The Way We Eat How Did Things Get This Way?

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The Way We Eat
How Did Things Get This Way?
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Part 1
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We all know that our ancient ancestors did not open a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli or microwave a four-course frozen dinner when the old tummy started to rumble. In fact, primitive man ate about the same way as our relatives the great apes do, roaming through the woods or jungles, foraging for fruit, nuts, and berries; eating the occasional handful of creepy, crawly things. So how did we arrive at our present day eating habits, so far removed from the way things were? This month we begin a new series in The Way We Eat, a little trek through time to see how our highly involved practices of food gathering, processing, preparation and consumption have developed.
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It was, reportedly, about 500,000 years ago that man first taught himself to build a hearth and use fire to cook his food. This was the first major deviation from the way in which other animals eat. At first he just dropped the food into the hot embers. When it didn't burn, he found that the cooked food was often tastier and easier to chew and digest. Over the ages, variations on this original technique developed, such as grilling food above the flames, spit roasting, and stewing - by wrapping food in leaves before placing it in the hot ashes. Other than that, not much happened on the culinary scene for about the next 480,000 years.
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Although primitive tools such as spears and sling shots had given man enough of an advantage over other animals that he could hunt and eat game on a somewhat regular basis, archeological evidence indicates that by far the largest component of the hunter-gatherer diet was plant food. Nuts, berries, edible roots, a wide variety (sometimes hundreds) of different kinds of plants, and meat when it was available - that is how man ate for hundreds of thousands of years. And he was actually quite healthy. Accidents were apparently the main cause of death among those who survived birth and childhood. The bones and organs of early man were virtually free of the degenerative diseases that now plague mankind.
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Sometime between 18,000 and 10,000 BC, depending on which sources you rely on, inhabitants of the Middle East started to herd and breed animals and use these "domesticated" animals as an easily accessible source of food. Deer and antelope were among the earliest animals to be herded but other species proved to be better suited for domestication. The practice of herding animals took several thousand years to spread over the continents of Europe and Asia. By 5,000 B.C. herds of sheep, pigs and goats could be found from China to Rome and Greece. About 1,000 years later the Sumerians learned how to churn milk into butter and how to make cheese. Cows, who had long been used as draught animals, became highly valued for the abundant supply of this precious liquid. The earliest raising of poultry may have been the fatted geese of Egypt which were reportedly being force-fed to make plump, juicy roasters as early as 2,500 B.C. In the meantime, other very significant changes in the way man procured his food were taking place.
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Possibly the single development that has had the greatest influence on the process of civilization was man's realization that he could gather the seeds of certain foods, plant them and harvest a new supply of food in the location of his choice. With this awareness, what we know as the Agricultural Revolution began approximately 10,000 years before Christ. At that point the gristly and tasteless grains - the wheat, barley, corn and rice that had been habitually chewed by the hunter-gatherers, started to become a staple of man's diet.
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The agricultural llfestyle changed everything about man's existence and change took place quite rapidly from that point on. Permanent settlements grew up around the fields. Man began to claim ownership of the land. Social classes, organized warfare and the need for government developed. There was rapid growth in population. Specialization of work began, with some men continuing to produce the food supply while others became builders, artisans, merchants, soldiers, teachers and philosophers.
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The development of agriculture seems to have taken place almost simultaneously in various parts of the world. But different plants grew better and therefore, became the prevalent crops in the various regions of the world; rice in the Far East, grains and root vegetables in Western Europe, olives and grapes in the Mediterranean, corn and potatoes in the Americas. Tools for cultivating became more and more sophisticated and, despite a host of new problems that accompanied this Agricultural Revolution, there was more food readily available than ever before. Nevertheless, in most parts of the world there was still a growing season and a non-growing season and thus the problem of how to preserve some of this abundance for use during the non-growing season. Next month we'll discuss some of the problems created by the Agricultural Revolution and how man has attempted to solve them.
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Part 2
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Last month we touched on some of the major developments that have changed the way man eats, from the cooking of food to the herding and domestication of animals and the development of agriculture. This month we will look at some of the problems that developed directly as a result of the agricultural lifestyle.
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Crops and domesticated animals are subject to disease and pestilence. Creating a condition in which one crop monopolizes an area of land also creates an ideal situation for the growth or proliferation of the weeds, viruses, bacteria and insects that thrive on that crop or flourish in the same growing conditions. This process of planting a large area in one crop has been termed "selecting for." When man selects for the plants he needs or desires for his sustenance, he also selects for the organisms that live on those plants.
