Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
more or less unconscious acceptance of the global feast available in super-markets
and fast food outlets, but have also driven the supply of those foods. This also means
that, in the main, advocates for agriculture have not only a commercial motivation
for promoting a 'more is beter' global dietary provision, but share the same uncon-
scious belief that progress and abundance are inseparable value systems.
Of course, the reasons for modern obesity are more complex than opportunistic
gorging. Another is that survival in most modern societies requires the expenditure
of fewer calories than in the environment in whih hominids evolved. Some of our
hunter-gatherer ancestors may have had leisure-rih lives, but their daily activities
still involved more activity and energy expenditure than is generally the case today.
Most of our agrarian ancestors (apart from a small privileged minority) are likely
to have worked harder than either modern people or hunter-gatherers, and until re-
cently had distinctly worse nutrition. Many still do.
Nutritional knowledge and nutrition science
Until recently, most humans have, and have had, litle conscious understanding that
different foods contain different quantities, qualities and ratios of nutrients. Even
so, learned and instinctive preferences and aversions to certain foods modify their
atractiveness for humans, other animals including invertebrates, and perhaps even
microbes. Thousands of years ago, some cultures had evolved plant-based cuisines
whih provided complementary amino acids, suh as rice and dahl, and corn and
beans. Hundreds of years ago, a primitive understanding of vitamins existed, par-
ticularly among seafarers. Of course, the active dietary constituents were not then
isolated, but custom ensured that basic nutrition was supplied for most, apart from
at times of famine, at times of conflict, or at sea. Some populations had also learned
how to safely use foods in ways to reduce their toxicity, suh as the proper prepara-
tion of the cyanide-containing root crop, cassava.
he recent discovery of bones showing evidence of buthery using stone tools
has pushed bak the date of sophisticated hunting by hominids to more than three
million years ago. These human predecessors seem to have greatly valued the meat
and marrow of the large animals they killed in cooperative groups, not least because
they transported their stones six kilometres from the site where they are naturally
found to the place where the buthery occurred. heir preference for suh foods in-
curred other risks and costs, including being vulnerable to atak by large carnivores
(Braun, 2010).
