And WHY is it important?
Because as a species, we evolved by
eating what was available in our environment as all other animal species did.
Hunters and gatherers ate what was available in the territories in which they
lived. Largely humans developed into separate racial groups, but not different
species. Even Neanderthals were a different race than Cro-Magnon man, but of
the same species, because genetically most all of modern man contains some
Neanderthal DNA.
We learned
to eat which foods sustained us, and which were poison. Hunters and gatherers
ate meat, fish, insects, roots, leaves, fruits, fungi, grains, seeds, and nuts,
but the actual foods were greatly different from one part of the world to the
next. It is one reason we are not the same as other animals, and why different
animals cannot survive on the same foods we eat.
Humans
learned to adapt. Some kinds of prey animals migrated, and plants also varied
from season to season. Many primitive tribes learned to preserve some foods to
sustain themselves in winter. Some cultures ate a vegetarian diet, and others
ate more meat or milk. Hunters and gatherers adapted to eat some foods by
preparing them in a special way, while other groups had little tolerance for certain
foods. The species as a whole is very adaptable, omnivores, able to digest all
kinds of foods. In some cases when foods made an individual sick enough, they
died, and their individual intolerance had less chance to get passed on.
Some foods
contain both beneficial nutrients and toxins. The human metabolism readily
discards some excess elements from the digestive system, and uses others. Other
species of animals can utilize some foods that we cannot tolerate at all. Dogs
usually cannot handle mushrooms, but there are many fungi that we can eat and do
obtain important nutrients from them. Because humans spread over the world they
have both diverse and individual needs from their diet. One size does not fit
all.
Some
cultural customs of food preparation affected the overall advantage of
nutrition, such as food combinations that created complete proteins, or others
that destroyed beneficial elements in the food. Humans only knew to repeat what
seemed to work. By 10,000 years ago, as a worldwide species, we had adapted
well, and most racial groups had an advantage in heredity that gave most
individuals the predisposition of good health. As long as they were eating mostly
the same diet as their ancestors ate.
We are
largely dependent upon the needs and predispositions passed to us from our
ancestors but we are not eating the same foods they ate. We have altered the
nutritional content of the wild foods that our species once ate. Is this why
our diet is failing to keep us healthy?
© by Ruth Zachary.
