Are humans more naturally disposed to eat certain foods over others?

January 17, 2007 11:30 AM

Most animals (herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores alike) seem to eat and/or prefer food from a very limited set of options. But humans eat just about everything. Are there foods that humans are more biologically disposed to eat? Alternatively, are there other animals that eat foods as widely diverse as humans do?
posted by scarylarry to science & nature (19 comments total)

Pigs will eat just about anything.
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:35 AM on January 17, 2007

Raccoons eat just about anything a human will.
posted by mikepop at 11:41 AM on January 17, 2007

Bears have a fairly varied diet as well (fruit, fish, picnic baskets) ... but then aren't they related to pigs?
posted by tastybrains at 11:41 AM on January 17, 2007

I would offer that we're not biologcally designed as diggers, so our root-eating habits are probably secondary to eating of fruits, nuts and leaves.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:47 AM on January 17, 2007

cows will eat just about anything you put in front of them. a dairy farm i used to work on would buy expired donuts from the factory (Entemann's, for those from the northeast) in dumptruck-sized lots and use it to augment their feed.
posted by sonofslim at 12:21 PM on January 17, 2007

Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, eat a varied diet; although they mostly eat whatever ripe fruit is most abundant, they eat a whole bunch of other stuff too - leaves, flowers, bark, insects, birds, mammals etc. The latest thinking is that primitive human diets were similarly varied.

I think that your premise - that most animals have limited options and humans are unusual - is wrong. Can you actually think of many animals that have the limited set of foodstuffs you suggest is the norm? (I assume we're just considering 'higher' animals such as mammals here). Neither pandas nor koalas are as fussy as their reputations.
posted by nowonmai at 12:32 PM on January 17, 2007

Bald eagles love the trash heap, they will eat anything.

If you are into growing bacteria or fungi, there are dozens of nutrient broth recipes that work for some species.
posted by peeedro at 12:37 PM on January 17, 2007

Rats.
posted by gwint at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2007

rodents.....+
then there's the golden retrievers an ex-gf bred: after a year of experimentation, i determined that the only things they wouldn't eat were raw onions and milady's oatmeal-raisin cookies which, when dropped to the kitchen floor, would hit like a hockey puck and remain there unbroken. everything else, from caesar salads to straight tequila, was consumed with tail-wagging aplomb.
posted by bruce at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2007

Your premise is a bit flawed, in that many animals (omnivores in particular) will eat damn near anything. The fact that their diet is limited to a select set of items is because of availability of said items. Animals don't have import services, and so eat whatever is proximal to them. They also tend to make their homes near their favorite and most abundant foods. This leads to a certain restriction in diet due to geography/growing seasons.
posted by chrisamiller at 12:49 PM on January 17, 2007

tastybrains writes "Bears have a fairly varied diet as well (fruit, fish, picnic baskets) ... but then aren't they related to pigs?"

Insofar as they're mammals. They're closer to wolves.

/derail
posted by brundlefly at 12:52 PM on January 17, 2007

Most birds are omnivorous. (Especially seagulls.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:54 PM on January 17, 2007

the only things the [dog] wouldn't eat were raw onions and milady's oatmeal-raisin...
I hope you'll allow this digression, but I'd call that self preservation. Both onions and raisins can be very harmful to dogs.
posted by vito90 at 12:58 PM on January 17, 2007

You might want to read The Omnivore's Dilemma. Highly recomended.
posted by fixedgear at 2:10 PM on January 17, 2007

Human societies that have had a limited set of foods availible have eaten from that, and some specific humans tend to eat a very limited number of foods.
posted by yohko at 2:19 PM on January 17, 2007

I have a cat who likes mushrooms and red bell peppers.

Some animals are designed to eat just one thing (think hummingbirds), but most are able to be omnivorous if they have to be, at least for a short while.
posted by rtha at 2:23 PM on January 17, 2007

Goats will eat absolutely anything.
My sister used to have a blood hound that liked to eat socks.
posted by Sara Anne at 3:17 PM on January 17, 2007

Cockroaches will eat literally anything, from food to glue, paper, sweat stains, you name it. Ants are the same - I've even seen them swarm over spit and urine on warm days. Crows will also eat anything, including other crows. Rats happily eat candlewax. Silver gulls infest rubbish dumps and thrive on crud picked from the heaps. Pretty much any omnivore that has followed humanity around and confortably lives in its cities can chow down on anything we have left lying around.

I'm with christamiller in that you probably started with a flawed premise. Most beasties are only really limited by their proximity to food - so my chick-pea loving cat would never have been assumed capable of eating them unless he was fed them in the first place. Of course, exceptions do exist, but they're just that - exeptions.
posted by Jilder at 7:09 PM on January 17, 2007

Well, I must add that there are some things that humans must eat. Specifically sugar in some form, because our brains are pretty well protected from the larger molecules of fats, proteins and, uh, germs. So, if we eat only fats and proteins the human body is forced to do some very expensive re-engineering of those things into sugar. The byproduct of that conversion is nitrogen and that is a poison to our bodies. And makes us pee a lot to expel the poison.

Thus, many people who lose weight on strict early days write ups of the Atkins Diet were loosing water/ dehydrating themselves.

/rant
posted by bilabial at 12:10 PM on January 19, 2007