Food is such a loaded topic. Especially in SF, land of the foodies! There are countless theories, fads, etc. out there, and no matter what you're inclined to believe, you can find some "experts" to back it up. Personally, I'm a fan of Occam's razor, which is the principle that the simplest solution is usually correct. Since San Franciscans REALLY LOVE THEIR PETS, let's make this simple and think of ourselves not as "humans" but as "exotic pets." If you were entrusted with the care of a rare exotic creature, what would you feed it? Well, that would depend on the creature and where it came from. If the creature was some sort of carnivorous reptile, then chances are good that you would not be feeding it breadcrumbs or birdseed. If the creature was a rare little dog (or ANY dog) you would certainly not feed it grapes or chocolate which, while delicious, can be easily lethal to dogs! If you cared for this pet, you would not only feed it the appropriate foods for its species, but you would make sure that it was not too stressed -- that it had a private place to sleep, that its enclosure was bright or dark according to natural daylight cycles, etc., right? So what about this creature that is yourself? If you were an alien and someone gave you a pet human, how would you figure out what to feed this human creature so that it could live long and be healthy? You might study its teeth and jaw for clues. You might study its digestive tract for clues and compare it to the physiology of other earth creatures. By studying the bodies of the human pets, you would probably deduce that this is a creature that would do well with a mixture of meat and plant foods. You would probably that this human pet is the happiest and healthiest when it gets a lot of physical activity. You would probably therefore toss is in some live food and make the human run around to hunt it. (Ok, the analogy is getting weird here, I guess. Too Planet of the Apes or something.) And if the human pet didn't "feel like" eating the healthy food, but rather wished to eat some delicious toxic stuff that it got its hands on at one time or another, what would you do? Nothing, of course -- you'd keep giving it the healthy food and you'd say, "It'll eat when its hungry enough." Anyway, if we look at ourselves as animals, we'll see that we're basically a kind of animal that is a hunter gatherer. It takes animals MANY MANY GENERATIONS to change the basic way their physiology works. Think of all the many varieties of dogs. How many hundreds and thousands of years did it take to develop all those breeds of domestic dogs?? And yet... they're still dogs. Physiologically, they are dogs and need the same basic foods, etc. to be healthy dogs. And so it is with humans. Sure, agriculture has been around for a while -- many many generations. But enough to totally mutate our hunter gatherer physiology? Probably not so much. Ever see pictures of hunter gatherers? It's interesting to me that they seem to always have such amazing nice teeth! If it weren't for modern dentistry, most of us (myself included!) would probably be toothless by age 30. These days, especially in the U.S., we are really adept at covering up the signs of nutritional disaster, thanks to our great dental technology, makeup, drugs, etc. so it's easy to fool ourselves into thinking that our weird manufactured foods are ok. But come on, it is REALLY so mysterious that Americans rank close to the bottom (among "modern nations") when it comes to infant mortality? Or that we have the worst health and yet the most money blown on "health care"? What happens if you feed your pets a synthetic diet? or a diet that absolutely does not exist in its natural setting? or a diet in which coffee and alcohol are the main liquids consumed? Well, you'd have sick or dead pets. Duh.
-DK