What would happen if we ate like wild animals?
GoCleanGoLean
Posts: 71 Member
This may sound like a very odd question (bordering on the troll side of odd) but I am quite curious as to what would happen. So. To explain myself further:
You know how several wild animals (let's take lions, for example) gorge themselves on food when it's available then go for a few days without eating? What would happen if a human did this?
Like what would happen if I ate as much clean foods as possible in one sitting -- if I ate until I was stuffed to the absolute max; if I ate until I felt like I was going to throw up ... then didn't eat again until I felt hungry, even if a day or two passed by.
I don't know I think it would be a fun experiment. I kind of wonder what would happen though. I wonder if I could end up injuring myself somehow.
Okey doke, pointless musings over.
You know how several wild animals (let's take lions, for example) gorge themselves on food when it's available then go for a few days without eating? What would happen if a human did this?
Like what would happen if I ate as much clean foods as possible in one sitting -- if I ate until I was stuffed to the absolute max; if I ate until I felt like I was going to throw up ... then didn't eat again until I felt hungry, even if a day or two passed by.
I don't know I think it would be a fun experiment. I kind of wonder what would happen though. I wonder if I could end up injuring myself somehow.
Okey doke, pointless musings over.
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I imagine you would survive, as humans at some point in time in history likely had to eat in similar fashions on occasion. However you would probably feel really horrible after eating, have to rest/sleep to recover much like the lion. Then you would feel equally crappy in the other direction as time got further from the last meal.
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So, like intermittent fasting, just a bit more extreme?6
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I'd probably end up eating an actual human if I did that. Because I get very very hangry if I miss meals.6
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You and I must have different definitions of "fun".6
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SuzySunshine99 wrote: »You and I must have different definitions of "fun".
Yeah ... my definition of fun is performing a variety of bizarre experiments just to see what would happen, lol. 0 -
I think people are generally doing that now. Looking at the unprecedented availability of accessible, easy, delicious food and then looking at the rates of obesity in Western countries, there's a strong correllation. As compared to when food was scarce or not easily come by.
True, but what if instead of gorging on a crapton of junk food, we gorged on a crapton of real food?0 -
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Typically only carnivores eat like that, of course. Herbivores eat almost continually, at least when they can.4
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GoCleanGoLean wrote: »I think people are generally doing that now. Looking at the unprecedented availability of accessible, easy, delicious food and then looking at the rates of obesity in Western countries, there's a strong correllation. As compared to when food was scarce or not easily come by.
True, but what if instead of gorging on a crapton of junk food, we gorged on a crapton of real food?
"real" food can be just as calorie dense as "junk" food... unless you think real food is kale and green beans.
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GoCleanGoLean wrote: »I think people are generally doing that now. Looking at the unprecedented availability of accessible, easy, delicious food and then looking at the rates of obesity in Western countries, there's a strong correllation. As compared to when food was scarce or not easily come by.
True, but what if instead of gorging on a crapton of junk food, we gorged on a crapton of real food?
Would that be a metric crapton or an Imperial crapton?
Seriously, it would depend on how calorific the food was compared to your activity level, regardless of how "clean" you think it is. It can be all organic and artisnal and if it's still more calories than you burn you'll gain weight.2 -
There's a lot of debate on what "the original humans" (which depends a lot on time and place actually) ate and how. Humans are amazingly adaptable foodwise. We can survive healthily on a vegan diet or a meat-heavy diet like Mongolians or Inuit.0
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I keep trying to graze on my lawn but it makes me queasy.
Some wild animals gorge and fast. For example Boa constrictors. Others eat slowly, consuming rather low calorie foods, continuously, during their waking time, like pandas. Others eat whatever is there, whenever it is there, like bears--they might gorge on a salmon one day, peck at some ant grubs the next, get some fruit somewhere, and aren't above eating carrion if they happen upon it. I don't intend to do any of those things, especially not dislocating my jaw in order to swallow huge pieces of food whole.5 -
GoCleanGoLean wrote: »This may sound like a very odd question (bordering on the troll side of odd) but I am quite curious as to what would happen. So. To explain myself further:
You know how several wild animals (let's take lions, for example) gorge themselves on food when it's available then go for a few days without eating? What would happen if a human did this?
Like what would happen if I ate as much clean foods as possible in one sitting -- if I ate until I was stuffed to the absolute max; if I ate until I felt like I was going to throw up ... then didn't eat again until I felt hungry, even if a day or two passed by.
I don't know I think it would be a fun experiment. I kind of wonder what would happen though. I wonder if I could end up injuring myself somehow.
Okey doke, pointless musings over.
The simple answer is, if over the course of whatever time period you did this for, you ate more than you expended, you'd gain weight. If you ate less, you'd lose.
My thoughts are that some people would do fine eating this way, others would struggle. Also critical to the situation would be eating nutrient dense foods. If you ate junk food, you'd likely get hungrier quicker and not have the required nutrition over the long term.0 -
Based upon personal experience, I'd just be hungry again two hours later.3
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Primates generally don't eat in that fashion, they graze on fruits. As someone mentioned above, there's ongoing debate about what primitive humans ate, but one thing that is important to remember is that we are not primitive humans. For example, most Northern Europeans fairly recently acquired a gene that gives them the ability to digest lactose as adults. Expecting people with this gene to avoid dairy because their ancestors without it avoided dairy is nonsensical - they are not the same and their bodies do not digest food in the same way.6
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Most animals that eat this way do it out of necessity, not because it is preferential to their well being. If given an endless supply of available food, many animals will over eat. The diets of lions in captivity, to take your example, are carefully controlled. Just look at the obesity rates among domesticated pets like cats and dogs. When their owners do not properly control their diets, most will instinctively eat more food than they need.2
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When I started feeding the feral cats in my backyard, they'd wolf it down. As they got used to the idea that it was ALWAYS going to be there in the morning, and that if it was finished, there'd often be more later in the day, they relaxed a bit. The most aggressive one stopped attacking any other cat that tried to get to the dish before he was finished. They started leaving over some for later in the day. And occasionally, if they didn't like a new treat, they'd actually... nudge it out of the bowl and ignore it. THAT was when I knew they weren't starving anymore!
