Genes, Climate, and Consumption Culture

Connecting the Dots

Jagdish N. Sheth

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781787434127
• eBook ISBN: 9781787434646
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Marketing

Drawing from decades of research, Genes, Climate, and Consumption Culture: Connecting the Dots demonstrates how climate dictates culture and consumption. The author shows that human genes are climatic adaptations over thousands of years of evolution, which has resulted in the dramatic differences between people's food, clothing, and shelter choices. Most importantly, the book discusses how many of the fundamental differences between cultures, with respect to time, space, friendship, and technology, are responses to their particular climate.

Readers will learn how to challenge their assumptions about what types of products and services foreign markets want. They will learn how to examine local markets vis-à-vis climate and culture, either changing their products accordingly or delivering entirely new offerings.

PART ONE

ONE

WE ARE WHERE WE EAT

Years ago, Chicklets brand chewing gum went to India. The product was marketed just as it is in America, with the box of eight pieces and a unit price appropriate for eight pieces. The introduction was a miserable failure.

I was part of the team whose seven-day mission was to analyze this failure. The most obvious answer was culture. The argument went that Indians are not a gum-chewing people; that, in fact, Indians chew betel nuts, an activity that offers pleasures very different from gum chewing. Why would Indians, used to the stimulating alkaloids in their betel nuts, be induced to chew a piece of candy-coated gum?

The real answer? India’s warm climate. Nobody chews eight pieces of gum at the same time (except maybe for baseball players). Participants in the product trial would chew one or two pieces and put the package back in their pocket-where in the hot weather the candy coating would melt away from the gum. It was messy and unappealing.

A second problem was a function of the first: eight pieces were too expensive, especially when most of them were thrown away. The solution was to repackage the product into units of two pieces — with each piece wrapped in cellophane. The new package solved the melting problem and also made the price attractive. Marketed with a clever campaign — “Just for the two of you” — and targeted to young adults as India was modernizing, the product took off like a rocket.

I believe it often happens this way: we assume that what people choose to eat, just like their other “lifestyle choices,” is a matter of their so-called culture. But in fact, it’s my contention that our food is often chosen for us, predetermined by climate. To some extent this is simply stating the obvious — “people in Southeast Asia eat rice because it grows well there” — but the implications are sometimes less obvious, and often far-reaching.

THE ORIGINS OF FOOD PRODUCTION

In the Introduction, we noted the importance of climate to the rise of civilization in southwestern Asia, beginning more or less with the end of the last Ice Age. In fact, it was food production, which had its origins in the Fertile Crescent around 12,000 years ago, that gave the spur to civilization, and it was climate change that made food production possible. As noted evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond writes, “[J]ust as the depletion of wild game tended to make hunting-gathering less rewarding, an increased availability of domesticable wild plants made steps leading to plant domestication more rewarding. For instance, climate changes at the end of the Pleistocene in the Fertile Crescent greatly expanded the area of habitats with wild cereals, of which huge crops could be harvested in a short time. Those wild cereal harvests were the precursors to the domestication of the earliest crops, the cereals wheat and barley, of the Fertile Crescent.”

Looking more closely at the climate of the Fertile Crescent, Diamond describes the area as lying within the Mediterranean zone, characterized by mild, wet winters, and long hot, dry summers. Such a climate selects for plant species able to survive the long dry season and to resume growth rapidly upon the return of the rains — in other words, annuals, which “inevitably remain small herbs.” Such plants tend to put much of their energy into producing big seeds, which remain dormant during the dry season and are then ready to sprout, or be harvested, when the rains come.

Remarkably, says Diamond, the 56 wild grasses with the largest seeds “are overwhelmingly concentrated” in the Fertile Crescent or other parts of western Eurasia’s Mediterranean zone. Future farmers in the area had no fewer than 32 of these most prized wild grasses to choose among for cultivation.

What advantages did this profusion of suitable grasses confer upon the people of the Fertile Crescent? Well, compared to other incipient civilizations, they were able to domesticate local plants much earlier, to domesticate more species, to domesticate far more productive or valuable species, and to domesticate a much wider range of types of crops. Consequently, they developed intensified food production and dense human populations more rapidly, and thus entered the modern world with more advanced technology, more complex political organization, and — by no means least important — more epidemic diseases with which to infect other peoples.

Another fascinating aspect of Diamond’s discussion of food production concerns the direction in which it spread. The rates and dates of the spread of agriculture varied considerably, he says. “At one extreme was its rapid spread along east–west axes: from Southwest Asia both west to Europe and Egypt and east to the Indus Valley…. At the opposite extreme was its slow spread along north–south axes,” especially North and South America.

