varieties of familiar fruits and vegetables to
revive, and many new foods to taste. It’s
estimated that there are 300,000 edible plant
species on earth, and perhaps 2,000 that are
cultivated to some extent. We have plenty of
exploring to do!
Plant Foods
and Health
Plant foods can provide us all the nourishment
we need in order to live and thrive. Our
primate ancestors started out eating little else,
and many cultures still do. But meat and other
animal foods became important to our species
at its birth, when their concentrated energy
and protein probably helped accelerate our
evolution (p. 119). Meat continued to have a
deep biological appeal for us, and in societies
that could afford to feed livestock on staple
grains and roots, it became the most prized of
foods. In the industrialized world, meat’s