Showing posts with label FOOD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FOOD. Show all posts

Thursday, May 30, 2019

The Omnivore's Dilemma

No, not the book of that name, which was the only reference that popped up on a full page of Google results. I first encountered this term in the section on "Disgust" in HOW THE MIND WORKS, by Steven Pinker, who attributes it to psychologist Paul Rozin. The omnivore's dilemma encapsulates the double-edged nature of our ability to digest a vast variety of different foods. Therefore, human beings can survive in almost any environment on Earth. The negative side of this advantage is that we can't be sure whether a new potential food source is safe to eat until we've tried it.

As Pinker puts it, "Disgust is intuitive microbiology." After a certain age (when they outgrow the "put everything in their mouths" phase), children avoid things we would consider intrinsically disgusting, such as decayed organic matter or body fluids and excretions. Most people will even refuse to put in their mouths harmless items that resemble disgusting objects (e.g., fake vomit). Contact or resemblance equals contagion, an emotional aversion that overrides mere rationality. But what accounts for "disgust" reactions to items that we dismiss as inedible but many other cultures classify as food?

Pinker points out that we accept a very narrow range of animal products as food, even though those we shun are perfectly edible. Most Americans confine their animal diets to chickens, pigs, cattle, sheep, and selected types of fish and other seafood. From the mammals we raise for food, many of us eat only certain parts of their bodies and avoid the rest (e.g., organ meats, feet, tails, etc.). Pinker discusses how we learn these dietary prejudices as a byproduct of the omnivore's dilemma. In infancy and early toddler-hood, the "put everything in their mouths" stage, children have to eat what their parents offer them. When the child gets mobile enough to forage for himself or herself (in a hunter-gatherer society), the "picky" stage sets in. (It's probably not a coincidence that the food-finicky phase coincides with the drop in appetite when the rapid growth spurt of early life slows down.) Now the child regards new foods with suspicion. The items fed by the parents during the early months are accepted as edible. All other potential foods are, by definition according to the child's world-view, repulsive. Whatever isn't explicitly permitted is forbidden and therefore disgusting. As a practical corollary of this process, it seems parents should try to introduce their toddlers to as many different foods as possible during the sensitive learning period.

I was reminded of this section in HOW THE MIND WORKS (a fascinating, highly readable book—check it out) by Facebook videos of our seven-month-old grandson trying his first solid foods. He likes avocado. Until recently, he liked applesauce. Last week, he rejected it; maybe that's just a temporary fluke. Babies, like human beings in general, crave sweet tastes, because in a state of nature our ancestors depended on sweetness to tell them when fruit was edible. This natural attraction to sugar inspires infant-care experts to advise starting babies on less sweet foods (e.g., vegetables) first, rather than letting them get fixated on sugary things such as fruit right off the bat.

Pinker, by the way, says that not only are most parts and products of animals considered disgusting (see above), but also most or all disgusting things come from animals. Vegetables may be rejected because they taste bitter, but they're not viewed as disgusting. I reacted to that statement with, "Speak for yourself, Dr. Pinker." As a child, I was disgusted—i.e, nauseated—by several kinds of vegetables because they were served in a cooked-to-mush condition. The combination of change in taste from overcooking and the yucky texture made my stomach revolt. I believe, by the way, that the cliche of children hating vegetables arises from the crimes perpetrated on perfectly harmless plants by 1950s cooking styles and the prevalence of over-processed canned veggies in the American diet of that period.

One especially interesting issue: What about bugs? Why don't many cultures—ours included—eat insects and similar arthropods (e.g., spiders)? We often pay high prices for the privilege of consuming certain other arthropods, such as lobsters. And we happily eat one kind of insect secretion (honey). Yet we abhor the termites and grubs that form an important part of our ape relatives' diets. The easy answer in American culture is that bugs aren't included among the "permitted" items we're fed in childhood. But why aren't we?

An article from SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN attempting to answer that question:

What's Stopping Us from Eating Insects?

And one from the anthropology website "Sapiens":

Why Don't More Humans Eat Bugs?

Neither of these articles exactly repeats Pinker's hypothesis, which makes a lot of sense to me, although the second essay touches upon it: Gathering enough insects or other small arthropods to provide sufficient protein isn't a very efficient process. It takes a lot of time and energy. Therefore, people incorporated bugs into their diets only if those creatures were abundant (in the tropics, for instance) and nothing better was readily available. Where a society could obtain plenty of protein from more efficient sources, such as raising herd animals, they didn't bother to eat bugs. And since whatever isn't permitted during the early learning period is by definition forbidden, bugs are disgusting to most of us. This cultural phenomenon drives the humorous appeal of the popular children's novel HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS, since at a certain age many kids develop a sort of queasy fascination with yucky things.

One lesson for future interplanetary explorers might be that colonists should conscientiously expose their children from infancy to all sorts of safe native foods in extraterrestrial environments, even if the parents find those items repugnant.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Food Production of the Future

Here's an article about tabletop greenhouses controlled by a computer program:

A Byte to Eat

Food computers "use up to 90 percent less water than traditional agriculture and can help reduce food waste." The ones built in the class showcased in this article are the size of a moving box and very cheap—the "computer" part of the system costs about $30.00.

These devices are too small, of course, to feed a household. However, they could allow people without yards or gardens to supplement their diets with home-grown vegetables. Furthermore, the design can be scaled up to the size of a warehouse.