This makes climatic sense, of course. As Diamond points out, localities distributed east and west of each other at the same latitude share exactly the same day length and its seasonal variations, along with similar temperatures, rainfall, and habitats. “Woe betide the plant whose genetic program is mismatched to the latitude of the field in which it is planted!” writes Diamond.

On the other hand, while Eurasia’s east–west axis promoted the spread of Fertile Crescent agriculture over the band of temperate latitudes from Ireland to the Indus Valley, a very different scenario prevailed on the American continents and in Africa. For example, Fertile Crescent crops spread rapidly to Egypt and then as far south as the cool highlands of Ethiopia, at which point they stopped. As Diamond notes, “South Africa’s Mediterranean climate would have been ideal for them, but the 2,000 miles of tropical conditions between Ethiopia and South Africa posed an insuperable barrier.”

The Americas provide a similar illustration. For thousands of years after corn was domesticated in Mexico, its migration northward into eastern North America was stalled by the cooler climates and shorter growing season prevailing there. So the generalization works both ways. Just as movement along an east–west axis tends to result in a journey through similar climates, so heading north–south will carry the traveler through zones that vary widely in climate, day length, rainfall, habitat, and, of course, in foods consumed.¹

To summarize briefly: favorable climatic conditions in the Fertile Crescent fostered the cultivation of the numerous wild grasses there, leading to the widespread displacement of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle by a sedentary agricultural one. Food production, in turn, allowed for the development of technology, of writing, and of political organization — the great hallmarks of advancing civilization. And the rest, they say, is history.

Interestingly enough, some nutrition scholars are suggesting that the human diet took a wrong turn at the end of the Pleistocene, that the ‘“whole enterprise of agriculture” might turn out to be “deleterious to human health.” As reported in Time Europe, a Swedish scholar of evolutionary nutrition by the name of Staffon Lindeberg maintains that ailments ranging from heart disease and diabetes to atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, and rickets “can probably to a large extent be prevented by diets resembling those of hunter-gatherers.” Lindeberg claims that a typical European gets at least 70 percent of his or her calories from foods that were practically unavailable during human evolution — milk products, most oils, refined sugar, processed foods like margarine, and cereals — foods he describes as low in minerals, vitamins, and soluble fiber, but high in fat and salt. We should be ingesting more protein, more fish, and more lean meat. We should be eating like our ancient ancestors.

Such thinking has spawned what could become a new food fad, the “Paleolithic diet.” Those interested can download “grain-free, bean-free, potato-free and sugar-free” recipes from PaleoFood.com.²

But this thinking also overlooks a couple of points. First, it was adaptation to climate change, rather than conscious human choice, that set us on the road to agriculture, and thus to civilization. And second, there are still many people in the world — again, as dictated by climate — who do eat something like a Paleolithic diet. For the most part, these are northern peoples who live where meat and fish are plentiful but where vegetables are not. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

NORTHERN DIETS: VEGETARIANS NOT WELCOME

Consider Finland, a country one-sixth of which lies north of the Arctic circle. As a result, notes a writer in a recent issue of Europe, “the domestic supply of vegetables and fruits is rather limited.” As a predictable result of this vegetable-free environment, Finnish food traditionally contains a fairly high proportion of animal fat. “In times before centrally heated buildings,” notes Europe, “the ancient Finn had to be able to stand the cold during the long winter and needed a protective layer of fat under the skin. This fact has left its mark to this day as Finns consume more milk and butter than any other people in the world.”

A typical Finnish specialty is the kalakukko, “a mixture of pork meat (as greasy as possible) and a small freshwater fish called muikku cooked inside a dough of rye.” Game is also a favorite among these descendants of hunters from the deep Finnish forests. Even modern urban Finns still love to hunt and eat moose and reindeer.

Finnish wine wins no prizes, but maybe that’s because this cold-weather people need a more bracing tonic. “Arctic bramble and cloudberry are the base for some outstanding liqueurs,” says Europe. “Of course, there is the Finnish vodka, which is superb.”³

Or we can jump across the Baltic to Sweden, on December 24, and pull up a chair at the Julbord, the Christmas Smorgasbord. It will begin with fish, probably both pickled herring and smoked salmon, then proceed to the main course: the Julskinka, or Christmas ham. But the Swedes love their meats, especially on this special feast day, and the table is likely to include a variety of additional meat dishes: chicken liver pate, oven-roasted pork ribs, Julkorv (the special Christmas potato sausage), tiny smoked prinskorv sausages, and of course Swedish meatballs.

