WHAT DID OUR ANCESTORS EAT?

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.