All animals have the exact same dietary problem: finding enough
nutrition to build and maintain their bodies within the limits of
their digestive capacity. Rarely in nature (except for predatory
carnivores) is there any significant restriction on the number of
calories or serious limitation of the amount of low-nutrition foods
available to eat. There's rarely any shortage of natural junk food
on Earth. Except for domesticated house pets, animals are sensible
enough to prefer the most nutritional fare available and tend to
shun empty calories unless they are starving.
But humans are perverse, not sensible. Deciding on the basis of
artificially-created flavors, preferring incipid textures, we seem
to prefer junk food and become slaves to our food addictions. For
example, in tropical countries there is a widely grown root crop,
called in various places: tapioca, tavioca, manioc, or yuca. This
interesting plant produces the greatest tonnage of edible,
digestible, pleasant-tasting calories per acre compared to any other
food crop I know. Manioc might seem the answer to human starvation
because it will grow abundantly on tropical soils so infertile
and/or so droughty that no other food crop will succeed there.
Manioc will do this because it needs virtually nothing from the soil
to construct itself with.
Pages:
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235