Wuriupranili and Tukumbini

Mike Denney, MD, PhD

An ancient Australian aboriginal creation story tells of how mythical people at the beginning of time had to search for food in perpetual darkness of night, because there was no sun. One day, a tall, grey-feathered Bolga stork hurled the yolk of an emu egg into the sky, whereupon it struck some sticks of wood and burst into flames, lighting up the beauty and abundance of the earth. Thereafter, Wuriupranili, the Sun-Woman, carried this torch east to west across the heavens each day, returning through a tunnel under the earth at night. After she gathered food as she rose in the sky during the morning hours, in the heat of the day at high noon Wuriupranili would begin to cook for a later celestial feast.

Within this new diurnal cycle, the rising of the sun each morning awakened Tukumbini, the yellow-faced honey-eater, who would then sing out a melodious birdcall to rouse the aborigines so that, like the Sun-Woman, they would gather food in the light of day for their dinner at sunset. Recognizing Tukumbini as the god of wisdom and instruction, Wuriupranili inspired him to teach the people how to recognize, gather, cook, and eat healthy, locally-grown foods that contained guruwari, the sacred life-sustaining essence of the earth.

As in this issue of San Francisco Medicine we discuss food and health—practical and scientific nutritional ideas such as eating habits, integrative nutrition, eating disorders, world health, the benefits of wine, environmental food contaminants, and special diets for heart disease and diabetes prevention—we might pause to reflect upon the simple, down-to-earth dietary practices and teachings in the mythology of the indigenous aborigines, at 65,000 years the longest continuously intact local culture in the world.

Certainly, if there is a modern-day personification of Wuriupranili, it might be internationally acclaimed chef and author Alice Waters, inventor of California cuisine, powerful advocate of sustainable agriculture, and founder of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley. For many years, Waters rose with the dawn, gathered fresh, organically-grown vegetables and fruits from local farmer’s markets, spent the day preparing and cooking, and, to the delight of her customers, served a delicious and impeccably healthy feast during the evening dinner hours. She was named Best Chef in America by James Beard and one of the top ten chefs in the world by Cuisine et Vins de France. During this time, she published eight books about healthy natural foods and their preparation. Lamenting the ubiquity of processed and fast foods, her fundamental principle has been, “Allow food to be what it is.”

Extending our aboriginal myth, we might visualize a modern Tukumbini, one to carry forward this earth-bound dietary philosophy with wisdom, teaching, and intellectual fervor. That might well be Berkeley professor Michael Pollan, director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism, who, Alice Waters has said, “forages in the overgrowth of our schizophrenic food culture” and “is the kind of teacher we all wish we had, one who triggers the little explosions of insight that change the way we eat.” Pollan has recently published two books about food and nutrition, The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in which he elucidates the powerful connectedness of human beings with the plant world and describes how the current policies and practices of the modern food industry impact negatively upon the eating habits, nutrition, and health of Americans.

Both Alice Waters and Michael Pollan advocate more basic and intuitive ways of eating. In an article on food and health published in The New York Times Magazine on January 28, 2007, Pollan discusses the process of what he calls nutritionism, the erroneous belief that the scientific study of individual components, nutrients rather than food, can offer solid conclusions about what to eat or what supplements to take. He says that nutrition-ism, with its inability to address the complexity and wholeness of the human relationship to food, has led to the opposite of health—to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and malnutrition. Focusing upon food, not just individual nutrients, Pollan convincingly argues that we would be better off eating the way our grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents taught us to eat.

Thus, both Waters and Pollan ask for a return to more traditional ways to recognize, gather, cook, and eat healthy, locally-grown food. They acknowledge the intimate and complex connection of human beings to their planet. Yes, over these thousands of years, the sacred life-giving essence of the earth, the guruwara, remains with us in the spirits of Wuriupranili, the Sun-Woman, and Tukumbini, the teacher.