LAMORINDA WEEKLY | Food for Thought: 'Gulp'


Vickie Sciacca of the Lafayette Library and Learning Center (left, in red), and Beth Girshman of the Orinda Library discuss the latest Lamorinda Reads selection: Mary Roach's "Gulp." Roach is scheduled to speak at the Lafayette Veteran's Memorial Building March 27 at 7 p.m. Photo Cathy Dausman

Warning: Do not attempt to eat while reading "Gulp" - you might end up choking back laughter. Mary Roach's latest book, the current Lamorinda Reads selection, is an in-one-end and out-the-other digestive system 'tour de farce' for the layman.

While the book cover is all smiles, it's soon strictly downhill, as Amazon's Best Science Book of 2013 begins its discourse on each piece of the alimentary canal (or "food chute," as Roach calls it), minus the small intestine.

"I just can't make the small intestine interesting," she admitted.

Roach's introduction to the subject of her latest book came in fifth grade science class by way of a "headless, limbless molded plastic torso" with "a set of removable organs in full and lurid view." Later, she wrote an article which became the subject of Chapter 13 ("Dead Man's Bloat," if you must ask) and found she had "no space to do it justice," hence her latest monosyllabic title.

"It's important to shake things up," Roach said without a hint of irony in a phone conversation a week before her Lafayette appearance. She admitted she comes to her book ideas "in an inside out [sort of] way," and feels lucky to be able to pick and choose her topics.

Reading "Gulp" you'll learn that each person's chewing habits are unique, that hydrochloric acid doesn't faze mealworms (even those rescued alive from frog stomachs), that laundry detergents contain digestive tract enzymes, that humans generate three pints of saliva daily, and that said saliva/spit cleans old paintings quite well.

In spite of the book title and chapter headings which include "Hard to Stomach," "Spit Gets a Polish" and "Stuffed," Roach cautioned "I don't like to write with puns." Not to worry - some of her expert witnesses have it covered - a chemist named Spitz, for example, or the detergent industry consultant named Grime.

Roach's previous titles offer similar offbeat science takes on the afterlife, life in space, human cadavers and sexual physiology. Her audiences are happy to suggest she explore subjects such as UFOs, drugs, alcohol and the brain connection, or the lives of high-rise apartment dwellers.

While she hasn't taken up any of those suggestions, she is already at work on her next book project. "I don't want you to say '['Gulp'] is gross,'" Roach writes in her introduction. "I want you to say 'I thought this would be gross, but it's really interesting. Okay, and maybe a little gross."

Roach starts her book tour for "Gulp" at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 27 at the Lafayette Veteran's Memorial Building. The program is a joint presentation of the Lafayette, Moraga, and Orinda Friends of the Library groups. Print and audio copies of the book are available at Contra Costa County libraries, as well as at Orinda Books and Storyteller in Lafayette. It is available on order through Canetti's Bookshop, Orinda.