[EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Gwinyai Masukume is joining our gang of regular bloggers. This is his first post at improbablecom.wpcomstaging.com. Please welcome him!]
Besides food acting as source of energy for the brain during thinking, food (drinks, utensils, waiters, etc.) can literally be used for thought. Various situations encountered in medicine have been named after food related entities such as coca cola colored urine, bean shaped G-spot, dinner fork deformity – there are hundreds of such medical culinary terms in the literature. I write about them, in my blog Food related medical terms.
For instance seeing port-wine colored amniotic fluid could clinch the diagnosis of placental abruption – a life threatening condition in which a normally sited placenta (which incidentally means a flat cake) separates prematurely from the womb (which incidentally is pear-shaped). So, a life (or lives) can be saved by noticing port-wine amniotic fluid.
In 2012s first issue of the Croatian Medical Journal, I discuss the critical importance of food related medical analogies [here’s the PDF]. I hope you find the discussion tasteful.
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I guess this career in gastronomic medicine was inevitable as I come from Zimbabwe—a place that on the map is more or less shaped like a teapot. At the teapot’s snout is Victoria Falls; its other name, Mosi-oa-Tunya, means “the smoke that thunders”.
Food for thought.
BONUS: AMNIOTIC FLUID IS ALSO KNOWN AS LIQUOR