North County Times/The Californian - Mark Hineline's Out Here column

But, in the end, it is just pizza. Consuming pizza expands neither the palate nor the mind. Pizza is dull as a stick.

I would not be giving pizza a second thought were it not the case that I have lately been reading a book by Gary Paul Nabhan, an ethnobotanist who has spent most of his career exploring the relationships between plants and people in the border region between Mexico and the United States.

Most people associate ethnobotany with pharmaceuticals and with drugs of a more illicit nature, but Nabhan's interest has always tended toward the more mundane matters of gathering, harvesting and eating foods.

Nabhan is not as well-known as he should be, even among people who read and ponder natural history, perhaps because of his regional focus on a marginal part of the country. Even so, he has authored or co-authored nearly a dozen books on ethnobotany and associated subjects.

His most recent, the book that has caused me to ponder pizza, is "Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods."

"Coming Home to Eat" is an account of Nabhan's effort, during a one-year period, to consume only those foods that have been produced or foraged within a 250-mile circle drawn around his home, which was then near Tucson, Ariz.

(Nabhan has since relocated to the southern Colorado plateau, where he now serves as director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.)

A Macarthur "genius" grant winner, Nabhan's accomplishments in the areas of foods and natural history include the creation of a seed bank for sustaining biodiversity in the narrowing and increasingly engineered realm of agricultural production. Nabhan also sought and found a key to explaining the high rate of diabetes among American Indians of the Southwest; the Tohono O'odham, who live in the mountainous area west of Tucson, have the highest incidence of adult-onset diabetes in the world.

Nabhan discovered that the physiology of the Tohono O'odham is adapted to the consumption of desert plants, which are in turn adapted to desert aridity. When they were encouraged by federal agencies to go to the store for food, instead of to ancestral sources in the stony soils of the Sonoran Desert, the Tohono O'odham began to succumb to diabetes in large numbers.

Nabhan's discovery, along with a more general and long-standing interest in sources of foods, led him to attempt his dietary experiment. During the course of his year of eating locally, Nabhan grew food at home, purchased from local producers ---- including community-supported farms near Tucson ---- and found a Sonoran family who made tortillas for Nabhan from mesquite flour he provided.

Not all of Nabhan's experiments with food sound promising or appetizing. His quite accidental discovery that chuckwalla lizard tastes like chicken convinced me that I will do best to stick with chicken in my grilled kabobs. And the error that he and his wife, Laurie, made in naming the four turkeys they raised, knowing that they were destined for the butcher's knife, reminded me of my own singular and misguided attempt to raise and slaughter poultry ---- an effort of several months and many dollars that resulted in a single and memorably sullen meal of fried chicken.

But "Coming Home to Eat" made me think about our own regional resources in North County and about American attitudes toward food.

Many of the necessary resources are in our midst. The North County is host to at least two community-supported farms, and farmers markets offer easy access to other area growers. Citrus, avocados, olives, apples and locally produced wines are available, and in some cases abundant. Meanwhile, during the months to come, the back yards of our region will yield zucchinis, tomatoes and other vegetables by the bushel.

With certain exceptions ---- grains from North County fields are rarities ---- a predilection for preparing and eating foods produced locally is a doable proposition.

I will leave it to Nabhan to explain why that would be a good idea, no matter that it may be inconvenient. If you read one book this year about food and diet, read "Coming Home to Eat" (W. W. Norton, $14.95).

Then loan the book to a friend to read, and ask your friend to pass it on. Once the book has made the rounds of your social circle, organize a gathering and talk about it.

But please, don't serve pizza.

Mark Hineline writes the weekly "Out Here" column, on science and nature, from his home in Escondido. He is a historian of science. He can be reached at hineline@ocotillofield.net.