Travel and the cultural bubbles we live in. A word like “Banting” for instance. All the rage in South Africa, yet never once encountered in Copenhagen. A quick search reveals that this diet, a kind of precursor to the Paleo (which is encountered all over Copenhagen), has its roots in William Banting’s 1863 Letter on Corpulence.
There’s a New Yorker cartoon with two puzzled cavemen that comes to mind: “Something’s just not right – our air is clean, our water is pure, we all get plenty of exercise, everything we eat is organic and free-range, and yet nobody lives past thirty.”