whole foods in connection with gluten thread

[Guest guest]

[] so cows, when they eat grass, are eating the WHOLE grass, seed, or

grain, and all.

[MikeP] Actually, like most animals, cows are selective about what

stage of growth and components of grass they eat. Given a choice, I

understand they'll always favor the young grass tips, but in practice

a bit of older grass and seeds will be part of their diet. Note that

various primates often preferentially eat only the *tips* of leaves

and not whole leaves, because of the difference in nutritional

profile. It's really not possible to make meaningful generalizations

about whole foods, because " the whole " is a relative notion in the

first place and humans and other animals adapt to the unique

properties of different parts of organic matter on a case-by-case

basis. When we speak of " whole grains " , we could just as well speak of

the whole plant with flowers, stalks, etc, and it is normal for just

one part of a plant to be edible, while nearby parts are poisonous.

Consider the 6 basic categories of human foods: animals, veggies,

fruits, seeds, eggs, milk.

In the animal case, the " whole food " could be considered the entire

animal, which is rarely eaten in its entirety and for larger animals,

never in the same meal. Eating whole small rodents and insects is a

traditional human practice, but eating large herbivorous animals is

probably an even more widespread tradition for humans and in those

cases we certainly don't eat the skin and rarely the whole bones. Also

consider the medicinal potency of various glands and organs and

resulting need to divide the animal up in various ways.

In the veggie case, well you've got the basic point about plants I

made above. Examples would be potato, tomato, and parnsip leaves (all

poisonous), poisonous flowers, and various inedibly fibrous parts of

plants.

In the case of fruits, well, this could be assimilated to

generalizations about the diversity of plant components, because

fruits are just a tiny part of the plants that bear them. But even

within a fruit, often the seeds or outer layers are not eaten.

In the case of seeds, we have the option of considering various

inedible pods and shells as part of the whole (coconut being an

especially dramatic example), but even if we narrow it down to a

minimal seed concept, we still find cases where it's equally valid to

remove certain outer layers, although it is possible to make a mild

generalization that whole seeds are more nutritious and the best

option if they're to be consumed in the first place.

In the case of eggs, there are the issues with whites and shells.

Lastly, milk is the only food substance that actually exists for the

express purpose of being food (unless we make a case for fruits), so

unsurprisingly this is consumed as a whole food, although eating only

parts of it (the cream, the fat, or the curds) are, besides being very

common, at least as valid as eating the whole food from a health or

nutrition standpoint for lactovorous weaned mammals like many humans.

So overall, it's clear that there's little in the way of

generalizations we can make about a concept of wholeness for foods. Of

course when we speak of " whole foods " in a casual context of modern

foodways, we are referring to a fairly clear contrast between

traditionally processed foods and industrially processed foods, but

this distinction relies on a somewhat arbitrary technological context

so we shouldn't expect to find much in the way of the sorts of

profound insights into nature you're seeking with this concept.

[] we're not supposed to feed cows just the grain part.

[MikeP] Well, even in the basest factory farms there is no such thing

as a 100% grain cow diet as far as I'm aware—at least some form of

grass is always in there. Past a certain percentage of grains, cows

just die, which is bad for business. But if that was a typo and you

meant something like " leaf " instead of " grain " , the idea doesn't hold,

because the small amount of grains (especially when taken calorically

and considering differences in grass breeds) that could be identified

as part of a natural cow diet is certainly not essential and amounts

to little more than dietary noise within the range of tolerance for

cows.

Mike

SE Pennsylvania

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. --Alan Kay