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Culture, acquired taste and past experiences, shape immigrants’ food preferences and acculturation inclination. As people migrate from Africa, South Asia and China to Canada, Toronto’s food landsca...

Although cholesterol is considered a vital lipid for animals, not all animals can make cholesterol. A new study employing that celebrated elegant worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, investigates mechanisms that evolved in a sterol auxotroph to enable survival without sterol synthesis.

This paper demonstrates the diachronic development of the Dutch gustatory verbs proeven and smaken and the semantic encroachment of the former on the meanings covered by the latter, and explains the current use of proeven in constructions in which smaken is expected (i.e. De soep proeft lekker ‘the soup tastes good’). This spread of the use of proeven (and the consequential increasingly limited use of smaken) can be explained by metaphorization and is analyzed as the result of lexical paradigm levelling.1

Taste allows animals to discriminate the value and potential toxicity of food prior to ingestion. Many tastants elicit an innate attractive or avoidance response that is modifiable with nutritional state and prior experience. A powerful genetic tool kit, well-characterized gustatory system, and standardized behavioral assays make the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, an excellent system for investigating taste processing and memory. Recent studies have used this system to identify the neural basis for acquired taste preference. These studies have revealed a role for dopamine-mediated plasticity of the mushroom bodies that modulate the threshold of response to appetitive tastants. The identification of neural circuitry regulating taste memory provides a system to study the genetic and physiological processes that govern plasticity within a defined memory circuit.

The regulation of translation is critical in almost every aspect of gene expression. Nonetheless, the ribosome is historically viewed as a passive player in this process. However, evidence is accumulating to suggest that variations in the ribosome can have an important influence on which mRNAs are translated. Scope for variation is provided via multiple avenues, including heterogeneity at the level of both ribosomal proteins and ribosomal RNAs and their covalent modifications. Together, these variations provide the potential for hundreds, if not thousands, of flavours of ribosome, each of which could have idiosyncratic preferences for the translation of certain messenger RNAs. Indeed, perturbations to this heterogeneity appear to affect specific subsets of transcripts and manifest as cell-type-specific diseases. This review provides a historical perspective of the ribosomal code hypothesis, before outlining the various sources of heterogeneity, their regulation and functional consequences for the cell.

This chapter reviews the literature on midlife single men and singles, and solo travel. It examines how midlife single men negotiate solo holidays. The chapter explains the narrative method used to construct the stories. Tourism scholars neglect midlife single men in their research. Few midlife men belong to the category always single; they are rather widowers and divorcees or have experienced co-habitation breakups. E. Goffman’s interactional units “withs” and singles are a way of making sense of marginalization of singles/solo tourists. Solo tourists are often positively motivated by the freedom of choice. Research on women’s solo travel indicates that it is an acquired taste; most of them have to overcome personal barriers and constraints in order to fully enjoy the experience. Solo tourists thus have to deal with solitude. On the one hand, solitude provides travelers with freedom from compromises. On the other hand, it means the absence of sharing the experience with loved ones.

This essay looks at food through the lens of immigration by analyzing the work of migrant writers in Italy. Comfort food, acquired taste and fusion cuisine are used to illustrate different stages of the migration process. Migrant writers have often used food as a metaphor to describe their longing for their homeland, for an idealized time and place when they felt safe, secure in their identity. Cooking and eating, sharing and learning culinary traditions foster integration and develop acquired tastes in the destination culture. The result is a sense of belonging, but also the formation of a split identity and a partial loss of the original self. Fusion cuisine, a product of globalization, offers the possibility of two identities coexisting harmoniously within the same person., COSMO | Comparative Studies in Modernism | Rivista del Centro Studi Arti della Modernità | centroartidellamodernita.it, N. 10 (2017): Il cibo degli umanisti

Adolescent rats are more sensitive to the rewarding and less sensitive to the aversive properties of various drugs of abuse than their adult counterparts. Given a nationwide increase in use of “bath salts,” the present experiment employed the conditioned taste aversion procedure to assess the aversive effects of 3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV; 0, 1.0, 1.8 or 3.2 mg/kg), a common constituent in “bath salts,” in adult and adolescent rats. As similar drugs induce thermoregulatory changes in rats, temperature was recorded following MDPV administration to assess if thermoregulatory changes were related to taste aversion conditioning. Both age groups acquired taste aversions, although these aversions were weaker and developed at a slower rate in the adolescent subjects. Adolescents increased and adults decreased body temperature following MDPV administration with no correlation to aversions. The relative insensitivity of adolescents to the aversive effects of MDPV suggests that MDPV may confer an increased risk in this population.

