Instincto and Natural Food Palette

Each species of primate has its own food palette. Some are frugivorous, others only eat leaves, and still others do not shy away from meat, so we can wonder about the natural food palette of the latest arrival: homo sapiens. If we are still genetically adapted to the diet of our hominin ancestors, the question remains what exactly they ate. And also, to know what era we have to go back to define the diet that would best suit today’s man.

The limits of traditional food as a reference

It is obviously not traditional food that allows us to answer this question. Thanks to culinary artifice, man was able to get used to eating anything, as long as he did not become intoxicated too quickly. The amanita omelette does not appear in cookbooks, any more than belladonna ice cream, but there are all kinds of foods that are just as dangerous in the long term, such as fries, pork cutlets, black butter sauces and other causes of cancer and cardiovascular disease.

A first answer can be given based on experiments already carried out within the framework of instinct: human beings do not need cooking or seasoning to feed themselves, on the contrary, the removal of all culinary artifice allows them to ensure optimal health, and for children, optimal growth from conception to adulthood. This simple correction of food hygiene makes it possible in the majority of cases to make the symptoms of common diseases disappear, or even to alleviate those of genetic diseases. It would therefore be difficult to claim that cooked food is natural for humans.

What methods are there to find the original palette?

It remains to be determined which foods are included in the natural diet of humans. However, no one has left us any reliable documents, we barely find an almost complete skeleton from time to time dating from before the fire. So what are the methods that would allow us to get an idea of ​​this?

There are still several, the overlaps of which can be significant.

1. Compare the dietary palette of the primates closest to us still living in nature.
2. Observe the food palette as determined by our olfactory and taste senses, which are supposed to attract us towards natural foods that correspond to our digestive and metabolic characteristics.
3. observe the effects on digestive balance and health of the different natural foods that we can still find today.
4. Try to determine from the traces on the teeth of human skeletons what foods were consumed by our hominin ancestors.
5. Observe the diet of ethnic groups that have remained as close as possible to archaic food customs

This archaeological route has been little explored for the oldest skeletons. We would in fact have to go back to the period preceding the control of fire, because the first cooking techniques were already able to modify the primitive food palette. It is also difficult to get an exact idea of ​​what was actually consumed, because the remains of certain foods are preserved for millennia, such as pollen or bones for example, while others degrade completely, notably fruits and other plants.

What the comparison with great apes teaches us

The first path, that of primates, is compromised by the fact that we are neither chimpanzees, nor gorillas, nor orangutans. The observation of the eating behavior of these primates in nature cannot be transposed directly to humans. However, it can provide us with essential information on the origins of our nutritional structures. We share 99% of our genes with the chimpanzee, we can expect to also share many characteristics in terms of our digestive system and our metabolism.

A very recent study, conducted by a Japanese team who went to live in the field with these primates, was able to observe that their taste inclinations are very close to those of human beings. Their diet consists of 68% fruits, 28% foliage and green stems, and 5% animal proteins (insects, birds, antelopes, wild pigs, small monkeys). The protein intake provided by fruits is not negligible, it represents around 5% of their weight.

The chimpanzee is largely omnivorous, apart from fruits, it willingly eats leaves (two hundred species), buds, pieces of bark, resin, honey, termites, ants, sometimes other small mammals. He is even interested in medicinal plants.

The path of instinct and alliesthesia

A third way is however possible: that of instinct. It seems relevant that the olfactory and taste attractions as programmed by our alloyesthetic mechanisms correspond to the foods included in our primitive food palette. These mechanisms are genetically programmed; our genetics largely date back to very ancient times; attractions for foods unfavorable to health would have exerted a negative selection pressure, that is to say they would have been eliminated by natural selection. We can therefore postulate that the attractions observable on current human organisms are likely to correspond to the original dietary palette.

On the other hand, the pressure of selection could only eliminate from this palette all the harmful foods; it in principle only retained those which were the most adapted to the data of assimilation. It is therefore also very likely that the most attractive foods (in their raw form) are also the most beneficial.

