The Primal Feast: Food, Sex, Foraging, and Love

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The Primal Feast: Food, Sex, Foraging, and Love

3.6 of 5 stars 3.60 · rating details · 20 ratings · 3 reviews

Science writer and naturalist Susan Allport takes readers on a passionate investigation of how the quest for food shapes our destinies and how our preferences for food were formed. In an engaging mix of in-depth research and personal anecdotes, the author of A Natural History of Parenting presents a delightful feast of facts and reflections on how food affects the lives of...more

Hardcover, 272 pages

Published March 7th 2000 by Harmony

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Mar 19, 2008 Daniel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Daniel by: my aunt annamarie

interesting cultural study cum behavioral science piece on the evolution of eating trends amongst both humans and animals... parallels are made between the two. developments of interest? the history of tofu & the ability of corn tortillas to provide sustenance via the gradual addition of lime, through lineage & over time...

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Aug 09, 2011 Adam Kranz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Adam by: Richard Manning (Against the Grain bibliography)

Shelves: richland-public-library, non-fiction, anthropology, environmental-history, evolution, the-problem-of-civilization, wealth-and-power-inequality

I'm not really sure what I was expecting The Primal Feast to be, but I wasn't expecting a popular science book that aggregates zoological, anthropological, and nutritional science work into a series of musing on the human relationship to food. I was pleased that that was what I got, though.

Allport does a nice job of weaving the research she reviews into a larger narrative without overstating the conclusions of the research. The book runs the risk of meandering aimlessly - it has no thesis, only...more I'm not really sure what I was expecting The Primal Feast to be, but I wasn't expecting a popular science book that aggregates zoological, anthropological, and nutritional science work into a series of musing on the human relationship to food. I was pleased that that was what I got, though.

Allport does a nice job of weaving the research she reviews into a larger narrative without overstating the conclusions of the research. The book runs the risk of meandering aimlessly - it has no thesis, only a theme. Yet as Allport moves from optimal foraging theory and ecological niche-making to gendered division of labor in food gathering to the ecology of the emergence of agriculture, a clear narrative and order emerges from the seemingly unconnected bits of knowledge. While there is no thesis, Allport consistently draws on the knowledge in previous chapters to interpret the knowledge found in later chapters.

Some of the interesting ideas presented within:

While agriculture is vulnerable to pests and weeds primarily because it resists the natural succession cycle and because it seeks to draw a large bundle of energy outside the bounds of the ecosystem, the pest problem is also in part a result of breeding - plants have developed a myriad of chemical defenses to protect themselves from predators, but in some cases we have found these chemicals undesirable (because they're poisonous or unpalatable) and thus bred strains that didn't produce them. Without their own chemical defenses, those plants must then be defended by humans, whether that be with fences, row cover, or artificially produced chemicals.

Animals must find a diet that allows them to extract sufficient energy and nutrients to survive. Allport suggests that two main strategies emerged among primates to accomplish this. Either a primate is a slow-moving, dull-witted animal that eats a lot of low-energy density leaves, relying on an extensive gut to extract what it needs from them, or it is a fast-moving, smarter animal that ranges a large territory and exploits a large variety of rarer but more nutritionally dense foods like fruits, nuts, insects, etc.

While there are a few food specialists that can be genetically "programmed" to find and consume only one or a few foods, the vast majority of animals must, to some extent, confront the problem of "What should I eat?" Omnivores, of course, face a particularly nasty form of this problem, called by some the "omnivore's dilemma." Omnivores must eat a variety of foods to obtain a nutritionally balanced diet, and must be willing to try new things in order to survive scarce periods and to expand into new territory. Yet eating many things will result in sickness, and omnivores are particularly prone to associating a food with illness and never eating it again.

Humans, of course, are among the animals that rely on a variety of rarer but denser foods, and are of course also omnivores. Thus begins both our intelligence and our complex, troubled and joyous relationship with food. But it gets more interesting, of course (we are not just like ravens or bears).

As modern humans emerged, it is believed food sharing, to a degree unprecedented among other animals, was a hallmark and often a necessary trait in our ecological lifestyle. Today, food sharing is the only way indigenous groups in ecological marginal areas (deserts like the Kalahari and the Arctic) can survive - it's simply not assured that individuals can find enough food for their families, on their own, consistently. In other places, however, the environment provided an abundance that allowed food sharing to enable a greater degree of social differentiation.

One of the most interesting parts of the book was Allport's interview with Clark Larsen on the emergence of agriculture. Larsen reviews truths known to me from Jared Diamond's essay, http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake..., including the negative effects agricultural diets have on human health and lifestyles. He introduces the idea (not his) that agriculture emerged as a consequence of overpopulation and resource stress - that, as Allport frames it, hunting and gathering was such a good way to make a living that humans were doing it everywhere there was solid ground, pretty much. At this point, people were living at the carrying capacity of their way of life, and in typical resourceful omnivore fashion, some switched to less accessible, desirable food sources, like seeds.

While the nutrition provided by such a diet was impoverished, it enabled a shift to greater population density, and eventually enabled agricultural peoples to expand across most of the planet. The vagaries of an agricultural lifestyle - malnutrition, famine, inequality, war, etc - have defined our fate ever since. The sharing of a dense food crop - even if it wasn't all that could be desired nutritionally - enabled much greater extremes of stratification, division of labor, and general inequality than ever before. And, unfortunately, most places were unsuited to agriculture and have suffered greatly from its presence - the Nile valley is the only civilization that has persisted for more than 1,000 years in one place.

Thus, Allport connects the dots between a bunch of basic research and draws a picture that reveals the deep ecological, historic, and evolutionary resonance in our superficially prosaic relationship with food. (less)

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Feb 03, 2008 Anie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: food, non-fiction, 2008

A very fun book on optimal feeding theory, human interaction, and personality.

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Explorers of the Black Box: The Search for the Cellular Basis of Memory

A Natural History of Parenting: A Naturalist Looks at Parenting in the Animal World and Ours

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