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In addition to the problems of pestilence, agricultural man soon learned that farming subjected the soil to erosion and degeneration. In the hunter-gatherer society a large geographical area was minimally affected by man's quest for food, while the farming lifestyle caused a smaller area of land to be much more heavily impacted. It did not take long for man to realize that he could not farm the same piece of land year after year and expect the same yield. The easiest and seemingly most logical, solution to the inability of the land to continue to support a crop would be to move the crop to another piece of land. And that is exactly what the early agriculturists did. It's not difficult to understand how farmland became a more and more valuable commodity.
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But, to deplete the soil is to deplete the most basic resource on which all life on earth depends. Somewhere along the line, man began to realize that he could not continue to do this indefinitely. He began to practice conservation techniques such as crop rotation to let the soil rest, intercropping (the practice of planting two crops together which complement each other in regards to what they add to the soil and what they extract from it), and fertilization. Unfortunately, man's immediate needs and desires often take priority over his concern for tomorrow and so we are still struggling with the problems of soil erosion and depletion. As time went on, the combination of need and greed made the acquisition of more and more land a frequent cause for war.
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Another problem that agriculturists had to contend with is the fact that most crops cannot grow in dry earth. Lack of rainfall can devastate both plants and animals and with many people depending on the same source of supply the agricultural lifestyle holds the potential for disastrous droughts. (In the Old Testament story of Joseph we are told that the whole known world around Egypt suffered a seven year famine.) Farmers had to learn to keep their cropland hydrated. In parts of the world where this was a problem various systems of irrigation were developed. The Egyptians expanded their growing area by redirecting water from the Nile River. On the other side of the world the Aztecs and Incas were developing their own ingenious irrigation systems.
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Conversely, some of the ancient agriculturists found it necessary to protect their crops from too much water resulting from periodic flooding of the land. Some very effective methods of doing this were developed by so-called primitive cultures and destroyed or allowed to fall into neglect when their lands were conquered by the Europeans. A number of these systems are now being re-activated by modern agriculture professionals who have come to realize their value. From one such system in an area of Mexico called Teotichuacan, fruits, grains and vegetables were grown on elevated beds called chinampas. The chinampas were surrounded by waterways that drained into canals called zanjas. These raised beds apparently supplied produce to a quarter of a million Aztec citizens. This system not only ensured good crops but also provided an easily accessible supply of fish that thrived in the waterways and rich fertilizer when the canals were dredged each year.
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With the advent of agriculture and man locating himself in one permanent place, food preservation became a more important consideration. Whereas previously nomadic people migrated to warmer climates in the cold months and cooler locations during the hot weather season, the agricultural lifestyle confined man to one location. To protect himself against starvation during the non-growing season, man had to develop effective ways of preserving food. Even before the Agricultural Revolution, he had learned to store nuts, bulbs and tubers and to dry grains and pound them into flour for future use. However, with the farming lifestyle grains became a dietary staple and the production of flour increased dramatically in importance. Around 8,000 BCE the Egyptians developed the first flour mills, using huge stone rollers to crush and grind the grain. This made it possible for large amounts of flour to be stored during the winter months so man could have bread throughout the year.
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Salting, pickling and curing meats, fish, and vegetables to extend their "shelf-life" made salt a valuable commodity as early as 500 BCE. Modern preservation techniques like canning and freezing which allow food to be transported over great distances were not developed until very recently in history.
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At first glance, the effects of agriculture on man's life do not seem to be very beneficial. His food supply was somewhat more secure, except in times of natural disaster but, with the valuable croplands and the permanent settlements that grew up around them came the threat of invasion and plunder. In addition, the specialization of work meant that those people outside of the farming profession had to depend on others to supply their food and lack of self-sufficiency breeds insecurity. From an ecological standpoint, forests were being cleared, soil was being depleted and eco-systems were being permanently altered. But what about the status of man's health and nutrition?
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It does appear that the Agricultural lifestyle increased man's susceptibility to a wide variety of diseases including tooth decay, malnutrition and infectious diseases. These developments were probably a result of a combination of factors including a less diverse diet, a heavier reliance on starchy foods, crowded living conditions and the spread of organisms through the milk and meat of domesticated animals.
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With the development of social classes these new threats to man's welfare did not affect all men equally. Even during the biblical seven-year famine, Joseph's wealthy father and brothers had the resources to buy the grain they needed from Egypt's stores. Throughout history crop failures and famines have had a much more devastating effect on the less economically fortunate, with those who have no land often being hit the hardest as the demand for their goods and services diminishes. It has been noted that in present day hunter-gatherer societies food is shared equally and all enjoy equal health. Whereas, there is abundant evidence that as the gap between the landed and the landless grew ever wider, so did the gap between the sumptuousness of their diets. As we will see, that does not necessarily mean that the diet of the wealthy was the diet of the healthy. But, except in times of extreme natural crisis, they had plenty of food available. This was not necessarily so for the poorer classes.