In an essay written several decades ago, Isaac Asimov calculated how long it would take for the Earth to reach maximum sustainable population at the then-current rate of reproduction. In a surprisingly few centuries, he figured, the entire surface of the planet would reach the population density of Manhattan at noon on a weekday. (I don't remember whether this estimate includes paving over the oceans.) Setting aside the practical fact that this end point will never be reached, because societies would collapse long before then, how would all those people living in one continuous urban sprawl be fed? Agriculture on almost every rooftop would be needed. Asimov visualized giant algae vats producing the raw material for nutritive substances. The society of Harry Harrison's 1966 novel MAKE ROOM, MAKE ROOM, set in 1999, feeds the overcrowded planet with a protein substance called Soylent Green. (Interestingly, Harrison predicts this desperate condition in a world with 7 billion people. Global population today measures about 7.5 billion, and we're nowhere near those dire straits. Maybe there's hope.) Contrary to the movie (in which the authorities falsely claim that the product's base ingredient is plankton), Soylent Green in the book isn't "people." Thoughtful consideration makes it obvious that relying on cannibalism to feed everybody would make little sense. It's not efficient to sustain human livestock on food that people could eat directly. Any consumption of human meat would have to be sporadic and opportunistic, not the main source of nourishment. In the novel, Soylent Green is made of soybeans and lentils, a highly nutritious combination of proteins. Still, most likely, the majority of people would prefer "real food" if it could be cultivated in such an environment. And inexpensive computerized growing units like those in the tabletop greenhouse project could be part of the solution to the problem.

Not that I'd want to live in a world like that. As much as I would miss the modern conveniences I'm very attached to, I would almost prefer the low-tech future of S. M. Stirling's "Emberverse" series (beginning with DIES THE FIRE), whose inhabitants enjoy fresh, locally farmed foods as one compensation for the high-tech marvels they've lost.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Sunday, October 16, 2011

#BAD11 -- Food in Alien Romances

I am proud to be taking part in Blog Action Day OCT 16 2011 www.blogactionday.org

Does anyone else find it ironic that the requested hashtags for today are #BAD11 and  #FOOD ?

Let me start with a disclaimer. I intended to blog about something else when I logged on this morning, but since October 16th is global Blog Action Day and also World Food Day, I'm showing up. Don't expect anything profound.

The strangest food that I ever ate (not counting a live worm when I was an infant, and which I do not recall eating; nor counting a small gob of a playful former boyfriend's snot that I mistook for a morsel of the porridge we happened to be eating at the time; nor counting ....well, such things aren't properly "food", are they?) might have been a cholla cactus in the flowering desert near Phoenix. Camelback area.

After I'd eaten it, the guide informed me that the flesh of the fruit is famous as both an aphrodisiac and a laxative. I used the experience in my first alien romance novel, Forced Mate. In that particular case, the food item was "BAD" in the sense of being truly evil, and something the hero feared.

I will leave fertile minds to boggle. Aphrodisiacs and laxatives don't mix.

However, food shortages can happen anywhere, and I think it is important to remember that some foods
have side-effects. Some people can eat certain foods because they have done so all their lives, and have built up an immunity. Do we think enough about the potential for food allergies in the MREs and other cheap and easy foods we send to disaster areas? Do we send emergency food rations that are appropriate? How far is it appropriate to include chemicals and artificial fillers in emergency rations sent to places where such chemicals are not in the local food supply?

In my own writing (of alien romances), I've touched lightly on alien food and survival techniques for people obliged to try an unfamiliar fruit for the first time. (Insufficient Mating Material is a marooned-on-an-alien-deserted-island story).

Mostly, if I need to add an alien flavor, I've combined the appearance and taste of exotic and everyday fruits and vegetables found on earth. I assume that on largescale space transporters, food would be organic, grown on recycled human waste, so there would be a lot of mushroom- and fungus- based culinary delights. Also tomatoes. Beans would probably need to be modified, but beans and rice are one of the world's most efficient foods. In Knight's Fork, I included a discussion of legume-growing on a space ark.

What have you done with regard to alien food in your own writings?

PS.
Someone else's blog discovered via #BAD11
http://www.geneabloggers.com/resources-blog-copyright-content-theft/

PPS
Blog Action Day's suggested topics are also great worldbuilding/plot/conflict thought starters.
Some topics suggestions for your Blog Action Day post.
  •   My favorite food
  •   The famine in East Africa
  •  To be organic or not to be, that is the question.
  • Hunger and poverty.
  •  Best and worst food memory
  •  Slow Food, Fast Food: What does it actually mean
  • Malnutrition
  • Conflict over Food: Will new wars be about arable land?
  • Is your hamburger hurting the environment?
    It takes 24 liters of water to produce one hamburger. That means it would take over 19.9 billion liters of water to make just one hamburger for every person in Europe.
  • Vegan, Vegetarian, Meat eater – Which one are you and why?
  • Trading in the future of food. What is the impact of food speculation?
  • Will we be able to feed 9 billion people in 2050?
  • How does Fair Trade food help farmers and communities get out of poverty?
  •  Freeganism  – eating the things others throw away.
  • The scandal of food waste.
  • What is the best way to farm food?
  • Growing your own – the joys and heartache of growing what you eat?
  • Too much or too little taking food to extremes.
  • Strangest thing you have ever eaten.
  • What food means to your culture.