Good Enough to Eat: Cooking up native traditions - Seattle Post-Intelligencer

[Christopher B. Martin]

By CHRIS SMITH SPECIAL TO THE P-I

In his best-selling book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals," author Michael Pollan argues that America doesn't have a strong culinary tradition. We tend to make our food choices more on the bases of weight consciousness, perceived health benefits and convenience than on a historical sense of what's good to eat. Ironically, many of us are overweight, unhealthy and ultimately inconvenienced by our diets.

If we go back several hundred years, though, we'll find culinary tradition. Native people in North, South and Central America based their diets on locally available fish and game and plants they either gathered or grew. Theirs was a sophisticated food tradition; they didn't simply wander around chewing on jerky.

Depending on what part of the Americas they hailed from, Native Americans might have enjoyed such cultivated crops as beans, corn, peppers, potatoes, squash and tomatoes. Combined with fish and game and supplemented by food that could be gathered -- including avocados, berries, chocolate, mushrooms, nuts, roots, vanilla and wild rice -- these foods formed the bases of cuisines. Like the French, the Italians and the Thais, American Indians had a well developed sense of what was good to eat.

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