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Land ownership, ever larger permanent settlements (villages, towns, cities), governing bodies and laws, population growth and wars - these were some of the societal developments resulting from the change to an agricultural lifestyle. So what was the ultimate effect on man's food supply? [continued next month]
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Part 3
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In the last issue we discussed some of the problems such as pestilence, drought and famine, food borne diseases and social inequality, brought on by the Agriculture Revolution. In this segment we will examine how food, previously thought of simply as a necessity of life, became a statement of a man's position in the community.
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Just as land and cattle became the measure of a person's wealth, the amount and varieties of food he was able to put on his table became symbols of his social status, with large quantities and varieties of meat being a most excellent symbol.
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In many cultures meat has always been more highly regarded than plant food. The Old Testament tells us that God was more pleased with Abel's offering of lamb than his brother Cain's offering of farm produce. In primitive societies the successful hunter has traditionally been regarded with the highest respect. Even though plants, usually gathered by women, often provided the majority of the food supply, the gathering of plant food does not carry the same prestige. While either sex could gather plants, hunting was strictly the man's domain. In fact, meat was already a highly valued commodity when man entered the age of the Agricultural Revolution.
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As some of the early farming settlements developed into huge cities, housing the extravagant homes of the wealthy and powerful, the practice of holding large feasts or banquets came into vogue. Feasts were held for a number of reasons. There were religious festivals to honor the gods. Great feasts were held to celebrate victory in battle. And sometimes the wealthy governing class held feasts just to keep the masses of poor people happy so that they didn't revolt. There are records of incredibly elaborate banquets held in Mesopotamia as early as 1800 BCE in which thousands of different dishes were served up along with spectacular entertainment. The Egyptians and the Greeks apparently enjoyed even more elaborate feasts. And, although the citizens of the early Roman Empire practiced an austere lifestyle - believing that this strengthened them, as that empire spread to Egypt and Greece the Romans adopted the more lavish dining habits. Eventually the Roman feasts outdid all others in the extravagance of their food and entertainment.
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There are some surprisingly revealing records of how the wealthy class ate in those ancient civilizations. For example, among the ruins of an Assyrian palace of Mari (9th to 7th century BCE) were found 1300 royal grocery lists relating that the royal family ate abundantly of fish, foul, beef, pork and mutton, shrimp, truffles, fresh and dried vegetables, a variety of breads, goats milk and cheese, fancy cakes and pastries.
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Many of the recipes and food preparation techniques that we use today go all the way back to ancient times. Cheesecake was originally a Greek delight, mentioned in records from the 5th century BCE. We can thank the Romans for developing the processes of thickening sauces with flour and reducing wine in cooking. They are also responsible for oil and vinegar dressings on fresh salads.
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At the ancient feasts the presentation of the food was often part of the entertainment with chefs creating spectacular, many-tiered food pyramids, featuring a wide variety of meats, vegetables, fruits and even exotic birds. It was not unknown for one of these elaborate structures to collapse, no doubt adding to the merriment of the guests who had been spending the entire day eating and drinking.
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These overly extravagant and shamefully wasteful culinary displays of wealth were also common in Europe during the Middle Ages. European banquets became so elaborate that sometimes a member of the middle-upper class would he thrown into financial ruin after a big bash. Consequently, sumptuary laws were passed, limiting the number of meat and fish dishes that could be served by persons of "lesser rank," in the course of one meal. The sumptuary laws were largely ignored and European chefs continued to develop richer, more colorful and elaborate meals.
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It was during the Middle Ages that red, green, yellow and blue food colorings derived from substances such as saffron, sandalwood, crushed herbs and mulberries, came into use.
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Vegetables, particularly root vegetables, were considered peasant fare and meat was highly prized. Very little beef was eaten but the upper classes enjoyed a wide variety of game animals, fish and all kinds of birds, elegantly dressed. . Among the favorites were pheasant, peacocks, swans, herons, cranes and a variety of small birds.
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Although for the common people food was still simply a necessity of life, for the royal class and the landed gentry it had become both a status symbol and an art form. In fact the procurement of more and better tasting food often played a key role in the history of the western world. (to be continued).
