Evolution Of Food

[Prudie]

I was wondering tonight while eating asparagus how did we find out that you can eat asparagus when it's shooting but not daffodils, that you eat carrot roots but not cabbage or rose roots, that egg white will whisk up, that flour and butter will thicken things etc etc. The list is endless. Was it trial and error? Did people die along the way finding out if things are poisonous?

[atalanta]

As for milk from animals, someone must have connected babies suckling from their mothers with small mammals such as goat kids suckling from the nannies, and wondered if they could try ( say) goat milk. This might have become quite important for human babies if their mothers ran out of milk, perhaps if they could not get enough water to drink in a drought. Children would probably have been able to digest animal milk, and then when humans began to herd goats, sheep, etc, they forced themselves to drink the milk when there was nothing else, and thus their digestive systems evolved to be lactose-tolerant.
Actually, there is one simple - if crude - test - if something tastes bitter, it is probably not good for you. A tiny taste might be enough to warn you without killing you.
Thinking of rhubarb, I expect some stone-age cavedweller picked a stalk to poke into a beehive to get honey out, and exclaimed "I say, chaps, this combination tastes rather smashing" - between stings, of course.

[Peter Pedant]

. First agrarian revolution.... see wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution

it is a big deal - as it coincides/causes the change from hunter-gatherer to putting down sticks and farming.

triticum was developed but wasnt the first crop
also see King Tut's bread
also associated with a balloon in the population figures so once it took off it was obviously very efficient compared to what went before
( and therefore would survive )

quite a lot written about this so if you can append good refs on this thread it would be useful

[Prudie]

Here you go then Peter
http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/history

[Peter Pedant]

Milk production is interesting in itself

lots of people have heard of alactasia because there is lots of alactasia around. ( milk intolerance ) - however there is a variant of adult onset alactasia and this gene is longer and bigger than the normal lactase gene
and thus doesnt fit the 'normal' interpretation that some societies didnt dairy farm and it is those societies that have persistence of alactasia.


The smart money is on the theory that there are some areas where dairy farming occurred and THEN dropped out of existence and was re-introduced in more modern times....