There is an idea in nutrition that I have used myself, but it’s flawed. The idea that we were evolved to eat a certain way. Or even the concept of ancestral diets in general. When the paleo diet gained popularity, it immediately made sense to me on a certain level. But as I learned more over the years, some things didn’t make sense. They promoted tons of vegetables, yet say grains are farmed (a new invention) and aren’t allowed. Ironically, most of their plate was covered with vegetables that didn’t exist until after farming either. That big sweet apple in the grocery store was engineered from tiny bitter crab-apples. A 2,000-year-old GMO if you will. In fact, many of the vegetables in the produce department came from just a few plant species.
Another big problem with that is in most of the world we have winter. There isn’t tons of vegetation in the winter. Most likely, your winter diet was obtained by hunting and fishing. Most people seem to have the idea that they can go into the wild and survive on nuts and berries. They don’t seem to realize those are only in season for a few weeks of the year. And also, you aren’t the only ones who like them. Bears are extremely fond of blueberries. They are good, but not good enough to wrestle a bear for.
Of course, in the tropical regions, none of that holds true. Maybe those people did subsist on mostly fruits and did little hunting. People who lived near the coastline probably ate a lot of seafood. The salmon run is sacred among the tribes that depended on it for food. There is no one diet that ancient humans ate. They ate whatever was available where they were.
Even without these flaws, The idea of “The old ways are the best ways” is still a logical fallacy. It is a way to come up with a theory, but it doesn’t prove anything. However, Even though I know this, I sometimes use it too. For example, there was a study going around that said charred meat led to increased cancer risk. I know that most food throughout history was cooked over fire. Charring is part of the process. The Idea makes no sense to me. How are we even here if it’s true?
Another related idea is that “processed food” is bad for you. You could stick your face into a cherry tree and start chomping down. but if you pick those cherries and pull off the stems, that’s processing. What if you use a straw to pop out the pits? What if you put them in a pot and cook them with a touch of honey and dried and ground cinnamon until they turn into a wonderful compote? That is a lot of processing. That doesn’t suddenly change it into poison either.
Corn in it’s raw state isn’t digestible. But if you nixtamalize, dry it, and Grind it into a meal, then you can add water and cook it a gruel or bread. Processing food to make something that isn’t edible into something that is, isn’t a bad thing. It’s a testament to our ingenuity and will to survive and thrive in all conditions. Entire civilizations were sustained by this kind of ingenuity. Humans haven’t evolved to eat much of anything but bugs and some bitter fruits without tools and processing. Where exactly is the line between how much processing is fine, and how much is suddenly bad?
So what’s my point? No matter what you eat, someone has an arbitrary rule as to why it’s poison and you should never eat that. Someone is always going to be there to tell you what the “good” and “bad” foods are. There is, and never has been, one perfect diet for humans just like there is no perfect food. This is what makes humans different. We have tools. We use our brains. If we are hungry enough, we figure out a way to extract the nutrients from whatever is available.
I don’t want beyond beef or lab-grown meat either. but it isn’t poison. This is a natural extension of what we have been doing all along. We won’t be able to graze cattle on Mars. After the 1,000th pea protein shake, that lab-grown steak probably looks pretty awesome.
If Twitter had existed 8,000 years ago, people would have been furiously chiseling on their stone tablets how poisonous the new big-eared corn was. And how evil selective breeding was. Except they wouldn’t have. They were happy to have a more reliable source of food. Maybe we should dig a little deeper and think a little more logically ourselves. Food isn’t ”healthy” or “poisonous”.
The only question is, “Does this fit my current goals or not?”
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