Food Diversity

Tapey
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Food Diversity

 Has anyone else noticed how little diversity there is in what we eat? Lets take the humble potatoe, how many different kinda of potatoe have you eaten? If you are anything like me 3 or 4 is the answer, But did you know there are actually 445 total different species of potatoe and over 12000 different varieties. And don't think this is unique to the potatoe, ask your self how many different kinds of food ave you eaten. My bet would be way under 100. It seems as the world gets smaller so does the list of food we eat. Really when was the last time you ate a mango or a nachie or even a pear? In fact the USA only has 3 major crops that make up a large majority of crops grown. Corn, wheat and soybean. Of corse these are grown on the 'superfarms' . The main reason for this is ofcouse price steming from the green revolution, it would cost alot more to grow lots of different types of crops at that magnatude and of corse in america the major crops are subsidised by the government. The same goes for Meat aswel, there is cows, sheep, pig and sheep, what other meat is there in mass production? Yes you do get osrtrach farms but that is really minor. When was the last time anyone here ate a goat or a buck and im not even mentioning dogs eventhough they are perfectly eatable? Is every one fine with that? I find it ironic in the land of the free thier really isn't that much freedom in what you eat. Maybe im wrong and people here do have a wide diet, but im willing to take a bet that for most it is quite limited. Is everyone fine with that? Or is food diversity another thing no one really care about?

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Tapey
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P.S. I ment' ask your self

P.S. I ment

ask your self how many different kinds of food ave you eaten. My bet would be way under 100 in the last year.'

 

 

Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.


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Tapey wrote:My bet would be

Tapey wrote:

My bet would be way under 100 in the last year.' 

Oh, I've eaten a lot more crap than that. Hehehe.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


Tapey
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butterbattle wrote:Tapey

butterbattle wrote:

Tapey wrote:

My bet would be way under 100 in the last year.' 

Oh, I've eaten a lot more crap than that. Hehehe.

bare in mind mcdonalds and burger king dont count as to different things  But I really should clarify I dont mean margrine as a kind of food, beef tamatoes potatoes that kind of thing is what im refering to. To my knowledge this is mainly in first world westenised countries though

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Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
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Now I'm hungry!!

I tend to buy the same thing over and over, not because I have to (at least I don't think so) just because I am a creature of habit.  I don't see the point of eating a different type of potato if the one I eat now is tasty and easily available.  I do wish I had  other types of meat to choose from time to time since I detest pork and shellfish and my other choices are limited.  Also, I am not very intrigued by different types of food and I rarely have strong cravings for anything in particular. I think I just eat to survive and in the end, within reason, I don't really give a shit what going into my mouth. 

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scole665 wrote:I tend to buy

scole665 wrote:

I tend to buy the same thing over and over, not because I have to (at least I don't think so) just because I am a creature of habit.  I don't see the point of eating a different type of potato if the one I eat now is tasty and easily available.  I do wish I had  other types of meat to choose from time to time since I detest pork and shellfish and my other choices are limited.  Also, I am not very intrigued by different types of food and I rarely have strong cravings for anything in particular. I think I just eat to survive and in the end, within reason, I don't really give a shit what going into my mouth. 

 

And you have hit the nail on the head why should we care? But I will come back to that, how do you know there aren't better tasting potatoes? The potato that was selected for this kind of mass production was chosen for alot of reasons but it wasn't the taste or nutritional content. It was because of storage if im thinking right, it lasts the longest. The other major reason is because it reacted the best to green revolution farming methods. It is the same for a lot of food, if they didn't work to well with green revolution farming methods they weren't the one that got mass produced. 

 

But onto why I think people should care but if you don't care nothing really wrong with that.  Ok think about all these mass produced  foods what do most of them have in common? It's protein. Most of the big crops are heavy on protein, this is causing people in america particualy to get way more protein in there body than is nessicary. Also eating to much meat does this aswell but it wouldn't be as much of a problem if the crops weren't high protein crops aswell. Wheat is a good example off the top of my head, it's been a while since I checked how much it has. But we don't just eat wheat oviously we  eat bread and  other wheat based products. Why is this a problem? Well when your body get to much protein with  out a training program it gets converted into fat. Now it doesn't play as bad a role as fat in foods whitch have 9 calories per gram aposed to 4 I think. But to much of the stuff is going to bulk you up.

