How to be a evolved human: FOOD
The evolutionary point of eating is to give your body material for it to rebuild cells so you can continue to live. Reactions to taste and the effects of certain things in food (like sugar) is in essence an incentive the brain gives us to get us to eat. As developed humans we have totally disregarded the actual point of food, instead focusing all our energy on rewarding taste and sometimes aesthetic. As a species we base our food choices on our preference of taste not on the nutrients we need. I find this idea puzzling since food is the thing that we need to live and life is the thing we are most concerned about- having a good one. We school so we can work so we can earn so we can buy so we can have a happy life. But the very things we need to PHYSICALLY continue life, is nutrients. We are all so educated about systems of economy, philosophy, history and art but when it comes to eating, the masses of our species know little more than what the basic urges of our bodies are telling them. Why is that the very thing we need to support cell regeneration (life) is such a minor priority in our specie's hierarchy. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs states that Food is the very first thing that we need as humans to survive. Keep in mind that we only need FOOD so that we can extract the essential things we need from them so our body can regenerate cells and perform other miraculous things that we don't yet
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fully understand. Every member of our species would agree that food is the number one need and that we need it so that we can continue to live and breathe, yet so many people do not make food choices based of the nutrients they need. We choose food by how good it is going to taste (creamy pasta) or by how good it is going to look (Asai Bowls) without thinking about what effects it is going to have on our body. I know I’m repeating many of the same statements but bare with me because it’s quintessential to my point.
Do women who wear full Burkas or people who lives in extremely populated cities like New York know that they need extra dosses of Vitamin B12 because they hardly have direct contact with sunlight and B12 is need so that….. Do they know it can be found in foods such as…. Do we/they make that a priority when they eat? No. There are some people- such as myself, who eat Vitamin consciously but remember that I’m not talking about individuals and I’m not generalising groups. I am talking about our SPECIES as a whole. The thing our species is centred around- life and working to have/make a great one for oneself, is the epicentre of EVERYTHING any member of our species does. When you’re stuck at the office late at night on a Friday night doing work while your friends are out living their best lives, you do it because you believe the outcome of working late will |
mean a pay raise or promotion or something else but the result of working late (for this exanple lets say a pay raise) will mean that you will be able to live your life better because you now have more money to buy things (experiences and materials) that you believe will make life better. The discussion of the exchange and sacrifice of time for money and how capitalism ensalves us in that system, is a lengthy topic that I haven’t fully thought through yet because the ignorance of our species has angered me so throughly that only the broken buttons on my laptops' keyboard can truly understand. The crux of my point is that to live we need to regenerate cells and feed existing organs. To do that we need food. Taste and an attraction to pleasing aesthetics are evolutionary factors that our species developed so that we could be urged to eat and not eat certain things. Looking back at history we can see that the technological and societal development of our species doubled after we learnt the basics of agriculture. Majority of our time no longer needed to be spent on hunting and gathering because we were farming produce. In the 21st century access to food is so abundant that there are more people dying from overeating than lack of food (in places like America). Before food was so abundantly available our specie's main concern was actually having something of substance to eat. Taste and aesthetic was never a priority much less a concern. Today we focus on taste disregaurding what it does to our body.
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Taking a step back and looking at this anthropologically (or looking at it as if we are aliens observing humans) we can see how underdeveloped and unintelligent our species really is. The thing we need to survive is set aside for arbitrary constructs like taste and aesthetic- most specifically in developed regions.
It seems that to evolve as a species we should be eating with the primary concern being the nutrients our body needs. I feel as though the things we developed that tried to further our evolution during the beginning of our species are the very things that might cause our downfall. Our response to sugar in all forms (sweets, fruit, pasta) might have been completely nessescary in a time when we did not seek out ‘sugary’ food but now it is becoming our downfall because ‘sugary food’ (ps food like fruit and pasta register as sugar to our brain) is the thing that is holding us back. Why haven’t we developed receptors that rewards food containing the nutrients we need. Surely that would be the next step in our evolutionary development. And why has our species- who claims to be intelligent, not used their developed intelligence to prioritise nutrients over taste?! Questions like this have been more concerning than that of special constructs like capitalism, gender norms , racism and everything else wrong with us. If our brains cannot evolve to develop system that gives rewards/urges/cravings for something as basic eating the nutrients you need! If our ENTIRE species cannot evolve to meet this basic need is there hope that we might one day reach the first bar of intergalactic intelligence ? |