You may have noticed that media saturation of fake meat products and meat alternatives, made of Insects no less, have been increasing of late.
We are being encouraged, or even bullied, into accepting the idea that what our ancestors – many of whom were probably healthier than many of us – ate on a regular basis ie. meat and to a lesser extent animal products in general, are not only bad for us, but bad for the environment as well.
A host of the Hollywood elite, including Kim Kardashian, Nicole Kidman, and yer woman from the Black Eyed Peas have all recently featured in ads promoting the consumption of fake meat and foods made of insects.
At this point an exploration into some research on the history of human development and meat consumption may be advisable.
Harvard University’s Gazette previously published details of research undertaken by paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello, an academic who was described by a Harvard professor as having a CV so long “it’s hard to know where to start.”
Aiello’s findings detailed 15 years of research revealing that increased consumption of meat likely led to the increase of human brain size, as well as the shrinkage of intestinal mass.
“This idea — called the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis (ETH) in Aiello’s co-authored 1992 paper — argues that around 1.5 million years ago early humans began to eat more meat, a compact, high-energy source of calories that does not require a large intestinal system.”
Aiello argued that the consumption of more meat “made it possible for humans to evolve a larger brain size,”
She further argued that consumption of meat led to more food sharing between mothers and their young saying, “the difficulty of getting meat led to cooperative food sharing among early humans, strengthening the bond between a female and her offspring.”
Encephalization – a process by which some species develop larger brains – is said by Aiello to be the third stage of development that led to human civilization.
The Harvard Gazette noted, “Better food sources and the social changes they engendered accelerated our human ancestors toward civilization.”
Research published by Scientific American argues that the consumption of animal fat and marrow from bones, rather than the meat itself is likely to be behind why humans have the largest brains compared to body mass, saying
“These highly nutritional parts are also a precursor to the fatty acids involved with brain and eye development”.
Whether meat, fat, or bone marrow – or all three in combination – are responsible for the development of the human brain and thereby civilization, one thing we can perhaps be sure of is that none of the wonders of human achievement were fuelled by eating bugs.