Ep. 1355: A Taste of Place

The Food Chain Radio

Fred Provenza, Author, Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom

(Animal & Human Environmental Nutrition)

Animals learn what to eat, and what not to eat, from their mothers – before they are born. It is a taste they pick up in utero, as the mother eats her way across the landscape. If such is the case, we wonder:

What tastes are American mothers teaching their children to desire?

Researchers believe that humans have been using plants as medicine for over 1,650,000 years. Birds, fish, insects, and other mammals are also known to self-medicate with plants when experiencing illness.

In the last hundred years or so, we humans began industrializing our food chain, and now we no longer rely on plants to be our principal source of medicine. And why should we? After all, the grocers’ shelves are filled with potions and notions that claim to be able to cure just about every malady. And so today we are free to roam the range all day, without having to eat a single plant.

But then, we wonder: Are we missing something by turning our backs on plants? Is there some kind of magic that occurs when earth, sky and water come together to present us with a plant? And we wonder:

What tastes are American mothers teaching their children to desire?