It is to me, yes.
Current animal welfare legislation is self-evidently inadequate for the protection of farmed animals. The double-standard with those animals lucky enough to be considered 'pet' species is one thing I (gently) encourage friends to ponder when the topic comes up...
As I said earlier in the thread, there's a fundamental conflict between animal products and animal welfare. Animals are mistreated because it's profitable. Better standards = higher prices = lower demand.
Yes, it's too cheap, in the past it was a luxury, there is certainly a good argument that's the way it should be.
I think I prefer Mopane worm-flavoured Mopane worms. They taste like scrambled egg with shredded shrimp.
Haven't tried termites but the 'pineapple flavoured' bit is more off-putting than the 'termite' part.
If humans are naturally herbivore (which I don't agree), why would the meat be luxury food? The meaning of luxury is what it is, something that's desired but expensive or hard to obtain.
It's obvious to me that we aren't naturally herbivore, for the average Joe meat wasn't consumed as much due to lack of availability. If you're a Lord of the Manor it's a different matter
Also, pretty much every part of the animal would have been eaten which would have been healthier
Also, pretty much every part of the animal would have been eaten which would have been healthier
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Meat was a luxury, and not too long ago. My mother was actually born in a log cabin. No TV, no telephone, no electricity, no indoor plumbing. That was not unusual for the time and place. They didn't eat a lot of meat. Maybe a little in the beans, or on a special occasions. But it was not a staple, like it is now. They all did just fine.
It's the same with most stone age people living today. Yes, they talk a big game (pun intended) about the hunt - but they actually eat a lot more vegetable matter than meat.
We'll never really know the diet we evolved with, and it's unlikely there was a single uniform diet across the world. There isn't now, why would there have been 250,000 years ago?
It's the same with most stone age people living today. Yes, they talk a big game (pun intended) about the hunt - but they actually eat a lot more vegetable matter than meat.
We'll never really know the diet we evolved with, and it's unlikely there was a single uniform diet across the world. There isn't now, why would there have been 250,000 years ago?
It wouldn't have been as diverse as it is today because people weren't scattered as far out on the planet as we are today. Plus, there were far less people around back then.
Cannibalism may not have been uncommon during the Paleolithic, but I haven't heard people who think prehistory is a blueprint for modern diet talk about that one much. 🙂
Doing just fine would be a relative term. Even today, in many countries, what's considered as poverty life in USA is deemed to be nice living condition or above average.
I can tell you, farm life during the great depression was not "nice living conditions". Better than some places, sure, but not "nice".
We certainly have a good understanding of what the diet was for the past 4000 to 10,000 years as archeological excavations of middens show what was consumed.
We are termed Hunter Gatherers for a reason, we hunted game large and small, and gathered vegetables, grains fruit and legumes.
Once we settled down in the fertile crescent and began dumping our refuse in localized places we left traces which show what we ate.
The oldest midden I have seen documented was around 11,000 years old.
Beyond that there is scant evidence, but it is consistent with the Hunter Gatherer characterization.
My grandfather was a butcher starting in the late 1890s in the Pennsylvania Coal country, and while there was a slowdown during the Great War, the Great Depression, and rationing during the second WW II, he never spoke of scarcity.
A lot depended on where you were.
For instance the eastern American Indians did more farming than the Planes Indians who followed the buffalo herds which were their primary food.
Polynesian people ate a lot of fish, but also farmed. Many midden from Polynesian island excavations show a high consumption of fish, shell fish, etc.
So yes there was great diversity, but meat has been a fairly large part of the human diet for most of our existence.
We are termed Hunter Gatherers for a reason, we hunted game large and small, and gathered vegetables, grains fruit and legumes.
Once we settled down in the fertile crescent and began dumping our refuse in localized places we left traces which show what we ate.
The oldest midden I have seen documented was around 11,000 years old.
Beyond that there is scant evidence, but it is consistent with the Hunter Gatherer characterization.
My grandfather was a butcher starting in the late 1890s in the Pennsylvania Coal country, and while there was a slowdown during the Great War, the Great Depression, and rationing during the second WW II, he never spoke of scarcity.
A lot depended on where you were.
For instance the eastern American Indians did more farming than the Planes Indians who followed the buffalo herds which were their primary food.
Polynesian people ate a lot of fish, but also farmed. Many midden from Polynesian island excavations show a high consumption of fish, shell fish, etc.
So yes there was great diversity, but meat has been a fairly large part of the human diet for most of our existence.
There is a lot of ancient and modern evidence against that. A part, yes, but likely a lot smaller than out current paleolithic fantasies portray. Unless you're an Inuit. 😉
The meat content of my childhood diet at home consisted mainly of minced meat, sausages and corned beef. On high days we would have a chicken, which we selected from those strutting about at the local farm, and sometimes a rabbit that my father had caught. School lunches spoiled me with liver and Spam fritters! All meals were accompanied by potatoes along with permutations of carrot, turnip and cabbage to "fill you up". When the long summer holidays came, I would return to the house from play just long enough to ask for a 'jeely piece' (jam sandwich) or to be given a paper bag containing a small amount of sugar in which to dip a stalk of rhubarb. Happy days! 🙂
From what I've read over the years diet and pair-bonding were essential to us humans.
Every hunter&gather society ever studied (there aren't many left but there were quite a few as recently as the '60s or '70s) followed the same pattern: More or less strict pair-bonding and a similarly strict division of labour: Females gather food, males hunt.
There were minor differences like some tribes considered fishing gathering while for others it was hunting.
Man and women have even diverged evolutionary to aid their respective tasks: For example women have on average superior colour vision while males became more adept at spatial tasks needed for hunting.
The conclusion was that humans could not survive on either method of food procurement alone. Of course since then farming has greatly increased the availability of plant-based food but gathering nuts, fruit etc is notoriously unpredictable...as is hunting.
Every hunter&gather society ever studied (there aren't many left but there were quite a few as recently as the '60s or '70s) followed the same pattern: More or less strict pair-bonding and a similarly strict division of labour: Females gather food, males hunt.
There were minor differences like some tribes considered fishing gathering while for others it was hunting.
Man and women have even diverged evolutionary to aid their respective tasks: For example women have on average superior colour vision while males became more adept at spatial tasks needed for hunting.
The conclusion was that humans could not survive on either method of food procurement alone. Of course since then farming has greatly increased the availability of plant-based food but gathering nuts, fruit etc is notoriously unpredictable...as is hunting.
I can buy them here dried in Zimbabwean shops but I don't think there are too many of those in Wales.
Also they are not cheap since they're not as yet mass produced and just collected whenever they appear and imported on a very small scale.
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