Power "natural" Blessed are the koala! Fruits
Until it comes to animals, the definition of natural food simply comes from observation: camuffatevi by ethologists or ornithologists, and go to see the wilderness as they feed the various animal species, land or sea or air to be.
Take the opportunity to make a holiday away from the city and to get some 'good air, but I recommend staying away from the country plagued by pesticides, industrial waste and smells of pig. Will draw from your comments now a belief that often tends to be forgotten: the animals do not practice or the kitchen or agriculture.
According to what science says, the agricultural revolution, that is the moment when the man began to assault the environment dates back to the Neolithic, or about ten thousand years ago. The practice of farming dates back, however, about eight thousand years ago, initially with sheep and goats, and then (a thousand years later) with the cows, which have apparently been a bit 'more recalcitrant.
a long time now, there is unanimity in finding that the farming techniques are characteristic of homo sapiens. The animal has the intelligence to invent the hoe or the scythe, or to lock up the other animals with fences and barbed wire. But are we sure that it is a monopoly?
Ants, for example, is dedicated to the breeding of aphids: protect them from predators and lavish their caresses wise, to ensure that their abdomen is contracted to provide a pleasure and dejection and sugary crystalline source considerable calories. Some tropical ants, however, most likely for agricultural work, are engaged in the cultivation of mushrooms: take home the green waste compost and leave them patiently, until they grow some molds very nutritious. It seems that their nymphs they are delicious.
From the point of view "scatological" fruitarian all animal species practice an archaic form of agriculture: they consume fruits whose seeds resist part of the digestive juices and are then scattered everywhere at the same time benefiting from a Instantaneous contribution of manure! It 's so that these clever animals adapt the natural environment to your taste food, without the possibility of error by multiplying the plants with the most delicious fruits.
farming and agriculture are not so much specific inventions of man as one would like to believe. What else would have done our early ancestors farmers if you do not multiply as cereals and tubers which recently formed their food, and the natural environment adapt to their new tastes in food. These new farmers, aphids preferred to goats and cows, which undoubtedly had a more adequate size, but the principle is the same, except that the liquid consumed was the secret of the breast and not the manure.
E 'a mistake and then blame the agriculture and livestock to be against nature: there are the preconditions in the animal world. Even if, however, it is sad to see the window of a campaign of endless barren plots multicolored squared, and is even more sad to know that this same country is doomed sooner or later become a desert, which gnaws every day more and more arable land. I think this paradox merits further consideration.
What is the culinary arts? The kitchen has also evolved from the Neolithic period, with the invention of pottery and with the spread of the oven for baking. Even before this, however, it was possible to cook the liquid for example by using an animal skin stretched between two poles: as the boiling temperature stays below one hundred degrees, a good skin resisted long enough to cook a soup , giving it more for a good taste of meat broth. Ricordatevene the next time you vacation in a tent and maybe you forgot the pots at home!
The pottery, however, facilitated a series of transactions characteristics of the culinary arts: cooking stew, storing wine and oil, the preparation of salads and all that our ancestors were able to invent cooks followed for the pleasure of the taste buds. Then, by the age of iron, pots and pans facilitated even more the work of housewives. It was then passed by a simple roast meat, not even salt, a sea of \u200b\u200bincreasingly sophisticated recipes, up to the food produced today, such as For example we see today in many cooking shows on television.
The discovery of the oven for baking certainly played an important role in the development of new eating habits. Without it, our ancestors could never consume the same quantity of wheat. Try crunching of raw wheat grains: able to eat a small amount and, unless you have nothing else to eat, you would never think of it the basis of your diet. Without the baking and milling, just masochists men have shown interest in the gifts of the goddess Demeter! Whereas the smell of freshly baked bread is good charming even the most discerning palates.