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Part 4
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To say that the pursuit of food has influenced history is much more than an understatement. In fact, nothing about man's history can be totally understood without looking at the role of his eating habits. In prehistoric, especially pre-agricultural, times man followed the "food," and as the world went through climactic changes that could, and often did, mean moving to a new geographical location. So, man's migration to different parts of the world and where he became the most populous had everything to do with the availability of food. Of course, countless wars, large and small, have been fought over access to food supply. Primitive men fought for the right to the best hunting grounds. After the change to an agricultural lifestyle, wars were fought over crop and grazing land.
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The discovery of the New World, as we all know, was the result of a search for an easier route to the Indies where valuable culinary spices could be found. If man had not been looking to spice up his food, it could have many more centuries before North and South America had been "discovered." In England, where seafood made up an important part of the diet, their superior fishing fleet led to the supremacy of the British navy and eventually to the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Of course, the last straw for the American colonists was the levying of a tax on their precious tea, thereby leading to the American Revolution. The development of the Dutch delicacy, pickled herring, is said to have resulted in the prosperity of the Netherlands, which leads into another factor in the development of our eating habits - food preservation.
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Since earliest times man has had to set aside a portion of his food supply and preserve it for future use. With the advent of agriculture and man locating himself in one permanent place, food preservation became a more important consideration. Whereas previously nomadic people migrated to warmer climates in the cold months and cooler locations during the hot weather season, the agricultural lifestyle confined man to one location. To protect himself against starvation during the non-growing season, man had to develop effective ways of preserving food. Even before the Agricultural Revolution, he had learned to store nuts, bulbs and tubers and to dry grains and pound them into flour for future use. However, with the Agricultural lifestyle grains became a dietary staple and the production of flour increased dramatically in importance. Around 8,000 BCE the Egyptians developed the first flour mills, using huge stone rollers to crush and grind the grain. Salting, pickling and curing meats, fish, and vegetables to extend their "shelf-life" made salt a valuable commodity as early as 500 BCE.
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While drying may have been the first method of food preservation, there is evidence that man employed the technique of freezing food for preservation during the ice age. (Seems fitting.) Man has stored food in cool places such as caves and, later, iceboxes for millenia but not until the early 1900's did the concept of freezing food for preservation come into full fruition when Clarence Birdseye introduced frozen foods to the American public.
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Ancient drying techniques were often accompanied by a preserving agent such as salt or smoke. Salted foods were dried in the sun, in an open room or on stove tops. The first dehydrator for drying fruits and vegetables was introduced in France in 1795. Other ancient preserving agents include sugar, vinegar and alcohol.
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Heating food to preserve its freshness is a fairly recent development in the history of food preservation. In 1809 the French chef and innovator, Nicholas Appert, introduced the idea of sterilizing food and storing it in sealed glass jars (canning). As is often the case, it was war that prompted this invention. Appert was searching for a way to provide unspoiled food for Napolean's armies.
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With the development of an understanding of microorganisms and their capacity to cause disease, has come further "advances" in food preservation technology - pasteurization in the early 20th century, hermetic sealing to remove air, most recently, gamma radiation to destroy micororganisms and retard spoilage and (unfortunately) genetic engineering to produce plant foods that will stay fresh longer.
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Recent innovations in this field, as well as the field of food processing, have generated questions as to the actual benefit of these technologies. Next month we will examine the impact of the developments of the last 100 years.
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Part 5
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This month we're going to look at what has happened to our diet over the past 100 years. A good point of reference might be New York City, the cultural melting pot of the world in 1900. There were 3.5 million people in N.Y.C. at that time. Manhattan was a great metropolis. It no longer produced its own food, relying on imports from many distant places but mainly from Long Island and the four other boroughs around it, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. These were still largely rural areas with traditional farms that had been there since colonial times. On these farms one could find horses, cattle, hogs, fields of grain and potatoes, vegetable gardens and orchards. Residents hunted and trapped in the teaming woodlands and fished in the surrounding waters. In the urban areas, fresh foods could be purchased from horse drawn wagons and pushcarts selling milk, vegetables, fish, ice and homemade pies. So, 100 years ago, even in one of the busiest and biggest metropolitan centers of the world, most people were still eating fresh, unprocessed, locally grown food.
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America was feeling her oats in 1900. People were saying that the 20th century was going to be the American Century. We were a proud and somewhat arrogant, people who believed that the future belonged to us. Restaurants frequented by the wealthy upper class offered meat-filled menus featuring exotic dishes like elk, caribou, moose and even elephant. Oysters Rockefeller, named after the millionaire John D. Rockefeller, was the culinary rage. But it's important to remember that this kind of food was only available to the wealthy and upper classes. The middle and lower classes ate of much more humble pie. Nonetheless, the middle and lower classes have always wanted to emulate the wealthy so eating lots of rich, red meat was still a status symbol to be aimed for.
