This is what bears eat. I had looked this up a while ago, but I was having some technical problems at the time so I didn’t get around to putting it in my blog. I was reminded of it by my bletting entries.
What I find interesting is that if we weren’t tool users, we would be pretty much on a bear diet. Which is- berries, seeds, nuts, the occasional leaves and roots, insects, small animals (frogs, mice, etc.), fish and the occasional left overs from large animal predators (bears rarely hunt large animals but they are happy to eat leftovers). Conveniently, bears hibernate through the winter, so they don’t have to worry about that pesky winter food supply.
In case you think I’m weird for comparing people with bears, I should add that chimpanzees have a pretty similar diet
Now, I’m not espousing this bear diet in any way as the good or proper diet. What I find fascinating is how we have managed to extend our eating options very considerably by the use of tools and architecture. Take cooking, for example. people often talk about cooking in connection with meat eating, but since we can easily consume raw meat this doesn’t really represent an extension of our diets. Instead, I think cooking is more important with respect to beans (lots of beans! lots of beans! lots of beans!) and grains. Beans contain sapponins, so are poisonous unless cooked. Once cooked, they are a great source of protein. Similarly cereals like wheat and oats contain some unappealing chemicals which break down when cooked, they are much easier to eat when cooked, and their protein and starch become more easily digested when cooked. Similarly for things like potatoes and many types of green vegetables (think raw vs cooked broccoli)
In addition to cooking, we’ve become pretty good at using external microbes to complement our internal microbes, thereby also extending our digestive capabilities. The most excellent example of this is our use of non-human milk. Most humans can’t stomach fresh milk from other animals that well (the ability varies from region to region) but can handle milk much more readily in the form of yogurt, butter (fermented, tibetan style), cheese, sour cream, butter milk, etc. etc. all of which make use of bacteria to make the milk both more storable and digestible. Cooking milk also helps. Cream sauce anyone?
Lastly, and what led me to this extended blog entry, is our ability to use architecture to extend our food consumption and storage abilities. Bletting works because architecture enables us to set up exactly the right conditions to encourage certain types of cellular decomposition (e.g. breakdown due to internal enzymes) and not others (e.g. breakdown due to presence of mold). Similar, smoke houses and drying racks allow us to transform food so that we can preserve and eat them later. In some cases it also transforms foods from barely edible (sour grapes) to highly edible (sweet raisins).
In any
case, none of this is to espouse one type of diet over another. I suspect
that most of our food extending knowledge is derived from an immediate
need to avoid starvation, rather than an eye to nutritious eating. You
know, more like “Hey Johnny, maybe if we try cooking that toxic bean over
there we can eat it instead of starving today” rather than “Hey Johnny,
maybe if we try cooking that toxic bean over there we can eat it, therby
improving our fiber and protein food availability, which will improve our
digestive health while at the same time reducing our reliance on animal
protein sources, which, since they, themselves, may cause heart disease
over an extended period of times, will in turn prolong our lives and
increase our quality of life in our later years.” Yeah- I’m going with the
former version, rather than the later.
posted at 14:23 on Mon, 15 Nov, 2004 |
path: /living
All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.