POWER PLANTS

Implicit in this story is the acknowledgement of plant foods' primacy in human civilization - something the current media-industrial complex does its best to make us lose sight of. "French botanist Francois Couplan has spent half a century travelling the globe searching for the lost culinary secrets of the plant world to record them for posterity. 'It is amazing the uses different people have found for plants, but also everything that has been lost in a bid to imitate Western lifestyles,' he said."

"His aim is to refresh our memories of the way our ancestors used to live, when for three million years man lived in symbiosis with plants which were their staple foods, as well as providing medicines, shelter and fire."