I’m unable to answer for the entirety of British university courses, but can respond in respect of those offered at my own institution, and those few with which I’m familiar through my work as an external examiner. I don’t think it would be true to say that Whitman and Stevens are considered “poetic equals,” but, instead, that Whitman outranks Stevens, as a poet considered seminal to an understanding of American poetry, in a way that Stevens, with his difficult quirkiness, is not. Stevens, that is to say, is an acquired taste, whereas Whitman is a taste you are obliged to acquire— as even Ezra Pound acknowledged when admitting he and Whitman had “one sap and one root” (in his poem “A Pact” [97]). Pound hadn’t anything like the same fellow feeling toward Stevens, who provoked him to a multiplicity of question marks rather than a recognition of connection. That represents my estimate of the general situation. To speak more personally, I regard Stevens as the jewel in the crown of twentieth-century American poetry (omitting transnationals like Eliot and Auden). I can re-read Stevens and discover “fresh transfigurings” (CPP 85) more readily than I can with Whitman, as it happens. The former seems inexhaustible, whereas the latter is on occasions exhausting (often by design).

This article is the transcript of a round-table talk delivered at the 2011 annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) in Cleveland, Ohio. It considers the paradox that the close identification of “Asia” with “technology,” globally as well as within Asia, has not been paralleled by a strong research program in the humanities and social sciences to understand this relationship, particularly its cultural ramifications. It outlines reasons for this, particularly in regard to teaching and research in the history of technology, and suggests that the recent rise of interest in STS in Asia represents a path forward.

Red Bull GmbH was founded in 1984 by Dietrich Mateschitz, who located the company’s headquarters in the Austrian village of Fuschl am See just outside of Salzburg. Before launching the drink in Austria in 1987, Mateschitz spent a year developing the drink’s formula to better suit the tastes of western consumers, including carbonating the drink; despite these changes, Red Bull remained an acquired taste.

The present study tested the hypothesis that lesions of the insular cortex of the rat retard the acquisition of conditioned taste aversions (CTAs) because of an impairment in the detection of the novelty of taste stimuli. Demonstrating the expected latent inhibition effect, nonlesioned control subjects acquired CTAs more rapidly when the conditioned stimulus (0.15% sodium saccharin) was novel rather than familiar (achieved by pre-exposure to the to-be-conditioned taste cue). However, rats with insular cortex lesions acquired taste aversions at the same slow rate regardless of whether the saccharin was novel or familiar. The pattern of behavioural deficits obtained cannot be interpreted as disruptions of taste detection or stimulus intensity, but is consistent with the view that insular cortex lesions disrupt taste neophobia, a dysfunction that consequently retards CTA acquisition because of a latent inhibition-like effect.

Around 5 or 6 years of age, children begin to recognize that speakers who make ironic remarks do not believe what they literally say, but children of the same age do not show appreciation for the humor function of irony (Dews et al., 1996; Harris & Pexman, 2003). We investigated 7- to 10-year-old children's interpretations of verbal irony and focused on factors that might modulate children's impressions of humor in irony. Results showed that (a) children tended to identify with the target, not the speaker, of ironic remarks and perceived less humor in irony when they did so; (b) children's appreciation of the teasing function of irony, like the humor function of irony, continues to develop late in middle childhood; and (c) children did not use relationship information (speaker and target were friends, strangers, or enemies) as a cue to the speaker's humorous intent. We suggest that these characteristics of children's theories of verbal irony are a function of their social knowledge and representational sk...

Although in a previous study we showed that caffeine and theobromine were the main psychopharmacologically active constituents in a 50-g bar of chocolate, mere activity does not guarantee a role in our liking for the food. Our aim was to see if liking for a drink repeatedly paired with these amounts of caffeine and theobromine would increase compared to a placebo-paired drink. Participants (n=64) consumed a ‘novel’ drink + treatment capsule on six non-consecutive mornings using a double-blind, placebo-controlled independent-sample design. Aspects of liking and intensity of various sensory descriptors for these drinks were measured at every drink collection. Treatment capsules contained either an ecologically relevant dose combination of 19-mg caffeine and 250-mg theobromine or a placebo. Liking for the drink paired with the methylxanthine-containing capsules increased over time compared to the placebo-paired drink. This highly significant effect was confirmed by subjective, retrospective changes in liking for the drink. Methylxanthines in amounts found in 50-g chocolate may well contribute to our liking for chocolate, especially to the more acquired taste for dark chocolate.

