Book Review Adventures On The Alimentary Canal By Mary...

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach is a truly fascinating novel that explores the body’s digestive system, beginning at the nose and ending with the rectum. Roach encaptures the reader with a not-so encapturing topic, and throughout the book uses humor and startling facts to keep the reader engaged. Gulp is not only about the human digestive system, but humans as people as well. Roach dives into cultural differences, provides interesting historical facts, and explores scientific investigations all while informing the reader on the human digestive system. The book begins with the nose, surprisingly, in which Roach informs the reader that eighty to ninety percent of the sensory experience of eating is olfaction, the sense of smell (Roach 24). Roach introduces the reader to Sue Langstaff, a sensory analyst, and takes the reader through her experience of training to be apart of the new UC Davis Olive Oil Taste Panel. Roach explains how humans perceive different tastes and smells, and how important sensory analysts and panels are to product development. She goes on to explain how humans differ from their pets in the sense of what they like to eat, due to the difference of how animals and humans perceive different flavors. Humans tend to feed their pets based on their own food preferences, but since animals have different senses of taste than humans, they may not like the food their owners give them. Speaking of preferences, Roach dives into the depths of why