What they want is irrelevant. As they evolved to avoid being eaten, so we evolved to be able to obtains, eat and digest it. It's not a one-sided process of providing us with a ready made menu.
> At this stage the cult of eating dead animals was borne
Why do you assume we did not eat animals "in the trees"? Is there any evidence to support that? Chimps eat meat on occasion, for example, and when they do the pack literally tears the victim apart.
And describing it as a "cult" is ridiculous. It became important because it is an immense source of nutrients, and available in many places where surviving on available plants/fruits was near impossible prior to the development of extensive trade. The ability to eat and digest meat provided us with yet another evolutionary advantage over many other animals.
> We (as in primates) only pick the ripe fruit, the stuff that is still green is identifiably no good to us
There's plenty of fruit that's green when it is ripe, and plenty that is a different colour than green for a long time before it is ripe.
> we still have hands for nabbling fruit rather than vicious claws to rip apart stray wildebeest
Which have proved superior in providing means for killing animals? Our hands can hold and wield weapons. Which approach to eating meat is better: Tearing apart raw meat, or cooking it? You seem to assume that we are not well adapted to handling our new menu entries and/or that these features somehow means we're better adapted to fruit just because we haven't taken on the characteristics of animals that are terribly limited in their abilities.
What about pure carnivores? Surely their food doesn't want to be food, but carnivores do just fine.
While I agree that the amount of corn we eat is absurd, to call it inedible is ludicrous. Raw corn on the cob is plenty edible, and sweet corn is quite tasty, although that's admittedly not what's grown on large corn plantations.
98% of the corn grown in the USA is field corn, grown for its starch content. You cannot eat this stuff and enjoy doing so. You need something tantamount to an oil refinery to make it edible or a distillery to make it drinkable.
The corn you are thinking of - the nice sweetcorn in the supermarket - is from a different variety, it is grown for the sugar content, not the starch content.
Essentially field corn is a chemical feedstock, it can be used for many, many things - which is great. However, look at those ingredient labels in the U.S.A. and, after a while, question whether you are eating a great deal of stuff that is not corn-derived. HFCS is obvious, 'xanthan gum' is not so obvious.
You will enjoy this article on it:
http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2008/11/081111-fas...
At least some pre-Columbian societies nixtamalized their corn (think hominy and masa harina), which unlocks many nutrients, greatly improving its nutritional value and making it a much better staple than non-nixtamalized corn.
Umm taking into account the Aztec, Maya, Inca and all the aboriginal nations that preceded and co-existed with them I would like to disagree with the failure part. It is as possible to build a civilization from corn as it was from rice and wheat.
Oh also, this whole "grains are bad for you because of our caveman roots" thing has to be the least provable piece of speculation passing around the Internet these days. It is backed by few facts and much smugness.
I like to speculate too though. I think the problem with corn is the petroleum refining style approach that is taken with it. If you read up about it corn is treated as almost like a chemical feedstock. The resulting "products" are a public health disaster hidden from scrutiny by the money of Archer Daniels Midland etc and politicians from the Corn Belt.
The problem with wheat is the post WWII intensive breeding programs designed to maximize yield and gluten content. Gluten makes a easier feedstock for bakers and food product manufacturers. It also counts towards protein measurements and that directly relates to price. Many governments like Saudi Arabia that buy wheat for their entire nation look for higher protein levels and bumping gluten is a nice shortcut. I believe these market driven wheat modifications have produced unexamined changes and proteins that negatively affect the health of a significant percentage of the population. I believe in the coming years we will see a movement promoting the revival of "heritage" strains of wheat like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Fife_wheat.
Do you imply that corn had negative effect on Indians? From what I've read [1] it actually allowed Indians to maintain their population levels without having irrigation technology comparable to one developed in middle East and Europe.
[1] http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/technology-world-civilization
This is an attractive statement but is not trivial: I would question it. (with the caveat that evolution is a passive process)
Species may gain evolutionary benefit from being eaten: the weakest of the species are pruned, leaving the strongest candidates.
Using toxins to avoid being eaten might have a short-term benefit but a longer-term penalty as less robust creatures get a temporary escape pass: plus, maintaining adequate toxicity creates an arms race that has significant evolutionary cost.
As part of participating in a healthy ecosystem, it is likely better for many species to allow some of their members to be eaten.
The fact that mammals generally do not maintain toxicity suggests there are more downsides than upsides.