What has this sociologist been doing in the years since his accession to the not quite exalted Emeritus state? Not much sociology, that's for sure. Retired or not, sociologists who don't see each other often have the habit of asking "what you're doing these days," by which they mean "what are you working on." Not to be working on something is an admission of idleness, stagnation, or worse. When I'm asked I usually reply, "Not much, some gardening, some carpentry, cooking, home maintenance; I don't use a cleaning woman, not even a cleaning person; I spent most of a day recently polishing my oak floors. I'm really retired." I had a deviant career (to put the best light on it), making it mostly on my criti cism and my writing skills rather than one timeless project after another. But I was well and quickly rewarded; I belonged to a demographically lucky cohort of Ph.D.'s. No assistant professor anxieties. In my first post-Ph.D. job I was promoted to ten ure by the University of Illinois after three years without even knowing I was being considered for it. No accumulation of files, no gathering of letters of recommenda tion, no ad hoc committees. The head of the department simply informed me one day that I was being promoted. Maybe one of the last gasps of the old boy network. One of the early high points (and an introduction to the ambiguities of university life) was when, as a young academic, I was solicited by The New York Times for articles in its Sunday Book Review and its Magazine. This was met by some of my then senior colleagues with a peculiar combination of envy and disdain?disdain because the Times was a "popular" (i.e., not scholarly) medium, envy because (something I didn't know then) the Times was harder to get into than even the most prestigious of the professional journals. But the highest points were my three years doing the field research for my commune book, followed by the three years run ning the journal Contemporary Sociology?those events being the closest I ever came to creating a community around me, although, as an "alienated" type, I never had much gift for community. I liked teaching too-never burned out on it?espe cially graduate students, though for some of them I was an acquired taste. Still I was most pleased to mentor a bunch of first class Ph.D.'s (inevitably, some medio cre ones as well) to teach theory to first year graduate students and, in a small

Conditioned taste aversions function by preventing an organism from ingesting a food previously associated with gastrointestinal malaise. Taste-aversion learning has been observed in many animals: molluscs to mammals, insects to birds. However, among mammals, neither bats nor monophagous species have been investigated adequately. Here we show that although three dietary generalists (one insectivorous and two frugivorous bats) readily acquired taste aversions, the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, a monophageous feeder on vertebrate blood, did not learn to associate a novel flavour with aversive gastrointestinal events. We interpret these data as consistent with the hypothesis that taste aversions are an adaptive specialization of learning.

This article delineates the operations of one particular ‘aesthetic economy’, focusing on the way in which aesthetics in the field of fashion modelling are central to the economic calculations of this market. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu and Blumer, the author argues that economic calculations are intertwined with cultural concerns, bound to forms of cultural knowledge, capital and acquired taste, and to social, cultural and institutional relations. A culturally valued look (the model’s body) is produced through processes of cultural valorization within the fashion modelling network, which, in time, aim to translate into economic value in the form of high fees. Fashion modelling provides an interesting case study which might shed light on how aesthetic values are generated in other fields of cultural production with a strong aesthetic component. In setting out this case study the author delineates an approach to the study of other aesthetic economies.

Background Time–intensity sensory evaluation of human taste perception is useful to know the feedback of a taste stimulus from tongue. However, it has not been profiled together with reaction time under the constant stimulating tongue in high time resolution. New method We first made intra-oral device to deliver taste solution to anterior, lateral and posterior tongue in standardized condition. Second, we developed a time–intensity sensory evaluation meter linked to synchronized taste solution delivery system. Time–intensity profiles were recorded in higher temporal resolution than our past study. Third, we analyzed the corrected taste quality reaction time from raw sensory perception data, and following sensory evaluation profile. Results The new method acquired taste sensory evaluation data with 1 ms temporal resolution and found the reaction timing was 908 ms, the corrected taste quality reaction time was 712 ms, maximum intensity was 3.47, and corrected time to reach maximum intensity was 1312 ms. The coefficient of variation ranged from 0.007 to 0.236 indicating low variance. Comparison with existing methods Time–intensity sensory evaluation in this study did not sacrifice the feature of raw data. The relative comparison of time–intensity sensory profile among subjects will be available in this system in future study, while it was still difficult to define the absolute value of reaction time. Conclusions Our method could gather real-time feedback for the time–intensity sensory evaluation of a taste stimulus under the standardized stimulating tongue. This could be useful for establishing database of time–intensity sensory profiles for comparison of delicate taste perceptions.