But let us ask ourselves this question: Is it possible to find somewhere in the wild world, at least one nutritional principle able to demonstrate that the consumption of bread is a natural thing for humans? There is the study of wear of the molars of the bones of prehistoric man, which leads us to believe that early hominids ate some quaternary already quite large quantities of seeds. Then perhaps it would be legitimate to conclude that daily consumption of grain products, so deeply rooted in our habits, corresponds to the real needs of our metabolism?
Even assuming that the old is granivorous as much as the genome of primates, we should still make a distinction between the consumption of seeds in their natural state, from which derives the wear of the molars of our ancestors, and the easy ingestion of powdered starch, kneaded and baked. No one could argue that the effect is the same.
And what about the industrial process in which several generations have revolutionized the eating habits: refined sugar, sifted flour, oils extracted at high temperature ... the list is endless.
raw sugar, for example, is more natural than refined white sugar with methylene blue. But we can perhaps say that it is the natural sugar food? No first sweetening fruits collected in nature. In the same way you think the bread is white bread less artificial. But we can perhaps say that it is natural for man to eat bread and cereals the base of your diet?
Many researchers have noted that these refined products are associated with many diseases, from tooth decay to begin. We must pay tribute to these brave reformers who have warned against the aberrations of the food industry, in an era when it was considered one of the jewels of progress. However, many diseases already existed long before the industrial age, including tooth decay, albeit less incidence. These procedures are not, therefore, the primary cause, but only the aggravating factors. It is not enough to give up industrial production to find the criteria for a natural diet.
The key lies not in ever more elaborate methods used by the food industry to exploit the appetite of consumers. What is essential is to go back to the first receivers that are made in the course of prehistory and that marked the break with what might be termed the power "original" of the human. If we want to solve the problem through and understand the mechanisms of evolution that led to our culinary art, we must go back the root.
However, there is an assumption that we can not discard a priori and which is considered by many theorists and philosophers such as irrefutable: that there is no power that could be called "natural" for a biped with knowledge which is the man. The man is an animal and also cultural ... the woman who cooks ... The category of the natural may be empty of meaning because it is the very nature to us with a brain capable of all sorts of artifice.
When it comes to the koalas, the problem is easy to solve: the adorable marsupial eats eucalyptus leaves, many leaves of eucalyptus, nothing but eucalyptus leaves, since it was installed in Australian forests millions of years ago. For this we can say that eucalyptus leaves make up its power "natural" or "original", and no one could contradict punctilious lexicology.
But when it comes to homo sapiens, with a skull rebuilt and enlarged by nature, which allows him from time immemorial to modify their environment according to their desires, their fantasies, their own culture, then define the natural food may no longer have any meaning. Having been endowed by the nature of cognitive functions that allow us to grow potatoes and soak them in hot oil, we would have the right to treat the fries as a gift of nature.
This reasoning has a major advantage: a priori justification for all the frills that bring satisfaction to our gastronomic delicacies. But unfortunately does not stand criticism. Enough to invalidate a simple reductio ad absurdum: the intelligence has allowed us to invent the atomic bomb. Hiroshima then it would be a gift of nature?
E 'thanks to the intelligence that we are able to extract from the opium poppy, a flower very "natural", and manufacture heroin. We all know that heroin is harmful to health physical and mental, that is incompatible with the functioning of our body. Despite what we might consider it natural?
same reasoning with regard to food. It 'was the intelligence, received from nature, to enable us to invent the frying pan. Well, science has shown a long time that the frying is bad for the arteries and that, unless someone proves otherwise, no fried foods in the primitive forest. Must we resign ourselves to enter the list of fried foods natural?
And again, homo sapiens is the first descendant of the first to be able to rear cows and produce cheese: no one has ever seen a gorilla, and even a bonobo, milking a buffalo or curdle the milk. Yet, it is conventionally said that a good cheese, cottage industry, is something natural.
The boundary between the natural and the artificial is not easy to trace. The concept of "nature" was botched and vilified in every way imaginable. Where nature ends and artifice begins? Where does the beneficial and harmful begins? Should we give up the power to define "natural" for men?