As the saying goes, "the people take food as the sky", human beings as the creatures at the top of the earth's food chain, the diet is also diverse, including meat, vegetables and fruits and essential grains. There are different food cultures in different places, often determined by the natural environment here, such as people in cold areas who like high-fat and high-calorie foods, while people in tropical areas love fruits and spices.
But in general, human food is a combination of meat and vegetarian food, which is the physiological need that our ancestors gradually evolved in the process of evolution. Meat can help humans quickly replenish energy, while vegetables and fruits can help people digest and replenish the vitamins needed for survival.
Growing up, one of the most heard lessons about food is to "eat a balanced diet." Everyone has their favorite and disliked foods, but we can't choose food based on our own preferences, we must match meat and vegetables, and all nutrients can be balanced to be healthier.
With the advancement of human agricultural technology, we have more and more types of food available, and people almost no longer think about what food they can get, but what food they want to get. There are also many businesses in the city that specialize in making "healthy meals", using a variety of less "delicious" foods to meet people's requirements for healthy diets.
People living in colder areas have access to significantly less food than where temperatures are higher. Paradoxically, cold environments consume calories in people's bodies more quickly, so people here need to consume some foods that are high in fat, high in calories, and less "healthy" in the eyes of people in other areas.
For example, Russians living in high latitudes have a large amount of carbohydrates, fats and sugars in their daily diet, such as various breads, potatoes, cream, meat, etc., so as to meet the environmental consumption of their physical strength, not to be physically exhausted at work.
Coincidentally, when we look at the dishes in the northeast of China, they are also mainly large and high in calories, and the average southerner's meal volume is simply "unbearable".
In addition, the types of vegetables and fruits in cold areas are relatively small, so they will choose to hoard some cabbage, potatoes and other vegetables that can be stored for a long time in the cold winter, or make these vegetables into pickles, pickles, etc., so that they can provide people's dietary needs for a long time.
However, with the development of transportation today, even people in cold areas can eat vegetables and fruits from the south, and they no longer have to "carefully calculate" these foods in winter.
So have you ever wondered what kind of food you can eat if you live in a place that has been cold for many years and has no access to transportation? The answer may be unexpected, and that is raw meat.
This habit belongs to the Eskimos, a name that translates to "the man who eats raw meat", but they themselves do not like this very labeled name, they prefer to call themselves Inuit, which means "man".
It is a people living in and around the Arctic Circle, mainly hunting and animal husbandry, from Siberia to Alaska and Greenland. Some scholars believe that the Inuit originally lived in Asia and migrated through the Bering Strait thousands of years ago, so they take on the characteristics of yellow people in appearance.
The Inuit have their own unique habits of adapting to the cold Arctic climate, building houses made of snow and living in tents made of hides in the summer. There are few plants to eat in the Arctic, and if they do, they exist only in the short summer, unable to provide for life all year round.
Therefore, the food of the Inuit people is mainly based on marine life caught in the ocean and mammals such as seals and reindeer. And the surprising thing is that these people, like their nickname, are "people who eat raw meat" and hardly eat cooked food, why is that?
From the perspective of human evolution, cooked food is a necessary choice for human development, and it has not changed since humans learned to use fire. Meat and grains after cooking can be better digested and absorbed by us, and high temperatures can also kill most of the germs in food, which is very important in ancient times when there was a lack of medicine and disinfection methods, which directly improved the survival rate and life expectancy of human beings.
It can be said that the development and growth of human populations is inseparable from our mastery of the method of making cooked food, but the Inuit people have "done the opposite" and returned to a more primitive state.
The Eskimos were good at hunting and were good at fishing, not to mention ordinary sea fish and even seals, and even the huge whales were not rivals of the Inuit, who were able to defeat huge prey with some seemingly "primitive" weapons and tools.
After catching these prey, the Eskimos generally cut off the meat and ate some of it, and the rest was dried or buried in the ground for fermentation, and even produced some foods that were unimaginable to people of other races — such as the near-rotten fermented petrels, which the Inuit would eat on.
In addition to raw meat, the offal of animals was also a food that the Eskimos loved. In particular, the liver of seals and the heart of reindeer are the top delicacies in the eyes of the Eskimos, and only people with high status can enjoy them for the first time, and the way they eat them is also very simple, that is, after killing the prey, they are taken out directly from the prey to eat, generally with hot blood.
To people in other regions, this way of eating may seem too extensive, and it is not the same as we imagine gourmet cuisine. But for the Inuit, it's not just their unique culture, it's what they need to do if they want to live in the harsh Arctic.
The Eskimos ate raw meat from an early age, but they never got sick because of it, but forcing these people who lived in the ice and snow to eat cooked food would bring harm to their health. There are three main reasons for this, one of which is that there are not many plants in the Arctic Circle, and it is mainly based on moss and grassland, and there are very few trees that can be used as fuel.
Therefore, even if they want to eat cooked food, it is not allowed in objective conditions, so eating raw food is a more normal and pragmatic choice, which can save them a lot of energy and maintain the calories of the body. And in the process of eating raw meat for a long time, the Eskimos' body has also changed, and unique genes have allowed them to adapt to digesting raw meat.
Second, because there are hardly any vegetables and fruits that can replenish vitamins and minerals, the Inuit diet is only a variety of meats. If these meats are cooked and eaten, they will also destroy most of the trace elements, especially various vitamins, after the high temperature, basically disappears.
Therefore, in order to maintain the normal operation of the body, the Eskimos must eat raw meat, and the heart and liver they like to eat are the parts where trace elements are particularly rich, which can make their bodies stronger, so they are rare and precious foods that need to be eaten when entertaining "distinguished guests".
The last point is because the low temperature environment here is very "pure". One of the reasons why people in other regions have the habit of eating cooked food is because raw meat may contain a large number of bacteria, parasites, etc., which will bring harm to human health. Temperatures in the Arctic are so low that most bacteria cannot multiply here, and parasites from marine life cannot survive in humans.
In addition, the Arctic is also the relatively least polluted region in the world, so Eskimos can "safely and boldly" eat raw meat without getting sick. In general, this habit is undoubtedly determined by the environment in which the Eskimos lived.
The Eskimos also had a variety of customs that differed from other regions, such as using dog sleds to move quickly through the snow and transport prey, and using a small boat that could carry only one person to hunt whales;
Their family structure is also relatively simple, closer to the concept of a primitive extended family, where people are free to fall in love and reproduce, unlike exclusive marriages in other regions.
In fact, whether it is food or living customs, it is the unique culture of local characteristics and races, and when outsiders come here, they should give enough respect, rather than using violent means to change.
There are all kinds of people living all over the world, peoples with different languages, scripts and customs, but all exist on this planet as equals.
Humanity has made many mistakes in the past, for a small number of peoples. Peoples whose economies are relatively less developed, and those that are more powerful do not pay enough respect to them, and even plunder and persecute them.
Now we know that this is not at all conducive to the overall development of mankind, nor is it in line with our moral concepts, and only when people everywhere unite and treat all people equally can we make mankind develop better and let the race continue to continue.
In addition to the need for mutual respect between human races, we must also pay attention to protecting the environment of the earth, and not allow those places that are originally "pure" to be polluted by the products of human creation, especially the sewage and garbage that enter the ocean, which is gradually encroaching on our huge ocean, killing those marine creatures, and gradually taking away human beings' own homes.
Even the Eskimos are already living in a polluted environment, are the omens not enough to attract our attention? Protecting the planet is clearly something that everyone needs to act on, and it is something that cannot be postponed.