Evolution and Food Habits

Food consumption is the basic instinct of all living things. The first life on the planet was microbial in nature, emerging and living in the primordial soup that was the ocean, also inhabiting rock, the deep Earth and the soil. They developed mechanisms and metabolic profiles to fit the environment they inhabited. Anaerobic systems and archaebacteria existed without Oxygen. Vegetation and photosynthetic cycle with the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange mechanisms caused an atmosphere where a variety of fauna grew abundantly, both small and big. The herbivores ate the vegetation while the predators killed the herbivores as well as creatures placed lower in the food chain.

In the evolution of man, that began some six million years ago, from the time of the early hominids until the period of settled living followed by the agricultural revolution, food was what could be hunted or foraged and gathered from the wild (Gore, 2003). In the interim, from around two million years ago during the Pliocene, Homo habilis devised tools to hunt but active hunting began with H. erectus, which was better endowed with the capability to utilise nature's bounty. Acquisition of the skills of fishing came later sometime between 190,000 and 130,000 years ago in Eastern Africa during the time of major glaciation (Oppenheimer, 2003, pp. 76–77). While H. habilis still ranged, modern man appeared. According to some writings, fire was domesticated much earlier, at least 700,000 to 800,000 years ago and with the discovery of fire came the appreciation of cooked meat and adapting a less strenuous way of eating and digesting the same food (Nestle Report).