(P.S. For the record, I've got three cats coming round, all of whom have been TNR'd before I ever met them.)4 -
you've obviously never seen me eat Domino's1
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GoCleanGoLean wrote: »You know how several wild animals (let's take lions, for example) gorge themselves on food when it's available then go for a few days without eating? What would happen if a human did this?
Not all wild animals do this. Different animals have different eating patterns.
Cats (including lions) are obligate carnivores, for example, and humans are not.
Lions eat their food raw (if you want to really imitate lions) and hunt for their food.
Lion groups have an organized hierarchy when it comes to the order in which they get to eat and who gets what.2 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »GoCleanGoLean wrote: »You know how several wild animals (let's take lions, for example) gorge themselves on food when it's available then go for a few days without eating? What would happen if a human did this?
Not all wild animals do this. Different animals have different eating patterns.
Cats (including lions) are obligate carnivores, for example, and humans are not.
Lions eat their food raw (if you want to really imitate lions) and hunt for their food.
Lion groups have an organized hierarchy when it comes to the order in which they get to eat and who gets what.
We used to eat meat raw also. One of the idea's as to why we became so intelligent was the cooking process. Some argue its the consumption of meat that is the reason. Which if it was we were eating meats raw way before we were cooking.
"“Cooking is what makes the human diet ‘human,’ and the most logical explanation for the advances in brain and body size over our ape ancestors,” Wrangham says. “It’s hard to imagine the leap to Homo erectus without cooking’s nutritional benefits.”
While others have posited that meat-eating enabled the rise of Homo erectus some 1.8 million years ago, Wrangham says those theories don’t mesh with that species’ smaller jaws and teeth. Instead, he claims meat enabled the shift from australopithecines to Homo habilis — a species about the size of a chimp, but with a bigger brain — more than half a million years earlier."
From http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/06/invention-of-cooking-drove-evolution-of-the-human-species-new-book-argues/
@ OP We actually used to eat like that and some people around the world still do. I forget who it was but it was a tribe of people where they poison darted a monkey and would chase it for days before they got to eat.0 -
To do this authentically I think you need to get out of your centrally heated home, forage your own food, and go for months chewing on tubers. Also, only eat what you can gather within walking distance.
http://thescienceexplorer.com/brain-and-body/iceman-controls-his-body-temperature-and-immune-system-his-mind2 -
You've gotten some interesting answers, OP. However, I have to admit that my first thought was isn't this just Fat Tuesday followed by Orthodox Lent? No yeast, no sugar, no dairy, no meat, no alcohol from Ash Wednesday until Easter, with a couple of total fasting days along the way. Use it up on Tuesday and that's that.
That's not eating like a wild animal, but it is pretty close to your experiment. I do Fat Tuesday (use up whatever I am giving up and put away the alcohol) followed by a 24 hour Ash Wednesday fast every year. We had Orthodox neighbors who gave up everything.0 -
This is making me think of Farley Mowat and his copying-the-wolves-eating-mice experiment in his book "Never Cry Wolf."0
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estherdragonbat wrote: »When I started feeding the feral cats in my backyard, they'd wolf it down. As they got used to the idea that it was ALWAYS going to be there in the morning, and that if it was finished, there'd often be more later in the day, they relaxed a bit. The most aggressive one stopped attacking any other cat that tried to get to the dish before he was finished. They started leaving over some for later in the day. And occasionally, if they didn't like a new treat, they'd actually... nudge it out of the bowl and ignore it. THAT was when I knew they weren't starving anymore!
(P.S. For the record, I've got three cats coming round, all of whom have been TNR'd before I ever met them.)
I HEART you for taking care of feral cats!
I moved into a neighborhood where 60 cats were living on the elementary school grounds and none were fixed.... My husband and I got the humane society (local, not national) to help us get them TNRed. We used online ads and found homes for about 25 tame cats and kittens. We had to euthanize the really ill ones. Then we put some of them back. After years of feeding them at the school and having some die from old age or get taken in by other neighbors--one guy ended up with 3 "retiring" his back porch for example, we took 5 into our house. That's in addition to our 3 cats we already had... Anyway, yes, they went from eating anything and everything and wolfing it down to now actually being kind of picky and holding out for their favorites. Only one of the former ferals has ended up overweight, but she was actually the one who was hit by a car and after I got her surgery I took her inside because she couldn't go back out after that, so she's been inside the longest. My tame cats though--they eat whenever there's food and have a tendency to get chunky. They aren't as active though. The other day a mouse somehow got inside our house--first I've ever seen here--and the feral cats killed the poor thing in about 2 seconds flat but didn't eat him because they weren't hungry. One of my tame cats moseyed over and was like "hey, I'll eat that if you won't" but I didn't know what mice might be carrying, so I disposed of the body.2 -
My husband doesn't want an indoor cat. But Soot is slowly winning him over to the point where "If it's pouring rain/heavy snow," despite there being two shelters in the yard, the cat can come in to wait out the weather IF he stays in the basement.
Last night, Hubby came home and the Soot on the doorstep and didn't move off when Hubby walked by. Didn't try coming in; he knows already that that's only when I'm home alone unless the weather's bad. But since we've gone from "There is no way those cats are ever coming in" to "Basement only", I've got hope. And Soot's a persistent little guy.2
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