In other words, the functioning of olfactory and gustatory alliesthesia should make it possible to rediscover, by relying on simple pleasure, the natural food palette of the human being, and this palette should be capable of ensuring the best possible functioning of the organism.

These data must be related to the dietary range determined by human olfactory and taste attractions. The practice of instinct therapy, based on the sole criterion of pleasure, leads to appetites and proportions comparable to those of chimpanzees: two thirds fruits, a quarter greens and vegetables, the rest oilseeds, protein crops and animal proteins.

There is therefore a very significant overlap: even though the learning of flavors took place in the culinary context for most individuals, the confrontation with uncooked foods spontaneously leads to finding the proportions of the different classes of foods consumed by the descendants of our distant common ancestors, who have always lived in nature. The human lineage and that of chimpanzees have separated for 6 to 13 million years, depending on the sources, there is between them the whole gap which separates culture from nature and, yet, the appetites are almost identical. It is in fact the culinary art which gives the false impression that the respective food ranges are different: it is enough to bring the observations back to a “preculinary” food context (elimination of cooking and preparations) to reveal a remarkable similarity.

The conditions for a relevant experiment

It is not guaranteed a priori that the products most attractive to the senses are also the most useful for the body. There is also nothing to say straight away that the most attractive fruits are the most important in the original food palette. Only long-term experience, allowing the effects on the functioning of the body to be observed, can provide an answer to these questions.

Several conditions must, however, be met for this experiment to be relevant: since primates most probably originated in tropical regions, all natural products from the tropics must be subjected to alloysthetic sorting if we do not want to miss out on foods that could be essential. Experience shows that certain tropical fruits, such as durian, jackfruit, cempedak, have particularly high levels of attraction.

Second condition: the tests must be carried out by subjects who have practiced instinct for a sufficient time, so that the allergic reactions are no longer biased under the effect of culinary overloads. Durian, for example, has an unbearable smell for heavy consumers of dairy products; it sometimes takes a year or more of instinctive practice for the natural attractive smell to be perceived.

Third condition: the experiment must be carried out by a sufficient number of subjects, in particular by children, or even infants whose ollfactogustative perceptions have not been vitiated by the effect of denatured foods or foods foreign to the natural food palette (cow’s milk, sweets, salty or sweet cereal porridges, etc.).

Fourth condition: over-selected fruits do not allow conclusions to be drawn, because artificial selection techniques have modified their flavors in the direction of increasing attraction. It is therefore necessary to experiment with unselected or poorly selected forms of common fruits and vegetables. Note that tropical fruits have been rather less selected than those from temperate regions. Jackfruit and cempedak, for example, grow as is in the virgin forest.

One criterion must also be verified: the consumption of foods appearing in the palette thus found must have a positive effect, in terms of digestion and health in general, provided that their consumption is regulated by the allethetic mechanisms and the sensations of repletion.

This experience is not simple, for the reason that many foods vary from one extreme to the other, sometimes being very attractive and, in other situations, uninteresting if not repulsive. We must therefore take into account the level of attraction, and the frequency of these attractions, and this on different people in different situations. A fruit like durian, for example, is extremely fragrant and has a more appealing flavor than most other fruits; it is possible to consume it very regularly, most often with a high level of pleasure, even if it sometimes loses all interest or becomes frankly repulsive (especially for wild varieties). Chimpanzees and other hominins show the same predilection for this fruit. Its effects on the body are positive: we can therefore say that it occupies an important place in the human food palette as in that of other primates. These findings go hand in hand with what we can know about the origin of primates, which are found mainly in equatorial and tropical regions, where this fruit itself originates.

An ultimately very diverse palette

The numerous experiments thus carried out have made it possible to include in the natural human food palette most of the known fruits, both from tropical and temperate regions, garden vegetables, oilseeds, meats, eggs, fish, seeds, mushrooms, honey and pollen. A palette that is ultimately much more diverse than that of foods used in culinary preparations.

It is essential, both in terms of pleasure and in terms of health, to have a sufficiently varied palette, particularly throughout the seasons, so as not to neglect certain foods for too long which could play a key role in restoring or maintaining health.