This is Part 2 of a 3-part article. (Go back to Part 1.)
Are we herbivores then? In nature, herbivores are natural comsumers of grass, weeds, leaves and stems. Would it appeal to you to forage in nature for grass, weeds and leaves? Not really. Herbage doesn't repulse us but its sight and smell don't strongly attract us either.
And there's a good reason for that. Herbage cannot supply us with enough calories for our needs. Because we don't have four stomachs as true herbivores do, the net energy needed to digest and assimilate herbage is equal to or greater than the caloric energy that the herbage supplies. We might eat raw herbage, but it cannot be the primary source of our natural diet.
Are we nut and seed eaters? We enjoy the taste of raw nuts, but in nature, as a practical matter, we would have a hard time eating very many of them because of the inherent difficulties in getting at the nut inside its hard shell.
Our teeth don't have thousands of pounds of pressure as the teeth of squirrels do. We might be able to crack nuts together to get at them, but it's not an easy process; try it.
Seeds taste pretty good to us, but do they have an overwhelming appeal? In nature, would we wake up in the morning hungering for seeds? Not really. Though we can enjoy nuts and seeds, they would not be the primary component of our diet in nature.
What about fruits? Are we natural frugivores?
Would you, in nature, reach for a ripe banana? Of course. Would you reach for grapes if you saw them growing on a vine? Of course. Would you eat a ripe, juicy mango and love it? Of course.
Would you reach for blueberries or blackberries growing on a bush? Of course. Would you be attracted to the bright color and smell of an orange? Of course. The riotous spectrum of colors and smells of these fruits and many others would strongly attract us.
Moreover, nature has designed us for the easy acquisition and preparation of such foods. Our opposable thumbs make it easy for us to reach out and grasp fruit in trees, vines and bushes. Our nimble fingers easily peel back the skin of a banana, or the peel of an orange.
Nature has designed us to be natural symbionts of fruit-bearing plants, just as bees are natural symbionts of flowers.
Both male and female flowers have nectar to attract bees and wasps. When a bee sucks the nectar in a male flower, its legs become coated with pollen. Then when the bee flies to a female flower and sucks the nectar, that same pollen is deposited in the female flower and fertilizes it. Thus bees are natural symbionts of flowers: The bees get food, and the flowering plants get fertilization.
In our case, fruits are designed by plants to appeal to us so that we will eat the mesocarp, the fleshy part of the fruit. Then, in throwing away the seed or seeds, we help to distribute it or them to another area where a new plant can grow.
Thus we are natural symbionts of fruit-bearing plants—we get food, and they get natural distribution of their seeds. This is, by the way, the only food of which that is true.
Further, our sense of beauty is intimately related to what is good for our well-being. In an uncorrupted state, we are attracted to—we find beautiful—that which we instinctively feel will be good for us, whether it be in picking a home, or a mate, or food, or anything else.
We instinctively find fruits beautiful. We love their bright colors, the reds and blues and oranges and yellows; we love the way that they stand out from foliage and all other foods. We instinctively find the smells of fruits beautiful. We love the smell of strawberries and mangos and peaches and watermelon and so on.
Additionally, that which is good for us we tend to find naturally pleasurable and joyful in an uncorrupted state. We instinctively love the flavor and texture of a banana as we eat it. We can experience great enjoyment in eating some dates or cherries or an apple.
All of this is backed up by the research of Dr. Alan Walker of John Hopkins University, as reported in The New York Times, May 15, 1979. With an electron microscope Dr. Walker studied the striations, or markings, in teeth.
He found that, when these striations were magnified millions of times, he could identify specific patterns in teeth that corresponded exactly to the foods that that animal had eaten in its lifetime.
Then he got the idea to apply these discoveries to human beings. Specifically, he looked at the dental fossils of humans and proto-humans stretching back as far as our fossil record goes, about 12 million years.
And here's what he found: He found that humans were exclusively frugivores in the state of nature. He found that in nature humans evolved, developed and thrived on a diet of exclusively fruit.
He found that this did not change until the advent of the Ice Ages, when humans could not get their natural food and in desperation adopted meat-eating and other foods. And it changed even more with the introduction of cooking about 25,000 years ago and agriculture about 10,000 years ago.
Then the industrial revolution about 200 years ago created enough wealth in the middle class to make possible animal foods at every meal for the first time. But all of these changes are blinks of an eye in evolutionary terms. Our natural diet remains fruit.
This ends Part 2. (Go to Part 3.)
—jim sloman, for 4/23/02
|
