Wally Day wrote:
I wrote:
>> He couldn't have found Pork ....
>>
Wally:
>Keep in mind, and I've pondered this a lot, that the
>selection of foods available to us may differ
>dramatically from those of our ancestors.
Really true, especially in the bigger quantities,
as would be necessary to maintain more than a few people.
>We really
>have no way of knowing, especially in the plant
>category, what may and may not have evolved (changed
>genetically) over the millennia.
With plants, I've realized by speaking with farmers and
in the public discussion, that *very* much
genetic alteration is done today, in the last few
years or decades.
Wheat isn't wheat anymore and animals are "produced" now.
The most rapid and unpredictable change comes by
genetic engeneering.
All this in the intention to fulfill only one obvious
goal, to maximize one economic topic.
Fruit to become sweeter, animals to grow faster and fatter
and cows as a milk-plant which can change 75% of its food into milk.
Quality - nutritional value and absence of toxins - n't on the
list of goals to achieve anymore.
Todays wheat yealds about 4-fold of what possible
a few decades ago. Quick growing plants that no longer have
time to collect mucronutrients and minerals as before.
Aren't these plants minsters? Designed to rebuild more artificial
fertilizer (nitrogen) into more plant gluten?
Genetic engeneered crops aren't "modified" just for growth,
but to achieve the "quality" that the plants can stand greater
amounts
of a specific pesticide or insect poison.
The plants will stand it and humans will get the increased dose.
Avoiding these plants (grains for ex) won't help, because the
plants are beeing fed in animal farming, where the stuff even
accumulates.
Recently i read that some plants - i think tomatoes-
are "implanted" a gene which let them produce annother plant's
lectin.
Horrible imagination for people thinking about possible dangers
from plant lectins and from "foreign proteins".
I don't have a solution for this problem, but it should be specially
important for paleo-aware people.
I do try to buy products from local organic farmers who *don't*
buy "new" seeds for their harvest.
I try to plant wildlife shrub with edible fruit.
And try to select varieties with a little history which didn't have
the chance of too much of short-sighted human gene-intervention.
Various tree seeds i consider as especially imune from the
short-sighted human intervention (nuts chestnut).
Because they life rather long, they can't be modified quickly.
I even assume that a *positive* human selection has occured on
them (walnut, almond). Because humans over the many millenia
will have favoured and then aided the forthcome of especially
well-tasting trees. This is a health-test over the millenias.
Almonds are a good example, fewer cernels have retained
the bitter taste now.
>So, we are stuck with
>general approximations; i.e. - this food is "probably
>OK", or at least, this food is "probably not bad".
>Besides small wildlife (rodents and birds), ...
Sure ... most people won't get or even want the small prey
(including me)...
Same for plants, some thoughts about them i have mentioned above,
>...I would
>guess that fish would have changed the least (at least
>until this century when we started dumping certain
>chemicals in the oceans). Plants, however, are a very
>different story. It is so easy to create hybrids, and
>plants are so sensitive to their environment, it is
>quite possible that most of the plants we take for
>granted today have very different nutrient profiles
>than their ancestors.
Fish is still often a kind of wild game - seldomer farmed- that's
good.
But many fish caught today have probably proteins *never*
in the food chain before, because fishing is done on new species
from open ocean and deep water (1000 m deep).
What does that mean for "foreingity" of fish proteins?
Compared to Cereal seeds?
In addition a anti-predator toxicity for fish
does make sense, so many will have evolved it.
And (some?) fish do contain lectins.
We still have some options left to favour
more original plants - and animals to.
At least by selecting the kind of production.
regards
Amadeus
|
