This review makes the case for anthropological reflection on the intersection of food and the senses. Given that a focus on food and the senses allows us to explore some of the most basic boundaries of inside and outside, private and public, individual and collective, this topic offers an excellent window onto that elusive notion of everyday life that anthropologists wish to understand theoretically and examine ethnographically. At the same time, food is a key component of ritual, which has typically been understood as heightening or stimulating sensory experience to instill social or cosmological values. Food and the senses overlap in notions of taste as distinction and in an increasing recognition of the culturally cultivated phenomenon of synesthesia. Furthermore, in making food and the senses central to understanding wider social issues, this review argues for the productivity of a concept of "gustemology" in opening up new realms of ethnographic and theoretical inquiry.

PURPOSE: The research reported herein investigated the effects of a range of lime (as calcium hydroxide; Ca(OH) 2) dosage levels on the growth of Sago pondweed in outdoor experimental mesocosms. BACKGROUND: Lime (CaCO 3 and Ca(OH) 2) application has been used primarily as a lake rehabilitation technique for limiting algal growth by controlling phosphorus availability in the water column and its release from the sediment (Prepas et al. 1990). At supersaturated concentrations, calcium co-precipitates with phosphorus and settles from the water column. As a deposited layer on the sediment, it can adsorb additional phosphorus (at pH > 8), preventing it from diffusing into the water column for algal uptake. More recently, researchers have found that lime additions can suppress submersed macrophyte growth as well (Babin et al. 1992, Chambers et al. 2001, Prepas et al. 2001). However, the mode of growth suppression, dosage levels, and exposure time requirements are not entirely known. Since lime application drives the pH upward, it may stress macrophyte metabolic activities by inducing inorganic carbon limitation for photosynthesis in hardwater systems. Lime additions to aquatic systems at varying concentrations have not resulted in clear macrophyte community responses. For instance, single dosages of lime at modest concentration levels (<110 mg Ca L-) to hardwater lakes were accompanied by control of macrophyte biomass (species) for over a year (Reedyk et al. 2001). However, Chambers et al. (2001) indicated that exposure time, in addition to concentration, might be important in the control of macrophytes in aquatic systems located in the Canadian Great Plains. These findings suggest that lime application may be a very promising technique for integrated control of both macrophyte and algal production in eutrophic hardwater systems. More information is needed regarding the mode of action, dosage requirements, and impacts on different aquatic macrophyte species in order to develop sound integrated management and control strategies using lime.

Information on reproductive requirements of grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella Val.) was obtained from published accounts, from a visit to rivers in the USSR where introduced grass carp have reproduced, and from discussions with Soviet fishery workers. Turbulent areas at the confluence of rivers or below dams are the focal points for reproduction. Successful spawning occurs only in large rivers or canals where water velocity exceeds 0.8 m/s and volume is roughly 400 m3/s. The eggs are carried 50 to 180 km, depending on water temperature and current speed. The larvae hatch 1 day after spawning and make their way to vegetated lagoons, impoundments, or lakes closely connected to the river. They begin feeding on rotifers at 2 to 4 days and change to larger zooplankton in about a week. Temperatures required for stimulation of sexual maturation, egg incubation, and survival of young range from 19 to 30 C, with an optimum of about 23 C. Because requirements for each factor must be found in juxtaposition, successful reproduction occurs in only a few locations. Vulnerability to predators further checks population growth, once egg laying occurs. Although successful spawning of escaped grass carp in the United States is predicted, we believe that the resulting populations are likely to be small and to have little environmental impact except in local situations.

Proust’s famous madeleine captures the power of food to evoke some of our deepest memories. Why does food hold such power? What does the growing commodification and globalization of food mean for our capacity to store the past in our meals – in the smell of olive oil or the taste of a fresh-cut fig? This book offers a theoretical account of the interrelationship of culture, food and memory. Sutton challenges and expands anthropology’s current focus on issues of embodiment, memory and material culture, especially in relation to transnational migration and the flow of culture across borders and boundaries. The Greek island of Kalymnos in the eastern Aegean, where Islanders claim to remember meals long past – both humble and spectacular – provides the main setting for these issues, as well as comparative materials drawn from England and the United States. Despite the growing interest in anthropological accounts of food and in the cultural construction of memory, the intersection of food with memory has not been accorded sustained examination. Cultural practices of feasting and fasting, global flows of food as both gifts and commodities, the rise of processed food and the relationship of orally transmitted recipes to the vast market in speciality cookbooks tie traditional anthropological mainstays such as ritual, exchange and death to more current concerns with structure and history, cognition and the ‘anthropology of the senses’. Arguing for the crucial role of a simultaneous consideration of food and memory, this book significantly advances our understanding of cultural processes and reformulates current theoretical preoccupations.