What food is “natural” for humans?
Discussion
Who mentioned honey?
Honey Contains Some Nutrients.
High-Quality Honey Is Rich in Antioxidants.
Honey Is "Less Bad" Than Sugar for Diabetics.
The Antioxidants in It Can Help Lower Blood Pressure.
Honey Also Helps Improve Cholesterol.
Honey Can Lower Triglycerides.
The Antioxidants in It Are Linked to Other Beneficial Effects on Heart Health.
Why is it that people just don't understand that we can eat most things, it's just the quantities that are important.
Earlier Kenny Powers said:
Glucose and fructose are naturally occurring in fruit. But fruit also contains water and fibre. Pure, refined table sugar is not a natural product.
But as you did I have to point out you don't want to be eating much, maybe a spoonful a day because:Honey Contains Some Nutrients.
High-Quality Honey Is Rich in Antioxidants.
Honey Is "Less Bad" Than Sugar for Diabetics.
The Antioxidants in It Can Help Lower Blood Pressure.
Honey Also Helps Improve Cholesterol.
Honey Can Lower Triglycerides.
The Antioxidants in It Are Linked to Other Beneficial Effects on Heart Health.
Why is it that people just don't understand that we can eat most things, it's just the quantities that are important.
Bees invert the sucrose in nectar to fructose plus glucose when making honey. This tastes sweeter to us so we need less to satisfy our sweet tooth compared to sucrose. But nutritionally sucrose and honey are identical.
I keep bees and sell honey. It has no magical health properties- it's just expensive sugar.
I keep bees and sell honey. It has no magical health properties- it's just expensive sugar.
StevieBee said:
Also worth noting that almost all of what we eat is the result of human manipulation at some point in the past. Natural cauliflower bares little if any resemblance to that which we eat today looking more like a cabbage gone wrong.
Honey is probably the only 'natural' thing, as in not f
ked about with thing we still eat? Mr Bee?didelydoo said:
Humans are where they are because of nature, we're the top dogs- there's nothing unnatural we could eat you could say- how could there be? Even if humans invent it, it's natural, we're part of nature.
Depends on your definition. Is it what was natural when we first appeared, or when we started small scale agriculture, or now? All semantics. Just because something wasn't available at some point during evolution, doesn't mean it's a bad thing it's available now too.
Same rules apply- if you eat crappy foods, you'll pay the price with your health- true today as it was a million years ago. We've just more options to fk ourselves up nowadays.
I concur.Depends on your definition. Is it what was natural when we first appeared, or when we started small scale agriculture, or now? All semantics. Just because something wasn't available at some point during evolution, doesn't mean it's a bad thing it's available now too.
Same rules apply- if you eat crappy foods, you'll pay the price with your health- true today as it was a million years ago. We've just more options to f
k ourselves up nowadays. the chat on lifespan interested me. I recall QI saying that cavemen (or whatever) lived to great ages, once they got past the two big bottlenecks (birth and late 20s).
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/science/11obnea...
I don’t know if this makes much sense regarding the subject of eating meat, but my thoughts are that when a lion sees an antelope its natural instinct is to chase it down, rip its throat out and eat it. It doesn’t need to be taught that.
I don’t think a human has a natural instinct like that when it comes to animals. We will look at a tasty piece of fruit or a vegetable growing on a tree and immediately think of that as a tasty piece of food but I think the craving for meat is a learned behaviour and not many would naturally want to chase and kill an animal and eat it raw. Those who like meat (including me) need somebody else to do the killing and dress it up and cook it before it becomes appetising.
That seems to me to be a pointer towards the fact that humans might be omnivorous in practice but are probably vegetarian by nature. I’m not claiming that this is scientific, nor do I have any particular knowledge in this area - it’s just my opinion.
I don’t think a human has a natural instinct like that when it comes to animals. We will look at a tasty piece of fruit or a vegetable growing on a tree and immediately think of that as a tasty piece of food but I think the craving for meat is a learned behaviour and not many would naturally want to chase and kill an animal and eat it raw. Those who like meat (including me) need somebody else to do the killing and dress it up and cook it before it becomes appetising.
That seems to me to be a pointer towards the fact that humans might be omnivorous in practice but are probably vegetarian by nature. I’m not claiming that this is scientific, nor do I have any particular knowledge in this area - it’s just my opinion.
FazerBoy said:
I don’t know if this makes much sense regarding the subject of eating meat, but my thoughts are that when a lion sees an antelope its natural instinct is to chase it down, rip its throat out and eat it. It doesn’t need to be taught that.
I don’t think a human has a natural instinct like that when it comes to animals. We will look at a tasty piece of fruit or a vegetable growing on a tree and immediately think of that as a tasty piece of food but I think the craving for meat is a learned behaviour and not many would naturally want to chase and kill an animal and eat it raw. Those who like meat (including me) need somebody else to do the killing and dress it up and cook it before it becomes appetising.
That seems to me to be a pointer towards the fact that humans might be omnivorous in practice but are probably vegetarian by nature. I’m not claiming that this is scientific, nor do I have any particular knowledge in this area - it’s just my opinion.
You only have to watch TV programmes like 'I'm a Celebrity get me out of here' and even more so Bear Gryll's Island to see how quickly we revert back to type when it's not on the supermarket shelf.I don’t think a human has a natural instinct like that when it comes to animals. We will look at a tasty piece of fruit or a vegetable growing on a tree and immediately think of that as a tasty piece of food but I think the craving for meat is a learned behaviour and not many would naturally want to chase and kill an animal and eat it raw. Those who like meat (including me) need somebody else to do the killing and dress it up and cook it before it becomes appetising.
