A tip of the toilet hat to you, Alexander Khoruts.
THE GREAT IRONY is that in the beginning, the gut was all there was. “We’re basically a highly evolved earthworm surrounding the intestinal tract,” Khoruts commented as we drove away from his clinic the last day I was there. Eventually, the food processor had to have a brain attached to help it look for food, and limbs to reach that food. That increased its size, so it needed a circulatory system to distribute the fuel that powered the limbs. And so on. Even now, the digestive tract has its own immune system and its own primitive brain, the so-called enteric nervous system. I recalled what Ton van Vliet had said at one point in our conversation: “People are surprised to learn: They are a big pipe with a little bit around it.”
You are what you eat, but more than that, you are how you eat. Be thankful you’re not a sea anemone, disgorging lunch through the same hole that dinner goes in. Be glad you’re not a grazer or a cud chewer, spending your life stoking the furnace. Be thankful for digestive juices and enzymes, for villi, for fire and cooking, all the miracles that have made us what we are. Khoruts gave the example of the gorilla, a fellow ape held back by the energy demands of a less streamlined gut. Like the cow, the gorilla lives by fermenting vast quantities of crude vegetation. “He’s processing leaves all day. Just sitting and chewing, and cooking inside. There’s no room for great thoughts.”
Those who know the human gut intimately see beauty, not only in its sophistication but in its inner landscapes and architecture. In a 1998 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, two Spanish physicians published a pair of photographs: “the haustrations of the transverse colon” side by side with the arches of an upper-floor arcade in Gaudi’s La Pedrera. Inspired, wanting to see my own internal Gaudi, I had my first colonoscopy without drugs.[125]
There is an unnameable feeling I’ve had maybe ten times in my life. It is a mix of wonder, privilege, humility. An awe that borders on fear. I’ve felt it in a field of snow on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska, with the northern lights whipping overhead so seemingly close I dropped to my knees. I am walloped by it on dark nights in the mountains, looking up at the sparkling smear of our galaxy. Laying eyes on my own ileocecal valve, peering into my appendix from within, bearing witness to the magnificent complexity of the human body, I felt, let’s be honest, mild to moderate cramping. But you understand what I’m getting at here. Most of us pass our lives never once laying eyes on our organs, the most precious and amazing things we own. Until something goes wrong, we barely give them thought. This seems strange to me. How is it that we find Christina Aguilera more interesting than the inside of our own bodies? It is, of course, possible that I seem strange. You may be thinking, Wow, that Mary Roach has her head up her ass. To which I say: Only briefly, and with the utmost respect.
Acknowledgments
This time around, I took a cue from the world of charitable giving. The categories below reflect the many levels of generosity and support that have made this book possible. If Gulp is interesting and fun, if it’s accurate, enlightening, or compelling, that is due in overwhelming proportion to the contributions of these excellent human beings.
For giving up entire afternoons with no compensation and no guarantee of pleasing portrayal, for walking me through archives, for twisting arms, opening doors, laying out welcome mats, I bow down to:
Andrea Bainbridge, American Medical Association Historical Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection
Ed dePeters, University of California, Davis
Anna Dhody and Evi Numen, Mütter Museum
Michael Jones, Virginia Commonwealth University
Alexander Khoruts, Matt Hamilton, and Mike Sadowsky, University of Minnesota
Alan Kligerman, Kligerman Regional Digestive Disease Center
Sue Langstaff, Applied Sensory
Michael Levitt and Julie Furne, Minneapolis VA Medical Center
George “Nick” Nichopoulos, personal physician to the late Elvis Presley
Megan and Rick Prelinger, Prelinger Library
Nancy Rawson, Pat Moeller, Amy McCarthy, and Theresa Kleinsorge, AFB International
“Rodriguez,” Gene Parks, Ed Borla, and Paul Verke, Avenal State Prison and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Stephen Secor, University of Alabama
Erika Silletti, René de Wijk, Andries van der Bilt, and Ton van Vliet, Food Valley, the Netherlands
Richard Tracy, Lee Lemenager, and John Gray, University of Nevada, Reno
For enduring repeated phone calls and protracted e-mail pestering with no outward indication that the author had overstepped the bounds of casual inquiry and was perched on the brink of actionable nuisance, I salute:
Jianshe Chen
Phillip Clapham
Justin Crump
Evangelia Bellas
Thomas Lowry
David Metz
Jason Mihalopoulos
Gabriel Nirlungayuk
Adrianne Noe
Tom Rastrelli
Danielle Reed
Paul Rozin
Terrie Williams
Sera Young
For providing indispensable expertise on arcane topics, for sharing contacts, for inspiring and encouraging me and making me laugh, I thank:
Jaime Aranda-Michel
Dean Backer
Daniel Blackburn
Rabbi Zushe Blech
Laurie Bonneau
Andrea Chevalier
Patty Davis
Siobhan DeLancy
Erik “the Red” Denmark
Adam Drewnowski
Ben Eiseman
Holly Embree
Father Geoff Farrow
Richard Faulks
Steve Geiger
Roy Goodman
Farid Haddad
Susan Hogan
Al Hom
Tim Howard
Bruce Jayne
Mark Johnson
Mary Juno
Jason Karlawish
Ron Kean
Diane Kelly
Bruce Kraig
Christopher Lahr
Jennifer Long
Johan Lündstrom
Ray and Robert Madoff
The Notto
Kenneth Olson
Jon Prinz
Sarah Pullen
Gregor Reid
Janet Riley
Michael Sappol
Adam Savage
Markus Stieger
Jim Turner
Paul Wagner
Brian Wansink
Judge Colleen Weiland
William Whitehead
For standing by me all these years and all these books, for their warmth, talent, patience, and friendship, a pixel and paper embrace to:
Jill Bialosky, Erin Lovett and Louise Brockett, Bill Rusin and Jeannie Luciano, and Stephen King and Drake McFeely of W. W. Norton, plus Mary Babcock, eagle-eyed copyeditor extraordinaire
Stephanie Gold
Jeff Greenwald
Jay Mandel and Lauren Whitney, of William Morris Endeavor
Lisa Margonelli
Anne Pigué
Ed and the rest of the wonderful Rachles family
Bibliography
Waslien, Carol, Doris Howes Calloway, and Sheldon Margen. “Human Intolerance to Bacteria as Food.” Nature 221: 84–85 (January 4, 1969.)
Drake, M. A., and G. V. Civille. “Flavor Lexicons.” Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety 2: 33–40 (2003).
125
Not typically a big deal. Most Europeans get scoped with sedation-on-demand. You’re set up with an IV ready to go, and need only say the word. Eighty percent never ask for the drugs.