Asklemmy

43917 readers

968 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

What is the oldest common food in the typical western diet? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by j4k3@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Of the things available to most of us, what are common and the oldest things we might find on a store shelf?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] modeler@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I'm going to suggest food items that we still take from nature and eat with minimal preparation:

Honey
Fish like salmon, trout, grouper
Shellfish (eg oysters)

We have evidence of shellfish and fish being eaten for a very long time - at least the middle stone age at 140kya - in middens which are 10s of thousands of years old.

Honey is likely to have been a food source - a treat even - even before humans left Africa (so before 100kya) but sadly this would be invisible in the archeological record

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I was going to say oatmeal, but honey is actually a better answer, since it predates even agriculture as a major food.

If you live somewhere with fresh seafood that's also a great answer. I wonder if grocery stores somewhere sell fresh insects, although that wouldn't be the West as per OP.