Objective. Barbados, a small developing state at the end of the nutrition transition, faces an obesity epidemic. Although there is hope of stemming the epidemic in childhood, no descriptions of children's dietary and physical activity (PA) patterns are available for planning purposes. We describe the food and activity preferences and adult encouragement of active and sedentary behaviors for children 9–11 years in relation to weight status and the cultural context.Design. We used data from a pilot study preceding a large-scale ongoing study on the local drivers of the obesity epidemic among preadolescent children. PA, sedentary activity, and dietary intakes were assessed from recalls. Weight and height were measured.Setting. Barbados.Subjects. Sixty-two (62), 9–11-year-old school children.Results. Sugar-sweetened beverages provided 21% of energy consumed. Energy intake significantly explained BMI. Parents selected significantly more of children’s sedentary activities and encouraged mostly homework and chores (59%). Children’s self-selected school-based activity was significantly related to BMI.Conclusions. Childhood obesity prevention recommendations and research should focus on culture-specific practices that promote acquired taste for excess sugar and parent-child interactions regarding PA. Child influenced by school-based activity intervention may an important area for preventive intervention research.

Chocolate has specific orosensory qualities that provide strong hedonic effects, which in turn relate to changes in the opioidergic and dopaminergic systems. This may induce soothing effects, which are especially relevant to people with certain types of mood depression (e.g., atypical depression). Chocolate consumption may be a personality marker of high neuroticism and represent a strategy to cope with the propensity to experience intense negative emotions. Regarding the psychoactive substances present in chocolate, at least methylxanthines (theobromine and caffeine) have significant psychopharmacological effects. Methylxanthines have an impact on mood and improve performance in specific tasks. Methylxanthines may therefore play the role of chocolate as an “energizer.” Chocolate addiction should be regarded as an inaccurate and misleading term. “Moreishness” may be a better term. It translates as the ambivalence associated with the desire to eat more chocolate (due to high palatability) and self-imposed dietary restraint (due to personal and cultural beliefs), which limits chocolate intake before satiation is attained, making the “desire for chocolate” more salient (craving). The orosensory qualities of chocolate are uncontested determinants for chocolate liking, but ­methylxanthines also contribute to an acquired taste for chocolate liking. PEA and anandamide are unlikely to exert significant biological effects. Also, an increase in brain serotonin related to carbohydrates after chocolate consumption is unlikely to occur. Anandamide-related compounds, salsolinol, THBCs, and magnesium cannot be discarded as ­effective psychoactive agents (see Table 31.1).

By analysing the pattern of Hesiodic quotations across Plato's works, this chapter concludes that Plato came to admire and use Hesiod — especially the Works and Days — more as he got older. The Hesiodic corpus, included the Theogony and Works and Days but not the Catalogue of Women and the minor works, just as the only genuine Homeric texts, for Plato, appear to be the Iliad and Odyssey.

Our previous studies have demonstrated that gustatory neurons in the parabrachial nucleus (PBN) show altered responses after the acquisition of conditioned taste aversion (CTA) to NaCl. The present study was conducted 1) to examine centrifugal influences on the altered gustatory activity of CTA-trained rats, and 2) to evaluate the role of amiloride-sensitive (ASN) and -insensitive NaCl (AIN) best units in coding the taste of NaCl. Animals were separated into 2 groups: a CTA group that had acquired taste aversion to 0.1 M NaCl and a control group that underwent pseudoconditioning before the recording experiment. Single-neuron activity, in 2 separate series of experiments, was extracellularly recorded in anesthetized rats. In the stimulation studies, the effects of electrical stimulation of the gustatory cortex (GC) or the central nucleus of amygdala (CeA) were examined on firing of PBN taste units. CeA stimulation produced excitatory effect in significantly more neurons in the CTA group ( n = 8) than in the control group ( n = 1). Furthermore, ASN-best units in the CTA group showed larger responses to NaCl than similar units in the control group. In the decerebration experiment, there was no statistical difference among the taste responses between the 2 groups in any best-stimulus category. These results suggest that CTA conditioning uses an effective central amygdaloid input to modulate activity of gustatory neurons in the PBN. Data also substantiate that amiloride-sensitive components of NaCl-best neurons play a critical role in the recognition of distinctive taste of NaCl.

