mam, a salty, fermented fish sauce, 
typically mixed with vinegar and chili. 
The camp kitchens, staffed by U.S. 
Army cooks, attempted to accommo- 
date Vietnamese taste by providing 
some traditional staple foods: chicken, 
fish, rice, vegetables. But the well- 
loved nuoc mam was not available. 
When the kitchen staff discovered, by 
trial and error, that the most popular 
flavorings were soy sauce and hot pep- 
per sauce, a bottle of each was always 
placed on every table in the mess hall. 
The cooks told us, with some incredu- 
lity, that the refugees would pour soy 
sauce and hot pepper sauce on all 
their foods, mix them together, and 
then eat them. They went through sup- 
plies of these sauces at a most re- 
markable rate. The refugees were do- 
ing the best they could, in a strange 
environment and with limited ingre- 
dients, to duplicate the traditional fla- 
vors of their cuisine. ( Nuoc mam is 
now widely available in Oriental gro- 
ceries throughout the United States; 
the demands of the Vietnamese have 
produced a steady supply.) 
The flavoring of food — that is, the 
deliberate manipulation of food by 
adding ingredients that will reliably 
alter the taste — is a uniquely human 
behavior. There are no animals that 
characteristically mix their foods with 
anything that could be called a fla- 
voring, even including the possibility 
of marking the food with a bodily 
secretion. The one possible exception 
is the troupe of monkeys on Koshima 
Island in Japan that has developed 
a tradition, “invented” by an adult 
female, of dipping sweet potatoes in 
saltwater before eating them. This one 
example may be the only reported sea- 
soning behavior from the animal king- 
dom. 
Why do human beings, or at least 
most human beings, flavor their foods? 
What is the function of seasoning tra- 
ditions, handed down from one gen- 
eration to the next? One can under- 
stand how the attachment to the fla- 
vors of their native cuisine might de- 
velop in individuals as a result of con- 
tinued exposure from early childhood 
(and possibly even earlier still from 
mother’s' milk). But what is the adap- 
tive value of this generally widespread 
and ancient practice? 
Surely, any particular flavoring in- 
gredients used — chili, cumin, garlic, 
or whatever — are largely determined 
by their availability in the environ- 
ment. But availability alone cannot 
explain the exclusive, persistent, and 
prevalent use of certain flavorings in 
any culture. Frequently, some avail- 
able flavorings are rejected, while oth- 
ers not easily obtained are widely 
sought after. The age of exploration 
in Europe, for example, was largely 
motivated by a specific lust for sea- 
soning ingredients, particularly pep- 
per. 
It is possible that some flavoring 
ingredients have specific biological 
value, in terms of either nutritive or 
physiological effects. Because such 
seasoning elements are typically eaten 
in small amounts, they cannot supply 
a significant amount of macronutri- 
ents, like protein and fat, but they 
might well provide valuable vitamins 
or minerals. Chili pepper, for example, 
is a very rich source of vitamins A 
and C. These vitamins are in short 
supply in the diets of some cultures 
that use chili; in these cases chili can 
provide a significant percentage of vi- 
tamin A and C requirements, for ex- 
ample, in some areas of Mexico. 
A few flavoring ingredients may 
have medicinal benefits: one of the 
better documented examples is the 
antibacterial effect of garlic. Certain 
physiological effects of the ingestion 
of some flavoring ingredients may also 
have adaptive value: chili pepper 
causes facial sweating, thereby facili- 
tating heat loss in hot environments. 
Like some other irritant spices, chili 
stimulates salivation, gastric secretion, 
and gut motility, and thus may fa- 
cilitate the chewing and digestion of 
high-starch diets. Research and inge- 
nuity could probably provide a pos- 
sible specific effect for each of the 
many flavoring ingredients used 
throughout the world. Although such 
adaptive explanations might well be 
valid, they are unsatisfactory because 
they provide a set of individual and 
specific explanations for a class of re- 
lated and general phenomena. And 
such specific explanations cannot ac- 
count for the pervasive use of sea- 
sonings on almost all staple foods. 
There are several other possible gen- 
eral explanations. Traditional flavors 
may serve the same function as tra- 
ditional costume or traditional reli- 
gious practice. They are a means of 
defining a culture group, of identifying 
an individual with it, and of separating 
that group from others. Whatever 
broad human needs are served by such 
visible in-group behavior, distinctive 
culinary practices must surely be a 
part of it. 
Another explanation focuses on the 
salient sensory properties of flavoring 
ingredients. These elements, particu- 
larly when combined in the bonds of 
flavor principles, almost always have 
a strong and distinctive flavor. From 
a broad cultural-ecological perspec- 
tive, it is those cultures that rely on 
a bland starch staple with small 
amounts of meat that have the most 
marked cuisines in terms of flavor. 
Indeed, the common explanation of- 
fered by individuals from a marked 
cuisine that the flavors add “zest” or 
“taste” to their food has some force. 
Flavoring ingredients may also be 
distinctively colored — for example, 
chili, turmeric, saffron, soy sauce — 
and may thus impart a characteristic 
rich and warm color to the food. 
Again, with bland or light-colored sta- 
ples (rice, refined wheat), color can 
provide visual zest, and through both 
taste and appearance give a meaty 
quality to the diet. Given that meat 
is a highly preferred food in almost 
all cultures, flavoring traditions might 
well be a response to an absence or 
shortage of meat in the diet. 
A final explanation, which we shall 
develop more fully, ascribes the wide- 
spread use of flavor principles to a 
basic feature of human biology: our 
omnivorous heritage. 
Human beings are omnivores, or 
food “generalists,” that is, they con- 
sume a wide variety of food sub- 
stances. Unlike food “specialists,” who 
rely almost completely on one or a 
few varieties of food, omnivores can 
select their diet from a theoretically 
almost limitless range of items, a range 
defined by availability in the environ- 
ment and by competition with other 
species. (For convenience, we will use 
the term omnivore but our comments 
hold for all generalists, including gen- 
eral herbivores.) The omnivore has 
much greater flexibility in exploiting 
the potential nutrient sources of the 
environment and in exploring and in- 
vading new habitats. Furthermore, by 
consuming a wide variety of foods, 
the omnivore can minimize the effects 
of mildly toxic or nutritionally imbal- 
anced substances by utilizing them as 
only partial nutritional support. 
A major cost of omnivorousness is 
that it makes great demands on be- 
havioral capacities. The food specialist 
consumes such a small variety of foods 
that recognition of appropriate food I 
items (specific types of leaves, flying 
insects, and so on) can be genetically 
built in. Specifically tuned receptors 
could never be constructed for the 
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