Chapter 4: Time & Food
I find that it is not accident but accumulated wisdom regarding foods that lies behind their physical excellence and freedom from our modern degenerative processes... on various sides of our world the primitive people know many of the things that are essential for life — things that our modern civilizations apparently do not know.
Weston A Price — “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects” (1939)
Time scarcity, the feeling of not having enough time, has been implicated in changes in food consumption patterns such as a decrease in food preparation at home and an increase in the consumption of fast foods... These food choices are associated with less healthful diets and may contribute to obesity and chronic health problems.
J. Jabs & C. Devine — “Time Scarcity & Food Choices: Overview” (2006)
Chrono-nutrition is an emerging field of nutritional science that aims to develop understanding of how when we eat may impact our health... it reflects the basic idea that, in addition to the amount and content, the time of ingestion is also critical for well-being.
Dr. R. Gibson — “Chrono-nutrition: a new dietary dimension” (2020)
One of the great triumphs of recent human history has been the... reduction in the percentage of the total working population involved in the production of food... The spectacular productivity gains... have, over time, allowed millions of people to focus their lives on other pursuits.
Matt Gurney — “Canadians won’t starve but we aren’t spoiled for choice in our domestic food supply”, The National Post (April 10, 2020)
You are what you eat.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin — French lawyer & politician (1826)
Without Food, our Time runs out.
This is the most fundamental relationship between Time and Food for all life forms.
Humans can survive for about three minutes without air, three days without water, and up to three weeks without Food — in its caloric and nutrient form.
But measuring the duration of these deprivations doesn’t even begin to capture how we experience them. Our first few seconds, hours, or days without air, water, and Food, respectively, would feel indescribably different from our last.
This speaks to the breadth of Human Time.
The first and twenty-first days without Food are completely different experiences.
Although uncomfortable, the former might actually improve our long-term health.
Voluntarily going without Food is called “fasting,” a religious practice that has gained secular popularity for its purported health benefits. Periodic fasting for between twelve hours to several days may actually help us to live longer and healthier lives.
The twenty-first day without Food, however — should you make it that long — would be excruciatingly painful and certainly would not not promote long-term health.
Subsequent life would generally be shorter.
Survival is at the core of the complex relationship between Time and Food.
Our species’ most primal interest in Food is how it serves our Time — especially when we are hungry or on the brink of starvation. We share this interest with all other life forms.
Time is used to acquire Food (usually indirectly), which provides us with more Time.
This is the “circle of life,” as we live it.
But although we share this basic need for Food with all other life forms, only humans may devise an additional Money-based interest in Food.
Beyond serving our biological needs, we may also acquire or produce Foods for the purpose of exchanging them for Money.
This uniquely human characteristic relative to other life forms is primarily carried out through corporations specializing at different stages — everything from extracting raw ingredients from nature to serving finished products.
Only in the most specialized field-to-table restaurants would a single group of collaborating humans oversee this entire process. For most people’s meals, there are many layers of corporations between nature and their stomachs.
From seed producers to corporate farms, and from multiple processing stages to the distribution networks serving our grocery stores and restaurants, Food has become a major industry in its own right.
But the goal of each corporate layer is to make Money — a radically different aim from providing nourishment, which was long the traditional basis of Food selection.
At a chemical level, humans have more in common with plants and animals than with corporations or governments. More than any other life form, we’ve spent countless millennia mastering the safe and efficient consumption of Foods found in nature.
With far more Food choices than any other life form, the distinction between what is possible and which is best looms large for our species. Early efforts to answer these questions opened new frontiers of human consciousness that are still unfolding.
Remnants of these efforts can be found in the field reports of Dr. Weston Price, which detail the different Foods that indigenous groups had long-ago classified as possessing special life-giving properties.
These Foods offered more than just energy. They were prized for their nourishment.
Lacking refrigeration, the passage of Time became an enemy of nutrition for our early ancestors. For many of the isolated groups studied by Dr. Price, their survival depended on ancient techniques for preserving their Traditional Food.
Next, we will explore our species’ adaptations to the hazards that Time posed to their Food.