In order to satisfy national consumer taste as regards bread texture and flavour and achieve varying degrees of processing rationalization, a very diverse range of mixing techniques and fermentation procedures is in use throughout Europe and the North American continent. Fermentation or floor-times have been progressively reduced by the application of technology and mechanization, but the quality of the end-product as an eating experience has not always improved. Although wheat-flour bread has always dominated the bread market globally, consumer tastes are changing in favour of bread varieties with more ‘flavour-token’, which at the same time make an improved contribution to a healthy diet. Although an acquired taste, rye-flour bread has distinct advantages over wheat since it has a more intense flavour-token and is more satisfying on a weight for weight basis, its acidic crumb often complementing the eating experience of other foods. Its keeping qualities are unquestionably superior to wheat-flour bread varieties.

One fancy color diamond specialist I know likes nothing better than showing a mouth-watering array of lovely brown diamonds to out-of-town jewelers who visit him in New York. But the vacant stares that usually greet these stones quickly remind him that brown diamonds are still a seldom acquired taste. Nevertheless, he’s convinced that some day soon the very same diamonds will become a required taste.

In South Asia, cricket has come to bear the promise of delivering lasting peace to a region tormented by a half century of strife. It may seem flippant to suggest that a sport will accomplish this when almost all else has failed, but consider the following. Mounting enmity between India and Pakistan is threatening to devour the entire region. Decades of failed diplomacy testify to the futility of conventional peace moves, and intransigent foreign policy positions bring the two neighbours ever closer to a nuclear flashpoint. India and Pakistan may speak the same language, but their deadlock cries out for a new medium of communication. Like marmalade, tweed jackets, and other things English, cricket is an acquired taste, which makes it slow to pick up but impossible to let go of. Introduced to the subcontinent in the 1800s, by the 1920s it was commanding great popularity in colonial India. In 1932 India became a Test playing country and, five years after the partition of 1947, Pakistan followed suit. In a cheerless, gloomy existence towards …

To assess the influence of circadian rhythmicity on conditioned taste aversion in rats, two vivaria (with the illumination cycle in one vivarium phase shifted 12 hours with respect to the other) were used to permit dissociation of rhythmic environmental (laboratory) activity from the influence of the illumination cycle. Also included were controls for change in baseline taste preference across phases of the illumination cycle. Across both vivaria: (1) Sucrose preference was significantly higher for Dark Phase than Light Phase animals. (2) Strength of the illness-induced taste aversion was greater during the Light than Dark Phase of the illumination cycle. These findings were discussed in terms of circadian alterations in metabolism that may modulate both sucrose preference and sensitivity to the consequences of LiCl. It was further demonstrated that inclusion of a circadian rhythmic factor in a conditioning model enables one to predict more accurately the magnitude of an acquired taste aversion.

Three experiments were run to assess the role of the area postrema in taste aversion learning resulting from combined treatment with subthreshold unconditioned stimuli and in the acquisition of an amphetamine-induced taste aversion. In the first experiment, it was shown that combined treatment with subthreshold radiation (15 rad) and subthreshold amphetamine (0.5 mg/kg, IP) resulted in the acquisition of a taste aversion. The second experiment showed that lesions of the area postrema blocked taste aversion learning produced by two subthreshold doses of amphetamine. In the third experiment, which looked at the dose-response curve for amphetamine-induced taste aversion learning in intact rats and rats with area postrema lesions, it was shown that both groups of rats acquired taste aversions following injection of amphetamine, although the rats with lesions showed a less severe aversion than the intact rats. The results are interpreted as indicating that amphetamine-induced taste aversion learning may involve area postrema-mediated mechanisms, particularly at the lower doses, but that an intact area postrema is not a necessary condition for the acquisition of an amphetamine-induced taste aversion.

Eleven cases of feeding on driver ants (Dorylus sp.) by mountain gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei) are described. Ant eating provides the gorillas with more animal protein and other nutrients per unit feeding time than do other forms of insectivory that contribute to their diet, but it is so rare that it is unlikely to be of real nutritional significance. Gorillas obtain ants with their hands and do not use tools. Immature individuals (except infants) ate more ants than did adult females, and silverbacks were not seen to eat ants. These differences are more likely to reflect differences in individual taste and interest in novelty than differences in nutritional strategy. Not all gorillas in the Virungas population eat ants. Intra-population variability may be ecologically contingent, but ant eating appears to be a socially acquired and transmitted taste.

