone marrow. That description might not get you salivating but it’s sure to pique your interest, amuse, or disgust you. Eat: The Story of Food, produced by National Geographic for cable television (Carnivores is episode two of this six part series), views food through a historical, cultural, and anthropological lens. It touches on serious issues such as feed lots and over-reliance on industrial food production, but in its essence, Eat is celebratory and humorous. It is education made fun.
The central message of the film is “we are what we eat,” including deep fried rat from southern China, caterpillars, spiders and crickets, chicken feet and various other animal parts including head and tail. Meat is what our species needed to become human (we cook, other animals don’t). The discovery of fire - a “eureka moment” - unleashed stores of energy, literally fueling our evolution. Man has been grilling for a million years. Barbeque is a universal concept. It is believed BBQ derives from “barabicu” - the sacred fire pit - of the Taino Indigenous Nation of the Caribbean and Florida.
Eat is for foodies, especially meat lovers. It’s fast paced, lively, and fun. Everyone is doing their best to entertain and the food is the star, including the often maligned New York City dirty water dog, the humble sausage, and the common hamburger. There are regional differences too. In NYC you are likely to eat your hot dog on a simple white bread bun perhaps with a flourish of sauerkraut, tomato/onion mix, mustard or ketchup. In Chicago you’ll eat it on a poppy seed bun with green fluorescent pickle relish and ketchup is verboten.
There’s plenty else to be learned from Eat. Here are a few. The ancient Romans held an annual sausage festival, slash orgy, called Lupercalia, where men chased down women striking them with leather thongs, a blow from which was supposed to render them fertile. And while 1 in 200 men are thought to be direct descendants of Genghis Khan, apparently he’s also the father of the hamburger. While there are several competing claims about whom or where the hamburger was invented, ranging from Hamburg, Germany where steak tartar was popular to Hamburg, New York, where Frank and Charles Menches claim to have sold a ground beef sandwich at the Erie County Fair in 1885, it is thought to have its origins with thirteenth century Mongolians who tenderized their meat by placing it under their saddles during forays onto the steppes.
Eat does delve into such serious issues as animal feed lots, the unsustainability of the current food system, and the future of meat. Not long ago a beef patty was grown in a laboratory at a cost of $325,000. According to the three lucky people who got to try it, the burger packed the sizzle and flavor of the real thing.
But more than anything else, Eat wants to make you laugh or at least smile. If you like your educational content served with a dollop of cheer, Eat may just be your cup of tea. And as the New Yorker might say, “Block that Metaphor.”