That seems to me to be a pointer towards the fact that humans might be omnivorous in practice but are probably vegetarian by nature. I’m not claiming that this is scientific, nor do I have any particular knowledge in this area - it’s just my opinion.
Evoluzione said:
Why is it that people just don't understand that we can eat most things, it's just the quantities that are important.
If you're referring to me, I have repeatedly said in this discussion that humans can eat a wide variety of foods. Though this doesn't mean they have to, or even need to, search out everything imaginable. My position is that a "natural" ancestral human diet is defined by what it doesn't contain more than by what it does.FazerBoy said:
I don’t know if this makes much sense regarding the subject of eating meat, but my thoughts are that when a lion sees an antelope its natural instinct is to chase it down, rip its throat out and eat it. It doesn’t need to be taught that.
I don’t think a human has a natural instinct like that when it comes to animals. We will look at a tasty piece of fruit or a vegetable growing on a tree and immediately think of that as a tasty piece of food but I think the craving for meat is a learned behaviour and not many would naturally want to chase and kill an animal and eat it raw. Those who like meat (including me) need somebody else to do the killing and dress it up and cook it before it becomes appetising.
That seems to me to be a pointer towards the fact that humans might be omnivorous in practice but are probably vegetarian by nature. I’m not claiming that this is scientific, nor do I have any particular knowledge in this area - it’s just my opinion.
You've clearly never had to persuade a child to eat its veg!I don’t think a human has a natural instinct like that when it comes to animals. We will look at a tasty piece of fruit or a vegetable growing on a tree and immediately think of that as a tasty piece of food but I think the craving for meat is a learned behaviour and not many would naturally want to chase and kill an animal and eat it raw. Those who like meat (including me) need somebody else to do the killing and dress it up and cook it before it becomes appetising.
That seems to me to be a pointer towards the fact that humans might be omnivorous in practice but are probably vegetarian by nature. I’m not claiming that this is scientific, nor do I have any particular knowledge in this area - it’s just my opinion.
A lion knows to chase, but like us needs to be taught what and how to hunt.
I think our modern squeamishness is very recent and a product of our increasing distance from the production. As for delicious fruit... My FiL grew up very poor in rural Ireland. One Christmas he was given an orange, and his first instinct was to take it outside to see how well it worked with his hurly! (A hurly being a stick for hurling.)
Kenny Powers said:
grumbledoak said:
I think you are assuming a lot about the "ages we live to" and "being a burden". The evidence from paleoanthropology and modern hunter gatherers is that - if not killed - they enjoyed good health into old age. All our degenerations of "old age" and our "diseases of civilisation" - hunter gatherers didn't get them. They arrived with agriculture.
This is in line with my understanding.To my knowledge, anthropological record shows that ancient hunter gatherer humans were killed mostly by predators, murder, misadventure or communicable disease. Chronic, degenerative diseases of civilisation such as heart disease and cancer are first observed alongside the rise of intensive agriculture. I'm sure there is some nuance, but I don't think the above is very much disputed by anthropologists.
And we have no idea (AIUI) whether the older ones were the gatherers who ate more veg etc or the hunters who got the pick of the meat.
Kenny Powers said:
Evoluzione said:
Why is it that people just don't understand that we can eat most things, it's just the quantities that are important.
If you're referring to me, I have repeatedly said in this discussion that humans can eat a wide variety of foods. Though this doesn't mean they have to, or even need to, search out everything imaginable. My position is that a "natural" ancestral human diet is defined by what it doesn't contain more than by what it does.I suspect you're another who has been forced into a better diet by life changes, the diet you should have had in the first place.
Kenny Powers said:
My position is that a "natural" ancestral human diet is defined by what it doesn't contain more than by what it does.
Do you eat meat with parasites as that is the natural way. Do you eat brains of animals, again that was natural way. Do you eat carrion, that was the natural way. It goes on..The natural movement is similar to the 1970s version of the wild west, rose tinted glasses.
Thesprucegoose said:
Do you eat meat with parasites as that is the natural way. Do you eat brains of animals, again that was natural way. Do you eat carrion, that was the natural way. It goes on..
The natural movement is similar to the 1970s version of the wild west, rose tinted glasses.
As it happens I eat lots of raw beef and lots of raw liver. But what I eat is immaterial to the discussion, really. It’s a conversation, not a competition.The natural movement is similar to the 1970s version of the wild west, rose tinted glasses.
Bill said:
You've clearly never had to persuade a child to eat its veg!
Well, I doubt if you put the child out in the garden with the pet rabbit it would chase it down, rip its throat out and eat it raw!I take your point though. It was only my feeling about the matter and I may well be wrong.
Kenny Powers said:
ATG said:
Do you really think eating honey is significantly different to eating table sugar?
No but then I also don't think it's a very good idea to be consuming a diet very high in honey. Certainly not in the quantities that most people now consume sugar.ATG said:
Kenny Powers said:
ATG said:
Do you really think eating honey is significantly different to eating table sugar?
No but then I also don't think it's a very good idea to be consuming a diet very high in honey. Certainly not in the quantities that most people now consume sugar.Stop and ask Bob in the street how much sugar is created in his body from bread, rice, pasta, most root veg etc and he won't have a clue, he'll be thinking they're all 100% healthy foods which he should be eating lots of.
As said (once again) it's all about the quantities.
ATG said:
I agree entirely and I think it is a fair example of why trying to define a healthy diet in terms of being "paleo" or "natural" isn't very helpful. Why not just say "don't eat tons of sugar, fatty"?
Because paleo is as much about the elimination of grains as it is sugar. Wheat and sugar is in pretty much everything with a barcode. No one has to agree that paleo is healthier or more natural than any other dietary approach, but clearly it is a valid part of any discussion on the subject.Gassing Station | Health Matters | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff