"All I ask of food is that it doesn't harm me."

Food.
It is the very center of any culture and our very existence as living creatures. Since the dawn of time we have been eating, yet what we have been eating has changed. Today we eat meat as a normal piece of our diet, almost as if it were the most important part. It is only recently, under my personal editing of my eating habits, that I have come to realize this.

For thousands of years the Human thing lived without eating meat as often or in such quantities as we do today. I site specifically the Paleolithic ear of our species existence. In turn, we can safety say that Humans are more that capable of surviving, comfortably, with minimal or no meat consumption. Originally, we subsisted on nuts, berries, wheat, and other greens. Meat, while not always a total rarity, was not what one would call a main course (as we would think of it).

This begs the question: what is the dies for which our bodies is designed? We are aware of our appendix and of its apparent uselessness as well as that of our wisdom teeth. Were these, at one point, needed to help process our semi-meatless diet?

Another question to be asked: would this ancient diet be more compatible with our bodies than what we currently eat?

Of course it would! Nuts, berries, herbs, legumes: these have not the preservatives nor the fact content of today's food. While the body does need a certain amount of protein this can be found in various other sources of foods, as we are sure those living in the Paleolithic era consumed.

Now, please do not read this as "my case for vegetarianism," because it is not. At all. I do eat meat, however, I have cut back and modified on my intake. Call it a combination of personal taste meets experimentation. I think it can be said that we are hard pressed to think of a "fat caveman" or "obese paleolithic humanoid" (whichever you prefer): the point still stands. Between daily activity (while not always harsh) and eating habits, our genetic ancestors were not as obese as today's posterity.

While not saying "there were on to something," at least not consciously, they certainly benefited from the results to an extent. Perhaps if there were a shift back to this diet, or something more like it, the Human condition of health would see something of an advancement.





Boulding, Elise. 2007. Women and the Agricultural Revolution. In Worlds of History, A Comparative Reader, 3ed. 16-20. Boston, MA. Bedford/ St. Martin's.

Strayer, Robert W. 2009. First Farmers, The Revolution of Agriculture. In A Brief Global History. 35-53. Boston, MA. Bedford/ St. Martin's.