Wednesday 19 June 2013

Why be a veggie?

By design and destiny, humans are omnivores. Our teeth and digestive systems are all-purpose and ready for anything. Our genes do not dictate what foods we should find tasty or repulsive. We come into the world with a yen for sweets and a weak aversion to bitterness, and after four months develop a fondness for salt. Some people are born particularly sensitive to one taste or odour... a tiny fraction of adults, between 1 and 2 percent, have true (And truly dangerous) food allergies. All human cultures consider fur, paper, and hair inappropriate as food. And that's about it. Everything else is learned. Yet by the age of twelve, we all suffer from a haphazard collection of food aversions ranging from revulsion to indifference. [But] by closing ourselves off to the bounties of nature, we become failed omnivores. We let the down the omnivore team. God tells us in the book of Genesis, right after Noah's flood, to eat everything under the sun. Those who ignore His instructions are no better than godless heathens.” 

In short, don't let the omnivore side down!

Quote taken from Jeffrey Steingarten's wildly funny The Man Who Ate Everything

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