Synonyms
Definition
The usual food and drink consumed by an organism or a group
Introduction
Human diet is important for human survival, due to the need of food and water to stay alive by getting the necessary amount of calories and nutrients to maintain the organism’s functions. Thus, the capacity to discriminate what can be ingested from what need to be avoided was beneficial over evolutionary time; those who fail to discriminate what is edible can get poisoned, for example, or be killed trying to capture the food intended (Tooby and DeVore 1987). Modern humans have very little obstacles to acquire food with adequate nutrients and food free of toxins. Over human evolutionary history, that wasn’t so easy. Our ancestors devoted energy and time into food acquisition, recognizing whether a food was harmless, and then capturing, collecting, consuming, and digesting it (Buss 2015).
Food selection, sharing, and consumption in humans are major social activities...
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References
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Biermann, M.C., Farias, M.G. (2018). Diet. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2775-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2775-1
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