Two studies were conducted to study the effects of unpaired sucrose (CS) experiences on the acquisition, retention, and reacquisition of a sucrose aversion. In Experiment 1, rats received 0, 1, or 3 preconditioning CS exposures and/or 0, 1, or 3 postconditioning CS exposures. Sucrose exposures prior to conditioning interfered with the acquisition of a sucrose aversion, while sucrose-only experience following a single taste-illness pairing retroactively interfered with retention of the sucrose aversion and proactively interfered with the reacquisition of the sucrose aversion. In Experiment 2, two unpaired sucrose experiences following each sucrose-illness pairing (33% PRF group) resulted in little apparent sucrose aversion after six sucrose-illness pairings, while a single unpaired sucrose experience after each conditioning trial (50% PRF group) produced a moderate level of interference compared to the rapid acquisition in rats receiving only sucrose-illness pairings (CRF group). It is suggested that CS familiarization and extinction may represent a single process where the rat learns that a taste cue predicts no illness, and that this expectancy can interfere with the development of an aversion or impair the ability of the animal to reacquire a previously acquired taste aversion.

Blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis Wolf) on the Zomba Plateau, Malawi, damage exotic softwood plantations by bark-stripping. An ecological study was carried out to investigate the causes of this. The history of forestry practice on the Plateau reveals that, though bark-stripping did not start until 1976, plantation of exotic softwoods goes back to the beginning of the century. In the last 20 years the area of plantations close to the core of blue monkey habitat has increased substantially and some significant clearance of natural habitat has occurred. Bark-stripping is practised only by the groups which are in closest contact with the plantations. Its seasonality may be related to rainfall through sap quantity. There is no indication that the persistence of bark-stripping is the result of food shortage or agonistic encounters due to overcrowding. The most likely explanation for the genesis of bark-stripping is the encroachment of large blocks of plantations, combined with some clearance of natural habitat in 1973–74. The mechanism proposed for the initiation and maintenance of bark-stripping is a combination of temporary food shortage caused by travel through young plantations and a resultant acquired taste for sweet-tasting sap. Leaving areas of indigenous scrub adjacent to the core areas used by these primates and possibly the non-destruction of indigenous food trees within exotic plantations are suggested as ways of alleviating the problem in the future.

SummaryA fundamental question in comparative cognition is whether animals remember unique, personal past experiences [1–3]. It has long been argued that memories for specific events (referred to as episodic memory) are unique to humans [4, 5]. Recently, considerable evidence has accumulated to show that food-storing birds possess critical behavioral elements of episodic memory [6–10], referred to as episodic-like memory in acknowledgment of the fact that behavioral criteria do not assess subjective experiences [1]. Here we show that rats have a detailed representation of remembered events and meet behavioral criteria for episodic-like memory. We provided rats with access to locations baited with distinctive (e.g., grape and raspberry) or nondistinctive (regular chow) flavors. Locations with a distinctive flavor replenished after a long but not a short delay, and locations with the nondistinctive flavor never replenished. One distinctive flavor was devalued after encoding its location by prefeeding that flavor (satiation) or by pairing it with lithium chloride (acquired taste aversion [11, 12]), while the other distinctive flavor was not devalued. The rats selectively decreased revisits to the devalued distinctive flavor but not to the nondevalued distinctive flavor. The present studies demonstrate that rats selectively encode the content of episodic-like memories.

Dietary salt (NaCl) has been implicated in the etiology of hypertension and atherosclerosis, although its role remains controversial. The human preference for salted foods is well-known and many investigators believe the taste for salt is acquired. An experiment we conducted suggests that the baboon does not have an acquired taste for salt. A sample of 36 baboons from a population of 70 baboons of known sire, sex, and dietary history was used; each had been raised since birth on a diet of fixed salt content in a study of dietary salt and blood pressure. Given this unique group of animals, we decided to test whether baboons raised on one dietary salt level (low, medium, or high) would prefer a different level. After baseline consumption was measured for 9 days, we offered each animal equal amounts of all 3 diets simultaneously in a counterbalanced randomized sequence for 9 days, controlling for tray position preference and color preference. We measured consumption of each diet by weighing the amount of food remaining. Our statistical analyses indicated an overwhelming preference for the lowest dietary salt level, regardless of which diet the animal had been fed since birth (p less than 0.0001).

