expand icon
book Stern's Introductory Plant Biology 13th Edition by James Bidlack,Shelley Jansky,Kingsley Stern cover

Stern's Introductory Plant Biology 13th Edition by James Bidlack,Shelley Jansky,Kingsley Stern

النسخة 13الرقم المعياري الدولي: 978-0073369440
book Stern's Introductory Plant Biology 13th Edition by James Bidlack,Shelley Jansky,Kingsley Stern cover

Stern's Introductory Plant Biology 13th Edition by James Bidlack,Shelley Jansky,Kingsley Stern

النسخة 13الرقم المعياري الدولي: 978-0073369440
تمرين 1
Since humans survived on wild plants for thousands of years, might it be desirable to return to that practice?
التوضيح
موثّق
like image
like image
Human diet is always a fascinating aspect when it comes to evolution and ecological assessments. There were several pieces of evidence have been found with respect to the consumption of wild plants by ancient human species. For example, there were archeological shreds of evidence that prove stone age people discovered medicinally important wild plants and plants also considered as a crucial part of their diet along with animal sources.
The major difference between Wild plants and Domestic plants is that basically wild plants have several stringent strategies to save themselves for animal foraging and environmental effects. For example, these stringent strategies including the production of poisonous compounds like alkaloids, tannins, terpenoids, etc and evolving new anatomical features like developing of spines and waxy layer, etc.
However, certain plants were considered to be elidable by ancient human species, even though they act as antigens and cause slight harm to the consumers. So, due to the lack of serious immunological issues these plants were subjected to domestication. As time progresses, due to self-fertilization and lack of any experience of animal attacks, wild plants tend to lose those protecting strategies. However, wild plants will have those phenotypes.
Likewise, the human immune system also tends to protect the consumer from antigens of wild plants when they consume it. However, as the domestication progresses since plants do not have any type of wild characteristics, the human immune system will also stop expressing protection agents and certain immune system genes become dormant and might lose its activity during evolution.
So, if modern humans might express desirability to return to the consumption of wild plants as a practice, then most of the wild plants will be not desirable to be consumed by humans because they might act as antigens. Since wild plants persist their protection strategies and they might be poisonous to the consumer. Apart from this reason, farming of wild plants is not quite a simple task.
Therefore, it might not be desirable to return to that practice.
close menu
Stern's Introductory Plant Biology 13th Edition by James Bidlack,Shelley Jansky,Kingsley Stern
cross icon