Food Choices Are Like Flu Shots, Will You Get Stronger Or Weaker?

I know what you"��re thinking already"�"Oh no!"�"Not another article on the controversial Flu Shot debacle. Well, no, not really. I want to talk about the process we humans have evolved to make regarding choice. Especially the really important ones"�"like what to eat.

I have learned recently that early humans had a different and longer digestive tract, the better to process the multitude of raw plants and animal matter once consumed. As we evolved and learned to discern the better items for our nutritional needs, the requirement for such an elaborate alimentary canal became superfluous. The discovery of fire was really the trigger for this, as the cooking of food reduced the need for much of what our bodies had to do in order to break down the raw materials we ingested.

Compared to lesser creatures with simplified diet needs like horses that can derive all their nutritional needs from hay, we humans have managed to utilize hundreds of thousands of food sources. Nearly anything that swims, flies, grazes, hunts, or grows in the soil has made it into our guts at one time or another.

The ability to analyze, remember, and communicate the food choices that were deemed safe (and tasty) has had a critical role in our evolutionary process. This was the very basis of our early society and contributed to our becoming a modern civilization. There is a reason that our brain amounts for three percent of our body weight but consumes eighteen percent of our overall energy requirements. This tool is essential for our omnivorous survival.

Modern man, then, has an over-developed ability to discriminate when it comes to food choices. But, we merely have to choose from a menu of store or restaurant offerings, which doesn"��t require us to forage or hunt for safe items for our survival. We naturally assume that those decisions have been intelligently made already, and that all we have to do is decide what we would most enjoy eating on any given day.

Herein lies the problem"�"modern food choices are a literal minefield of good, bad, and worse things to serve our nutritional needs. We can no longer trust our refined senses of smell, taste, and sight where healthy sources of sustenance are concerned. Nearly every delectable item with the potential to excite us also hides invisible threats to our metabolic processes. We can and should no longer trust the decisions of others that we have evolved to trust.

Moving away from the products of "��big agribusiness"�� back towards the local farmers who have an integral stake in our survival and return business is a burgeoning trend that promises the way forward as well as back. The faceless sources of our meat and produce which conspire to sell us anything for the biggest profit is taking a toll on our health, and the health of the ecology.

Modern farming practices have led to a "��dead zone"�� in the Gulf of Mexico the size of Texas where nothing can live. Runoff from Middle America"��s farmland has contributed toxic pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals to this once-fertile water mass and put a stranglehold on all life.

We evolved to know better. It"��s time to use our large brains again.