Gulp

It has been ages since I've been drawn into an actual book. With chapters.

How dare you compete with the stack of magazines on my coffee table?! 

Pinterest!? 

Picture books?! 

Bath time?!

 Breaking Bad?!

Well, with that being said, I am hooked on a new author; Mary Roach. 

She reads a bit like a research paper, but an interesting and funny research paper.

With book titles like "Stiff" and "Spook," respectively covering the topics of cadavers and the afterlife, how can you go wrong?

My friend Becky turned me onto her a few weeks ago, and I am currently devouring her newest book 'Gulp.' 

For a foodie that really only likes to read non-fiction, and the more honest the better, this book appears to be written solely for me.

The first paragraph of the Introduction pulled me in instantly:

In 1968, on the Berkeley campus of the University of California, six young men undertook an irregular and unprecedented act. Despite the setting and the social climate of the day, it involved no civil disobedience or mind-altering substances. Given that it took place in the nutritional sciences department, I cannot even say with confidence that the participants wore bell-bottomed pants or sideburns of the unusual scope. I know only the basic facts: the six men stepped inside a metabolic chamber and remained for two days, testing meals made from dead bacteria.

This was the fevered dawn of space exploration; NASA had Mars on its mind. A spacecraft packed with all of the food necessary for a two-year mission would be impracticably heavy to launch. Thus there was a push to develop menu items that could be "bio-regenerated," that is to say, farmed on elements of the astronauts' waste...: (p. 13, Roach)

Hooked.

The 1960's seemed hip, but I guess everything in retrospect is romanticized to a certain degree.

Hopefully these 6 men can look back at this experiment and laugh...

Call me wimpy, but there would be no compensation worth enough...

Bleccchhhhhhhh!

Nonetheless, I look forward to the next 314 pages...