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I've recently been delving deeper into our food ecosystem and have realized that the notion of consuming "natural" food, in its strictest definition, seems quit
by MoSattler 3y ago
I've recently been delving deeper into our food ecosystem and have realized that the notion of consuming "natural" food, in its strictest definition, seems quite untenable. It's fascinating to note that all meat - be it chicken, beef, or pork - are all outcomes of intensive human-driven breeding and domestication processes.
A similar scenario extends to the realm of fruits, vegetables and even grains, where the majority of what we consume today are far-removed variants of their wild counterparts, owing to selective breeding over centuries. Essentially, the food items that constitute our regular diets wouldn't exist in a truly untouched, natural environment.
Edit: I'm not saying that this is bad, just that it's interesting.
- pjc50 3y agoWell, yes. We domesticated everything and moved it around the world to optimal growing locations. Thus enabling is to have such a large number of humans. "Back to" movements have a tendency towards accidental mass famine.
- MoSattler 3y agoWe didn't just move species around, we essentially created new ones that exist solely under our care.
- 867-5309 3y agothis is why I try to practice pescetarianism. re gp's beef, chicken, pork: compare these animals to those they likely devolved from - dairy cattle from gazelles, antelope; poultry from cassowaries, ostriches; farm pigs from wild boar.. there is barely any resemblance left between these animals, having traded through inbreeding agility, physique, diet and genetic diversity for meat per kg per sqft per feed and docility. fish are the only remaining palatable animals most unfucked by humans
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoDoes it matter to your body if you eat meat from a water buffalo, or from a frog, or from a whale? Not that much. You can eat almost any animal. You can even eat insects. So why would it matter that a modern chicjen is different that it's ancestor? Assuming it has space to run around and is not factory farmed, it wouldn't matter.
- TylerE 3y agoPeople eat insects all the time. What do you Think crab, shrimp, and lobsters are?
- 867-5309 3y agocousins at best!
- 867-5309 3y agoprobably not, but by that point it just comes down to protein source, of which pulses and fungi are arguably better alternatives to meat it matters because of the long term effects on health and ecology
- jsjohnst 3y ago> dairy cattle Cattle are an older species than humans. > fish are the only remaining palatable animals most unfucked by humans Hate to break it to you, but a non-insignificant portion of store bought fish was cultivated / farmed.
- 867-5309 3y ago>Cattle are an older species than humans. incorrect. humans tamed the aurochs around 10,000 years ago and the most common dairy cattle breed today, the Holstein, was bred around 2,000 years ago >Hate to break it to you, but a non-insignificant portion of store bought fish was cultivated / farmed. you're not really breaking anything. this is a completely different sense of "farming". their genetics and physiology have not been altered to the same extent as dairy cattle, nor do we interfere with their evolution by selectively breeding. "farmed" fish are not fat and docile. so any fish you eat today is likely to be the same fish you would have eaten 300,000 years ago
- hooverd 3y agoEh, we could probably do with less corn-syrup water.
- thegrim33 3y agoSure, but this is also the nirvana fallacy; just because the food available to you isn't 100% perfectly "natural" doesn't mean that it's bad/wrong or that you shouldn't strive to eat as natural as possible anyways.
- Veen 3y agoBut why? Your body doesn't care if the nutrients it gets are from naturally grown animals and plants or from a lab or factory, provided they are the right nutrients in the right quantities. It all gets broken down to its constituent components anyway.
- MoSattler 3y agoAbsolutely. But it's important to note that our bodies have evolved over millions of years to consume naturally occurring foods. Now, as we've started to create and consume foods with characteristics unfamiliar to our evolutionary history, such as highly processed foods, it's evident that this can indeed cause problems.
- resoluteteeth 3y ago> Absolutely. But it's important to note that our bodies have evolved over millions of years to consume naturally occurring foods. Now, as we've started to create and consume foods with characteristics unfamiliar to our evolutionary history, such as highly processed foods, it's evident that this can indeed cause problems. I think the original point is that virtually everything we eat has "characteristics unfamiliar to our evolutionary history" because the animals and plants we eat have been bred for various characteristics so extensively, so simply avoiding "highly processed foods" doesn't meant that we're eating the types or quantities of foods that humans would have for almost our entire existence
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- crazygringo 3y agoThis is correct. If you wanted only food unaffected by humans you'd need to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle which could probably only support something like 1% of the world's current population. But on the other hand, why consider domestic/bred species as "unnatural"? We exist in a symbiotic relationship with them, and there are symbiotic relationships all over nature.
- ZoomZoomZoom 3y agoBreeding to kill and eat is not what symbiotic means.
- mc32 3y agoI think the writer means human influenced evolution in domesticated animals (which may of may not for slaughter specifically)
- Giorgi 3y agoNot to drive into offtopic here, but it always baffled me how can humans look at results of hybrids, like a mule, a lemon, or at breeding and still claim evolution is not real.
- a_c 3y agoA related idea is that, the existence of certain species is purely because of human consumption. They wouldn't exist in the current form if we stopped eating them completely.
- readthenotes1 3y agoWell, that's most animals, Right?
- Karellen 3y ago> the notion of consuming "natural" food, in its strictest definition, seems quite untenable. If not strictly natural foods, then what? I can't stand supernatural foods - the ectoplasm really doesn't agree with me. I'd like to try preternatural foods, but I've never been able to find a genuinely miraculous grower or farm to get them from.
- taskforcegemini 3y ago>It's fascinating to note that all meat - be it chicken, beef, or pork - are all outcomes of intensive human-driven breeding and domestication processes there's still animals in the wild though, that get hunted and eaten