Why do we eat what we eat?

[J. Allen]

RoJoHen wrote:

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I'm fairly certain that's all evolution is. Some random mutations just happen to be beneficial and become part of a species through reproduction. The mutations that aren't beneficial get weeded out because they don't get passed down to the next generation.

Ah, okay. I see what you mean.

SilentP wrote:

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I think, strictly speaking, as long as a batch of DNA can survive and copy itself, it doesn't care how it's done. DNA doesn't look out for fellow DNA, hence competition through species. Tis' tribalism at the molecular scale

Selfish molecular bastards.

RoJoHen wrote:

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Survival of the fittest. If the fittest get to be the fittest by eating other animals, so be it.

I think I'll survive by having a bacon lettuce tomato sandwich for breakfast. Or as I like to call it, a life sandwich!

J.

[Gryffindorian]

RoJoHen wrote:

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Survival of the fittest. If the fittest get to be the fittest by eating other animals, so be it.

Precisely.

[Shazam!]

SilentP wrote:

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Oddly enough I had a similar thought, and came up with a crazy hypothesis. Once upon a time (namely primordial Earth), a natural localised disaster cut off an area of plankton/early life/whatever from it's natural energy source (the Sun). Slowly, as available energy ran out, some of the early life did the only reasonable thing and started 'eating' the other life forms that were dead from starvation, and slowly started eating even forms that were still alive. Considering that there was no mechanism to defend against being eaten (yet), these new early predators spread and started eating other life forms that had already done the hard work in harvesting the sun's energy.

Yes, that does mean that my hypothesis is stating that all herbivores and carnivores evolved from single cell cannibals

Feel free to dismiss the idea

Okay.

[SilentP]

[Deckerd]

SilentP wrote:

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Oddly enough I had a similar thought, and came up with a crazy hypothesis. Once upon a time (namely primordial Earth), a natural localised disaster cut off an area of plankton/early life/whatever from it's natural energy source (the Sun). Slowly, as available energy ran out, some of the early life did the only reasonable thing and started 'eating' the other life forms that were dead from starvation, and slowly started eating even forms that were still alive. Considering that there was no mechanism to defend against being eaten (yet), these new early predators spread and started eating other life forms that had already done the hard work in harvesting the sun's energy.

Yes, that does mean that my hypothesis is stating that all herbivores and carnivores evolved from single cell cannibals

Feel free to dismiss the idea

It doesn't need to be that complicated. If a single cell with chlorophyll can convert light to matter then that is all you need. Cells die, something evolves to use that dead matter to feed on. Voilà you have a food chain.

[SilentP]

Deckerd wrote:

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It doesn't need to be that complicated. If a single cell with chlorophyll can convert light to matter then that is all you need. Cells die, something evolves to use that dead matter to feed on. Voilà you have a food chain.

Admittedly, your method makes much more sense than my hare-brained idea

[trekkiedane]

SilentP wrote:

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Admittedly, your method makes much more sense than my hare-brained idea

And there's the added advantage that you don't have to muck about with all that chemistry stuff of actually building the molecules you need to grow out of simpler molecules and elements -they are already there if you ingest something that has done all the hard work for you. Ideally the human body is the best food for an organism like the human body -it contains all the vitamins and minerals and whatnot -in the right proportions even

[RoJoHen]

trekkiedane wrote:

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And there's the added advantage that you don't have to muck about with all that chemistry stuff of actually building the molecules you need to grow out of simpler molecules and elements -they are already there if you ingest something that has done all the hard work for you. Ideally the human body is the best food for an organism like the human body -it contains all the vitamins and minerals and whatnot -in the right proportions even

That is only assuming you are eating a perfectly healthy human. Most humans don't eat anywhere near the proper amounts of nutrients.

[trekkiedane]

RoJoHen wrote:

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That is only assuming you are eating a perfectly healthy human. Most humans don't eat anywhere near the proper amounts of nutrients.

Hence the "ideally"

[Zion Ravescene]

J. Allen wrote:

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I've been thinking about this for a little while. As living organisms, we have to consume in order to convert that sustenance into energy and to power our bodies. Why, though, do we eat other life forms? We eat plants and animals. Why? Why are we designed this way?

I like your way of thinking. The next question, of course, is: where shall we have lunch?

[J. Allen]

Zion Ravescene wrote:

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I like your way of thinking. The next question, of course, is: where shall we have lunch?

Those words and that avatar... they tend to have a creepifying effect.


J.

[Jadzia]

Energy.

Living organisms gather energy within themselves in the form of biomass. At some point they realised they could steal these large reserves of energy from others, instead of slowly building up their own from sunlight and thermal vents.

This created a food chain, which prompted the evolution of larger and more capable creatures.

[Zion Ravescene]

J. Allen wrote:

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Those words and that avatar... they tend to have a creepifying effect.


J.

That is the sound of inevitability.

[Mr Awe]

J. Allen wrote:

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I've been thinking about this for a little while. As living organisms, we have to consume in order to convert that sustenance into energy and to power our bodies. Why, though, do we eat other life forms? We eat plants and animals. Why? Why are we designed this way?
J.

Because existing life contains the proteins and nutrients that other life needs in nice, neat packages. You've evolved this way because it is more efficient for your body to consume these elements already manufactured rather than needing to manufacture them yourself. Lower life forms (such as bacteria) can consume the raw elements (rocks, dirt) and create biological elements that they can use. However, being simpler, they don't need to produce as many.

More complex life forms need a lot more chemicals, organic compounds that just don't exist in nature. They need to either manufacture from raw Earth materials or obtain them from life forms that already created them. It's easier to just eat another form of life to get them.

Mr Awe

[Zion Ravescene]

Mr Awe wrote:

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Because existing life contains the proteins and nutrients that other life needs in nice, neat packages. You've evolved this way because it is more efficient for your body to consume these elements already manufactured rather than needing to manufacture them yourself. Lower life forms (such as bacteria) can consume the raw elements (rocks, dirt) and create biological elements that they can use. However, being simpler, they don't need to produce as many.

More complex life forms need a lot more chemicals, organic compounds that just don't exist in nature. They need to either manufacture from raw Earth materials or obtain them from life forms that already created them. It's easier to just eat another form of life to get them.

Mr Awe

Perhaps what J. Allen is wondering is why we adopted the model of carbon-based biology as a way to derive our energy, and why not, for example, use some other metabolic pathway we haven't discovered yet that uses a different form of (dare I say) alien energy, e.g. inorganic compounds, or adopted the parasitic way of life, etc.

There may be other forms of life out there that exists in a way we cannot comprehend.