Name: From Foraging to Food Shopping
Uploaded: 2020-03-31T20:28:01+00:00
Duration: 4 min 11 s
Description: An associate professor of archaeology shares how hunter-gatherers foraged for food, and why their choices impact our food shopping habits today.

How do our diets today compare to those of our early human ancestors? Hint: We all love sweet treats!

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Key Ideas

As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.

Think about the following questions as you watch the video

What kinds of food would hunter-gatherers prefer and why?
Why would hunter-gatherers go to extra lengths to get foods like bone marrow, nuts, and honey?
Why did extinctions often occur after humans settled in a particular area?

: What kind of foods do you like and what kind of foods
: do you end up eating?
: Are there nutritional and biological factors
: that you think about when you make your decisions?
: And how do hunter/gatherers choose what to eat?
: It just so happens that a lot of the decisions we make about food
: extend far back into human pre-history.
: Studies of current foraging societies clearly show
: that hunter/gatherers make choices about what to eat
: based on some very fundamental economic principles.
: When it comes to gathering food, humans like to maximize
: their gains and minimize their costs.
: Foods that are calorie-rich, come in large package sizes,
: and are easy to prepare are always top choices.
: For hunter/gatherers in most environments,
: that means that they're going to pursue the largest prey animals
: available to them.
: And they're going to choose their plant foods
: very carefully,
: going preferentially for tubers and large fruits.
: If you're going to go through the effort to track, pursue,
: and raise your spear at an animal,
: better a mammoth than a mouse.
: And when it comes to plant foods, better to have materials
: that are very easy to prepare and consume
: than costly materials that require a lot of processing.
: I don't see this as much different than how we make
: our own food choices.
: When we're tired and hungry, we often opt to go through
: the fast food drive-thru as opposed to making a meal.
: Or stop by the grocery store and pick up some calorie-rich food
: that requires very little preparation.
: Or we simply pick up the value pack.
: But there are some resources hunter/gatherers
: will consistently go to great lengths to procure.
: And those are items that are high in fat and sugar.
: In most environments, fatty foods are in short supply.
: So items like bone marrow and oil-rich nuts and seeds
: are always favorite items.
: These foods require additional processing,
: but hunter/gatherers will go to those extra lengths--
: cracking open bones for marrow or shelling and husking seeds
: and nuts to get at those oil-rich foods--
: simply because they taste good.
: The same applies to sweet items like honey.
: When hunter/gatherers encounter bees and know that they
: can acquire sweet honey, they'll often drop everything
: they're doing to pursue that sweet resource.
: Many of our current dietary health problems
: can be traced back to these same decisions our hunter/gatherer
: ancestors made thousands and thousands of years ago.
: They're simply exaggerated by the realities
: of modern food availability.
: When it comes to fat and sugars, economic decisions
: tend to fly out the window.
: I suspect that if we could transport a group
: of Paleolithic hunter/gatherers into a modern day grocery store,
: they'd head straight for the bacon
: and all of the candy and sugar.
: The leafy vegetables would be left to languish on the shelves.
: Through time, these hunter/gatherer food choices
: have fueled human population growth and the migration
: into new landscapes.
: When hunter/gatherers enter new lands, they often prefer
: to pursue those top prey choice items first.
: We see a wake of extinction in the aftermath of human settling
: new landscapes.
: Whether it be mammoths in North America
: or moas in New Zealand, those top food choices
: are often the first to become extinct.
: As an imbalance between supply and demand becomes apparent,
: we see hunter/gatherers including more and more items
: in their diet,
: often including small nuts and seeds and small prey animals
: that they previously would have overlooked.
: And this same trend continues today as our appetite for meat
: and calorie-rich grains pushes the development of new lands
: and decimates the habitats of other large animals.
: Think about your own food choices again.
: In what ways do you think it resembles or perhaps
: is different from the choices made by our foraging ancestors?

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From Foraging to Food Shopping

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