 

Now nutrition Whle they may be high in protein they are low in other human needs, witch is why you can't just eat I type of food day in and day out. Your nutritional needs are better forfilled with a wider range of food apposed to just eating the high end mass produced ones.  Yes wheat and barely and I think corn not sure and very likely rice are very good for you, but there are gaps they leave in nutrition, this is why it is important to go beyond them to potatoes, tamtoes etc. tbh you will be just fine by including just the common extras you eat. But there is still the formentioned problem with protein, you tend to eat more than you need to make up for the deficet  in nutrients and if you don't you end up unhealthy. While a wider range of foods reduces this as you get a more balanced nutrional diet. If we look about 10000 before present to the begining of farming you will find hunter gatherers were more healthy than the farmers as they ate a wider variety of food. Yes it has been improved on the side of farming as we learn't witch foods are the best for us etc and it also has a lot to do with avalibility of food. but that is because we have increased the range of foods farmed since then while being readily avaliable, but still we eat a small variety while a wider variety witch is avalabile would work better.

 

Isn't it funny that eating probably the most personal of choices indeed the one that keeps us alive, many of us don't care about.

P.S. this is just off the top of my head so I might be a little off on a few things

Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.


Hambydammit
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 I heard an interview with

 I heard an interview with a biologist who said that humans eat approximately 2-3% of the edibles in the world that we could eat.  I have no idea if that's exactly true, but I'm sure it's pretty low.  Part of the reason is that a lot of things we can eat taste really fucking awful, like grubs and sea cucumbers and the roots of many swamp tubers.  Mostly, though, I think it's because there simply isn't a good way to farm most of the things we could eat in any economical way.  A lot of the reason we eat what we do is because it's the easiest stuff to farm in large quantities.  Another reason is simple luck of the draw.  We don't eat potatoes because they're really great for us.  We eat them because we've always eaten them.

 

 

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Hambydammit wrote: I heard

Hambydammit wrote:

 I heard an interview with a biologist who said that humans eat approximately 2-3% of the edibles in the world that we could eat.  I have no idea if that's exactly true, but I'm sure it's pretty low.  Part of the reason is that a lot of things we can eat taste really fucking awful, like grubs and sea cucumbers and the roots of many swamp tubers.  Mostly, though, I think it's because there simply isn't a good way to farm most of the things we could eat in any economical way.  A lot of the reason we eat what we do is because it's the easiest stuff to farm in large quantities.  Another reason is simple luck of the draw.  We don't eat potatoes because they're really great for us.  We eat them because we've always eaten them.

 

 

Yeah it sounds about right, I haven't heard exact figures but it seems plausable. This is basically what I said in simplier terms, A main reason is the green revolution, really the start of yield intensive farming combined with huge tracks of land and of course monoculture. I'm not worried about those roots and things, lets face it who unwants to eat root soup? I'm sure thier are some raw fooders that do (they annoy me, don't confuse them with vegatereans, they only eat raw food). What i'm meaning here is like mango's, they taste great very good for you, I think the problem with them is storage as im sure they go off quick and are harder to transport. The mistake you make is with the last part although thier is truth to it. The food we have always eaten have genrally been the food that is best for us that was avalible. For thousands of years we experimented on witch food to farm (im talking 10000 years before presant here) and whether it was buy selection or chance the foods we stuck on have been very good for us. The school of thought I subscribe to is when we first started farming the people who grew the most nutritous crops became healthy and from that more susessfully expanded and could support a larger popualtion. This larger population oviously would spread taking thier crops where ever they went (why do you thing wheat is everywhere not just the fertile creasant?)  These crops then were grown where ever they went, not making the one grown in there new home extinct but more making them secondary (this is irrelvant if it was hunter gathereer space they invaded). By 5000 years before present we had domestricated all major crops that are used today. But even then there was still a wide range of food eaten as mono culture wasn't around. Admitedly theya te a less diverse set of foods than hunter gatherere did inearlier years. The real limiting of our food came much later with colonalism as the colonial powers took there crops with them pushing out many local crops witch are barely eaten today. Look up ecological imperialism.  But yes we do eat crops today because we did last year but the origanal cause was depaending on how good they were for you.

 

Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.


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I've eaten more, but then

I've eaten more, but then I've also made an effort to try new things as often as I can. There's probably 50 different kinds of potatoes in Canada alone, and I'd guess I've had all of them. PEI's are the best. Go red dirt!

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