I cannot think of an example where 'free food for predators' is part of the deal. I can see why lots of eggs are produced in the hope that some get to survive, but that is not the same as deliberately producing 'free food for predators' that also happens to be 'designed to be eaten'.
Did you have any examples in mind?
Many parasites have done just that. Also the females of some species eat the males after mating.
> Apex predators are hard to kill for humans
No longer true, and we still don't eat them a whole lot.
Your body likes sugar because there's lots of energy in sugar. Humans evolved to crave it.
> No longer true, and we still don't eat them a whole lot.
The ones that taste good, we do. Shark, whale, alligator for example.
Sweetness isn't just triggered by sugar, but yeah.. still, our threshold for tasting sweetness (energy) is much higher than that for tasting bitterness (toxins), because energy is not really useful when it comes bundled with poison.
Alligator meat is fine (Was there really ever a time when alligators where tricky to kill though? I mean, at least compared to, say, lions or wolves, which consider humans a food source instead of being afraid of them like alligators are), but shark and whale meat don't seem like good ideas:
Sharks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish#Levels_of_conta...
Whales: http://www.hsi.org/issues/whaling/facts/human_health_concern...
> Pro-whaling nations insist that whale meat is healthier than beef. But the truth is that whales are particularly vulnerable to environmental contaminants, including organochlorines—such as polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and dioxin—and heavy metals, such as methylmercury. Each of these environmental contaminants tends to accumulate in the bodies of top predators, including sperm whales, orcas, pilot whales, and false killer whales
Plankton have largely evolved to be eaten.
Grains want to be carried away by the wind to plant themselves somewhere else.
Another interesting parallel in eating seeds is between seeds from angiosperms like pine seeds and those from grasses like wheat. Two very different types of plants, but primates ate the same part of each.
Also, did humans evolve to carry gluten digesting genes over time, hence a subpopulation that cannot handle gluten?
I would disagree. Most animals didn't evolve any defense mechanism to make them less appetizing, and animals at the bottom of the food chain reproduce the most so they have the most numbers to keep the species going. Meanwhile animals on the top of the food chain evolved in a manner to eat other animals. It's just nature for you.
It is worth bearing in mind that a lot of things we consider to be food really does not want to be food. Grains want to be carried away by the wind to plant themselves somewhere else. Their ancestors invariably had toxins in them to dissuade any creatures (including us) from eating them.
Not one single animal, insect or fish has evolved specifically to be eaten. Hence the wide range of defensive measures most animals/insects/fish have to make sure that does not happen too often. Again, toxins come into play. As you move up the food chain so you get an accumulation of those toxins, hence we tend not to eat apex predators.
Compare and contrast with fruit. Fruit has evolved specifically to be eaten, particularly by primates. The idea being that we eat some fruit, wander off to somewhere new, have a dump, eject some seeds from the fruit complete with a handy amount of manure and water. Yep, those pesky plants tricked us into doing all of their work for them! They even managed to get us to cover up our leavings, thereby planting their seeds properly.
Our vision system co-evolved with fruit, we (as in primates) see in colour not because god wanted us to live in some world of puppies and rainbows but so we could eat fruit that is ripe and ready to eat. The plants, knowing that we were evolving colour vision, kindly evolved through some process of natural selection to produce fruit that kick in to 'eat me' colours when they are nice 'n' ripe.
With this colour coded system it is possible for plants to avoid waste. We (as in primates) only pick the ripe fruit, the stuff that is still green is identifiably no good to us so we leave it until it magically changes colour.
Obviously there came a time when grasslands took over and we had to leave the trees, learn to stand up and walk on two feet (so we could see over the grass) and find new meals to try. At this stage the cult of eating dead animals was borne, we adapted, but not that much, our intestines are still a million miles longer than that of a dog, we still have hands for nabbling fruit rather than vicious claws to rip apart stray wildebeest and we can still chew, as you need to do for fruit, in a way dogs don't do.
Much like how multi-vitamins are of dubious benefit to you, so it is with fructose. Sugars in fruit are fine, nobody has died of diabetes due to eating too many apples. The 'fibre' is an important part of it, you need 'fibre' if you are to consume sucrose.
The problem with diet in America is corn. There is nothing edible about corn grown in America today unless it has been processed by an industrial process or another animal first. All of those corn-stuffed animals Americans eat get killed before the corn kills them. If Americans are not careful they will be remembered as 'the corn people' like some of those American Indian tribes that tried and failed to build corn-based civilisations in pre-Columbian times.