Lisa Price

Andrea Pieroni

Discover neglected wild food sources—that can also be used as medicine! The long-standing notion of “food as medicine, medicine as food,” can be traced back to Hippocrates. Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine is a global overview of wild and semi-domesticated foods and their use as medicine in traditional societies. Important cultural information, along with extensive case studies, provides a clear, authoritative look at the many neglected food sources still being used around the world today. This book bridges the scientific disciplines of medicine, food science, human ecology, and environmental sciences with their ethno-scientific counterparts of ethnobotany, ethnoecology, and ethnomedicine to provide a valuable multidisciplinary resource for education and instruction. Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine presents respected researchers’ in-depth case studies on foods different cultures use as medicines and as remedies for nutritional deficiencies in diet. Comparisons of living conditions in different geographic areas as well as differences in diet and medicines are thoroughly discussed and empirically evaluated to provide scientific evidence of the many uses of these traditional foods as medicine and as functional foods. The case studies focus on the uses of plants, seaweed, mushrooms, and fish within their cultural contexts while showing the dietary and medical importance of these foods. The book provides comprehensive tables, extensive references, useful photographs, and helpful illustrations to provide clear scientific support as well as opportunities for further thought and study. Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine explores the ethnobiology of: Tibet—antioxidants as mediators of high-altitude nutritional physiology Northeast Thailand—“wild” food plant gathering Southern Italy—the consumption of wild plants by Albanians and Italians Northern Spain—medicinal digestive beverages United States—medicinal herb quality Commonwealth of Dominica—humoral medicine and food Cuba—promoting health through medicinal foods Brazil—medicinal uses of specific fishes Brazil—plants from the Amazon and Atlantic Forest Bolivian Andes—traditional food medicines New Patagonia—gathering of wild plant foods with medicinal uses Western Kenya—uses of traditional herbs among the Luo people South Cameroon—ethnomycology in Africa Morocco—food medicine and ethnopharmacology Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine is an essential research guide and educational text about food and medicine in traditional societies for educators, students from undergraduate through graduate levels, botanists, and research specialists in nutrition and food science, anthropology, agriculture, ethnoecology, ethnobotany, and ethnobiology.

Traditional Food As Medicine

Eating and Healing

Ina Vandebroek

Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco

Traditional Food Knowledge: New Wine Into Old Wineskins?

Rajindra K. Puri

Manuel Pardo de Santayana

Interest in environmental anthropology has grown steadily in recent years, reflecting national and international concern about the environment and developing research priorities, This major new international series is a vehicle for publishing up-to-date monographs and edited works on particular issues, themes, places, or peoples which focus on the interrelationship between society, culture, and the environment. Relevant areas include human ecology, the perception and representation of the environment, ethno-ecological knowledge, the human dimension of biodiversity conservation, and the ethnorgraphy of environmental problems. while the underlying ethos of the series will be anthropological, the approach is interdisciplinary. The Study of European wild food plants and herbal medicines in an old discipline that has been invigorated by a new generation of researchers pursuing ehnobotanical studies in new contexts. Modern botanical and medical science itself was built on studies of medieval Europeans' use of food plants and medicinal herbs. In spite of monumental changes introduced in the Age of Discovery and Mercantile Capitalism, some communities, often immigrants in foreign lands, continue to hold onto old recipes and traditons, while others have adopted and enculturated exotic plants and remedies into their diets and pharmacopoeia in new and creative ways. Now in the 21st century, in the age of the European Union and globalization, European folk botany is once again dynamically responding to changing cultural, economic and political contexts. The authors and studies presented in this volume reflect work being conducted across Europe's many regions. They tell the soty of the ongoing evolution of human-plant relations in one of the most bioculturally dynamic places on the planet, and explore new approaches that link the re-evaluation of plant-based cultural heritage with the conservation and use of biocultural diversity.

People, Health, and Wild Plant Resources

Ethnobotany in the New Europe

Manuel Pardo-de-Santayana

The study of European wild food plants and herbal medicines is an old discipline that has been invigorated by a new generation of researchers pursuing ethnobotanical studies in fresh contexts. Modern botanical and medical science itself was built on studies of Medieval Europeans’ use of food plants and medicinal herbs. In spite of monumental changes introduced in the Age of Discovery and Mercantile Capitalism, some communities, often of immigrants in foreign lands, continue to hold on to old recipes and traditions, while others have adopted and enculturated exotic plants and remedies into their diets and pharmacopoeia in new and creative ways. Now in the 21st century, in the age of the European Union and Globalization, European folk botany is once again dynamically responding to changing cultural, economic, and political contexts. The authors and studies presented in this book reflect work being conducted across Europe’s many regions. They tell the story of the on-going evolution of human-plant relations in one of the most bioculturally dynamic places on the planet, and explore new approaches that link the re-evaluation of plant-based cultural heritage with the conservation and use of biocultural diversity.

People, Health and Wild Plant Resources

The tremendous increase in migrations and diasporas of human groups in the last decades are not only bringing along challenging issues for society, especially related to the economic and political management of multiculturalism and culturally effective health care, but they are also creating dramatic changes in traditional knowledge, believes and practices (KBP) related to (medicinal) plant use. The contributors to this volume – all internationally recognized scholars in the field of ethnobiology, transcultural pharmacy, and medical anthropology – analyze these dynamics of traditional knowledge in especially 12 selected case studies. Ina Vandebroek, features in Nova's "Secret Life of Scientists", answering the question: just what is ethnobotany?

The Ethnobiology and Ethnopharmacy of Human Migrations

Traveling Cultures and Plants

Cassandra L. Quave

This volume addresses recent and ongoing ethnobotanical studies in the Balkans. The book focuses on elaborating the relevance of such studies for future initiatives in this region, both in terms of sustainable and peaceful (trans-regional, trans-cultural) rural development. A multi-disciplinary viewpoint is utilized, with an incorporation of historical, ethnographic, linguistic, biological, nutritional and medical perspectives. The book is also authored by recognized scholars, who in the last decade have extensively researched the Balkan traditional knowledge systems as they pertain to perceptions of the natural world and especially plants. Ethnobotany and Biocultural Diversities in the Balkans is the first ethnobotany book on one of the most biologically and culturally diverse regions of the world and is a valuable resource for both scholars and students interested in the field of ethnobotany.

Andrea Pieroni

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