There's not much that's non-obvious to write up. The food pyramid for primates has a broad base of leaves. Lots and lots of leaves. Then some roots, shoots and tubers. Fruit, flowers and seeds where available. Near the top in very small quantities are nuts and bugs. Vanishingly rare is actual meat.
The relatively low effort items are low return, the high effort are high return. Time invested in low effort/low return is fairly high, but results are predictable and well worth the cost. Time and effort expended in pursuing rarer high nutrient foods is greater, as is the risk of expending more energy than is gained. I speculate that regular pursuit of high-risk foods may be related to status in some primate cultures, but that's tangential.
I think that a more interesting exercise would be to make an "in actuality" food pyramid for particular demographics of humans. I believe they would resemble those joke food pyramids which list meat, grease, salt, sugar and alcohol as food groups so closely as to make them un-funny. At a wild guess, I estimate that "sugar" would be close to the base of the pyramid in some Western subcultures because of the stunning amounts of soda consumed.
When I first tried applying the "would I be frowned on for feeding this to my pet ape?" test in selecting food for my household I was quite overwhelmed by the end of the breakfast cereal aisle. So much sugar! :(
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Date: 2011-03-20 12:22 am (UTC)The relatively low effort items are low return, the high effort are high return. Time invested in low effort/low return is fairly high, but results are predictable and well worth the cost. Time and effort expended in pursuing rarer high nutrient foods is greater, as is the risk of expending more energy than is gained. I speculate that regular pursuit of high-risk foods may be related to status in some primate cultures, but that's tangential.
I think that a more interesting exercise would be to make an "in actuality" food pyramid for particular demographics of humans. I believe they would resemble those joke food pyramids which list meat, grease, salt, sugar and alcohol as food groups so closely as to make them un-funny. At a wild guess, I estimate that "sugar" would be close to the base of the pyramid in some Western subcultures because of the stunning amounts of soda consumed.
When I first tried applying the "would I be frowned on for feeding this to my pet ape?" test in selecting food for my household I was quite overwhelmed by the end of the breakfast cereal aisle. So much sugar! :(