Given Sweden’s climate, the vegetables are going to be of the root variety: red cabbage, chopped red beets, potato casserole with onions and anchovies. A hunk of yellow cheese and a variety of breads should round out the feast.⁴

Hearty fare for a hearty Nordic people, but neither the Swedes nor the Finns nor the Danes (whose meat-centered diet is typified by a popular ham sandwich called the skinkenburger) have anything on the Eskimos who inhabit Little Diomede Island, in the middle of the Bering Strait. The basis of their diet is the meat and fat from the walruses they hunt and kill during the annual marine mammal migration through the narrow straight. (They also use the walruses’ ivory tusks as currency, wrap the exterior of their fishing boats with the mammals’ two-inch-thick hide, and even make skylights in their houses out of scraped, translucent walrus intestine.)

But walrus meat and blubber are not the only components of the Diomeders’ diet. They also love something they call “sour liver,” which is raw walrus liver kept in a large wooden dish near the stove until it turns into a brownish, vinegary liquid. They consume a lot of seal oil, too, along with sea birds and bird eggs. But they also collect a variety of greens, stems, roots, seaweed, and berries. For example, a favorite is willow shoots and young leaves, ten times richer in vitamin C than oranges. Cloudbenies, also rich in vitamin C, grow profusely on the island’s plateau top. As Fred Bruemmer writes, the Diomeders’ diet is varied, healthful, and largely traditional, and their meals are copious, interesting, and probably very nutritious. “Most visitors have remarked on the Diomeders’ exceptionally strong and vigorous appearance.”⁵

Another writer, Mary Roach, sampled the cuisine of the Inuit, Canada’s Eskimos.

After scanning through an article titled “Use and Nutrient Composition of Traditional Baffin Inuit Foods,” she comes to this conclusion: “These people still eat a lot of meat. I count 71 meat items in a chart of foods eaten by an Inuit community in 1987. The Plants section has five entries.”

Her first experience, after arriving in Pelly Bay, was with a shank of raw caribou. “Inuit have always eaten meat raw for the simple reason that they live above the tree line, where there’s no wood for fires,” she explains. Plus, there are nutritional advantages: by not cooking food, you preserve heat-sensitive vitamins like C.

Vitamins are a concern, of course, in such a meat-centered cuisine. One solution, it turns out, is organs. “A serving of seal liver,” Roach discovers, “has half the RDA for vitamin C, three times the RDA for riboflavin, five times the vitamin A in the average carrot, plus respectable amounts of vitamins B-12, B-6, and D, folic acid, and potassium. Organ meats in general provide so many of the Inuit’s vitamins that for purposes of local health education they are classified both as meats and as fruits and vegetables.”

Fiber? No problem. The Inuit get fiber from “caribou stomach contents.” As Roach explains, “Tundra plants such as lichen and moss are high in fiber but tough to digest — unless, like caribou, you have several stomachs. So the Inuit let the caribou have a go at it first.” Another source is raw narwhal skin, or muktuk. It may not be exactly dietary fiber, but the natives claim it serves the purpose of roughage.

At the “town feast” Roach is invited to, a pickup truck dumps a load of caribou and walrus into 20-gallon drums of boiling water. Into a separate drum goes a bucket of char, an arctic fish that looks and tastes like salmon. Char eye turns out to be a special delicacy. As one of the locals sums up the meal, “Lots of protein.”⁶

So why haven’t all the Eskimos died of heart disease? It seems their meat and fish diet suits them. In fact, a study of 1800 Greenland Eskimos from 1950 to 1974 showed that during that quarter-century a grand total of three were hospitalized with heart attacks. And in two of the cases, the diagnosis was uncertain. That study prompted a flurry of research into fish oils, the so-called omega-3 fatty acids. The research continues, and the results to this point seem inconclusive. But one follow-up study concludes that fish oils “have a modest anti-clumping effect on platelets and slow down clotting by a number of mechanisms.”⁷

Then came the Harvard Health Professionals Study, which tracked 44,895 healthy men from 1986 to 1992. The conclusion was that fish was “no magic bullet” against heart disease. “Increasing fish intake from once a week to six or seven times a week doesn’t reduce the risk of coronary heart disease,” said the lead researcher. Nor were any benefits seen in the additional group of 2,000 men who took fish-oil capsules.⁸

Have you already guessed my reaction to such studies? They are irrelevant, of course. What does the indigenous diet of the Eskimos have to do with the diet of a spectrum of 44,000 American males? My point, of course, is that because of climatic and environmental factors, the Eskimos genetic make-up (including perhaps blood type) is compatible with the Eskimos’ traditional diet. The Native Americans who settled in Mesoamerica don’t eat walrus blubber. The Native...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction: Climate and the History of Man
• Part One
• Part Two
• Conclusion
• References
• Index