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During the first couple of decades of the 20th century it was fashionable to be plump, signifying that one had plenty to eat and was therefore successful One commodity that helped achieve the desired chubbiness was sugar. Americans across class lines were eating large quantities of sugar. By 1909 the per capita consumption was about 65 pounds a year. (that figure is now about double).
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The decade of 1910 to 1919 marked the beginning of the age of processed foods. Kelloggs and Post cereals and Aunt Jemimah pancake mix, already familiar to the American public, were joined by Hellman's mayonnaise, Oreo cookies, Crisco, Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice, Marshmallow Fluff and packaged hot dogs. It was during this decade that Clarence Birdseye began developing the frozen food process, which he would introduce to the public in 1930.
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The two world wars with the Great Depression in between brought some major fluctuations to the economy and the American diet but, through it all, processed foods continued to rise in popularity and with that rise, the addition of chemical preservatives, coloring agents, moisture control agents, stabilizers, flavor enhancers, bleaching and maturing agents and other additives has risen concurrently until we now have over 2000 direct chemical accom-paniments to our food (not including what goes into the soil and on the crops). In addition to the preserving agents, processed foods, which have been bleached, dried, frozen and otherwise altered, often contain large amounts of salt and refined sugar to make them more appealing to the taste buds.
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Food experts often consider the 1950's to be the beginning of the real downfall of the American diet. One development that made a big difference in the availability of these processed foods was the building of the national highway system. Now food processors could economically ship their products all over the country. The 50's also saw the birth and development of the fast food franchises like McDonalds, the advertising blitz of canned and processed foods offered up by our new found companion, the television, and the introduction of frozen "TV dinners." Another aftermath of WWII was the beginning of the end of the stay-at-home homemaker and with Mom working outside of the home, fast, easy, cheap and convenient were the qualities Americans were looking for in their food. If it wasn't a TV dinner, it was canned spaghetti, hot dogs and beans, sloppy Joe or frozen fish sticks.
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In addition to the proliferation of highly processed foods we had the continued deterioration of the soil and chemical pollution of our food supply. Farmers had long been using naturally occurring substances such as arsenic and pyrethrum, to try to control certain types of pests. After WWII traditional pest control were replaced by synthetic pesticides, mass produced. There was great excitement over these new pesticides which many believed would result in a green revolution and put an end to world hunger. Agricultural production has, in fact, increased substantially in many parts of the world since 1950 and there is no question but that pesticides and herbicides have contributed greatly to that increase. But it did not take long for thinking people to realize that these synthetically produced substances could be harmful to our health. In 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a grim warning about the real and potential dangers that these chemicals posed to our air, water and food supply. Yet, the use of pesticides continues to grow to the extent that almost a billion pounds of active pesticide ingredients are now being used in agriculture each year in the United States. When you include the use of wood preservatives, disinfects and sulfur, it amounts to approximately four pounds of pesticides, per person, per year. And we are generously exporting several hundred million pounds to the rest of the world each year. The presence of these substances is so pervasive that even organically grown food, which requires that no synthetic chemical substances can be used for three years prior to certification, cannot escape some presence of chemical pollutants.
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And what about the meat and the milk? Louis Pasteur had developed his process of pasteurization (actually first used in wine production) in 1861. Using this process to heat milk to destroy bacteria was an attempt on the part of the government to control the, then prevalent, tuberculosis bacteria which, it was later found, was not transmitted in milk. We now know that the pasteurization process also destroys the natural enzymes that facilitate the digestion and absorption of milk by humans. Since then our milk supply has been altered in a number of other ways. Homogenization breaks up the fat globules that used to rise to the top of a bottle of milk in the form of cream. Cows eat feed laced with synthetic hormones and antibiotics and contaminated with the same toxic chemicals that are in our plant foods. Of course these substances are present in the meat and the dairy products that we consume.
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Processed foods, fast food restaurants, the chemical pollution of the soil and the food supply - all of these developments that were making their debut in the first half of the 20th century increased dramatically during the second half. It's no wonder that the Standard American Diet has come to be known by it's acronym, SAD. Next month we'll take a look at what these changes to our food supply has done to the health of the generations of Americans who have been eating this way.
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This article is intended for informational purposes only. Nothing in this publication is intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical diagnosis and advice. Always seek the advice of your physician or health-care provider before starting any new diet or procedure involving your health. Prompt professional medical guidance is recommended for any health problem.