Meneely 1 and others have pointed out that the practice of adding sodium chloride to our diet is largely and perhaps entirely based on an acquired taste. It has been suggested that the use of salt as a condiment began after its introduction as a preservative of meats and other perishables. In the history of man, this event appears to have coincided with the establishment of semipermanent abodes in contrast to the previous nomadic existence. The evidence in support of this view is inferential and is based largely on the fact that the word for salt does not appear in the language of any tribe prior to the establishment of settlements. On the other hand, it should be pointed out that animals seek out springs which contain this salt. In the adult animal, at least, this may be presumed to be a matter of taste. Adjustments to Sodium Restriction Irrespective

The influence of Egyptian unification and expansion on the southern Levant at the end fourth millennium BC has been the source of a protracted debate. In this paper, a novel approach to the study of Egyptian-Levantine relations considers how food preferences, mediated by knowledge transmission and local cultural logic, provides an effective interpretive scheme for understanding the nature of relations between neighbouring societies. To this end, zooarchaeology can reveal how food preferences become enmeshed into the transformation of identity. Zooarchaeological analysis from the Early Bronze I (EB I) village of Horvat ‘Illin Tahtit, Israel, finds a clear overrepresentation of cattle forelimb parts relative to hindlimb parts. The results of a correspondence analysis of faunal data from late fourth/early third millennium assemblages in the Levant and Egypt shows that this pattern of forelimb overrepresentation is most common in Late EB I when the intensity of Egyptian-Levantine relations peaked. I suggest that while Egyptians clearly accorded high status to cattle forelimbs, their Levantine contemporaries, who did not have materially inscribed social rankings, defined cattle forelimbs according a cultural logic unrelated to status.

Which comes first to an infant born in this salt-loving culture? A taste for salt, or a taste of it? Probably the latter, according to David L. Yeung, PhD, who presented a report at the recent Chicago meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology: Children's taste for salt at the age of 4 years appears to be determined by the amount of salt their parents feed them in infancy. This finding is the most recent in a long-term, longitudinal study of nutrition in infants and children. The study, which has been under way since 1977, is sponsored by the H. J. Heinz Company of Canada, Ltd, Toronto—where Yeung, who is also associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, serves as corporate nutrition coordinator. In the salt substudy, Yeung and colleagues first examined the sodium chloride intake of 403 infants, half of

HE ABILITY to savor fine scenery is a very rare cultural phenomenon indeed, commonplace as it may seem to most of us. Only three civilizations out of the twenty-six or so listed by Arnold Toynbee have ever attained to a real understanding of landscape. One of these, the Indian, attained at the best only a relatively limited appreciation of nature.1 This leaves supreme the Far Western (our own) and the Far Eastern (Chinese) cultures, which developing at opposite ends of the oikoumene yet arrived at the same goal. As a little reflection will show, there is nothing "natural" about the appreciation of landscape. It is as much an acquired taste as a liking for art or music. Children and primitive people are unmoved by even the most spectacular landscape. The wilder the country, the more feared it is. The Chinese and the West are almost unique then in their feeling for natural beauty. But, whereas Western society did not really begin to appreciate landscape until the middle of the seventeenth century or so, the Chinese had attained a similar level of understanding some fifteen hundred years earlier. I stress this because in not one of the standard works which has appeared on the subject of the development of man's love of landscape has there been any indication that the author realized the primacy of the Chinese in this field. The works of Van Tieghem, Biese, Moore, Elizabeth Manwaring, E. T. McLaughlin, Katharine Chorley, and others, all ignore the Chinese contribution.2

Very few now read Carlyle for pleasure. Most do so only under the spur of an "assignment," as in a college literature course. Yet once we get used to his striking peculiarities, we can recognize him as one of the great masters of English prose. For many years in my medical-writing seminars, I have given excerpts from Carlyle, without indicating the authorship (and in five years no student has guessed correctly). I have then asked whether we were dealing with good writing or bad writing. Invariably, the majority considered it bad writing and did not like it, although an occasional hardy soul expressed pleasure and appreciation. But after we analyzed the excerpts with considerable care, the class almost unanimously felt that the writing really was strong, impressive, and good . A liking for Carlyle is an acquired taste. Most people find his prose at first rather repulsive, somewhat comparable to the