I just had to put this down, its an extension of an idea I had in an earlier thread and it's been bugging me.
Here is a quick one paragraph execitive summary. If you like the idea, I'll expand in the following paragraphs. The crux of my idea is that perhaps toxic chemicals produced by plants in order to protect themselves from being eaten, are the cause of the aging process. Simple really?
I remember watching a wildlife show a little while ago about plants, and their relationship with the animals they share the plains with. One of the things they explained was how herbivores seem to graze upwind. They went on to explain that it seems the reason they do this is because some plants communicate distress through some kind of plant chemical that the plant emits when being eaten. Any plants downwind pick up on the airbourne alarm chemical, and produce tanins and other chemicals in their leaves and stems in an effort to make themselves taste horrible. To stop themselves from being eaten. The plants upwind don't pick up the chemical, so the animal eats these instead of the yukky ones. Those upwind would however still have some of the "dont eat me" chemicals in them however, from previous experiences. It makes sense, that the plants who were able to produce the worst tasting leaves and stems would survive, and pass this ability on to their offspring.
In order to make themselves taste terrible, the plants would have to lock the chemicals they produce in their leaves and stems into the tastes that animals want to avoid the most. Take into consideration that the tongue is simply a chemical detection device, and that it is there to alert the animal to potentially harmful substances it may be chewing on, and warn the animal not to swallow them. Therefore, the chemicals the plants produce would need to be bad for the animals. Otherwise the tongue wouldn't tell them the animal not to eat them.
We also know that one of the reasons we don't eat many predators is because they don't taste good. This could be because, sitting at the top of the food chain, they have an accumulation of these chemicals produced by plants. Think about it, the animal that eats plants is full of "don't eat me " chemicals produced by plants, so that animal who eats herbivores is full of compounded "don't eat me" chemicals. I'm buggered if I'd eat a fox, lion, cat, racoon, or a dog for that matter! Would you?
Could it be that these chemicals produced by these plants are attacking us on some kind of cellular level? The tongue knows what is harmful, but why do we not die or get sick immidiately after eating something that tastes like crap? Perhaps the toxins are slow working. Perhaps they are in fact the key to the aging process?
The exceptions to the rules are foods produced by plants specifically to get us to eat them, in order to use us as a seed dispersal system. In fact, they produce their fruits in order to reward us for eating them by filling them full of sugars. So far I can think of nothing else other than fruit that does this. Vegetables don't want us to eat them. Animals don't want us to eat them. I tried eating dirt when I was a kid, but didn't find it to my liking. Not surprising really! It's full of microscopic organisms that don't want to be eaten!
Why do we eat crappy tasting things? I think it's because we aquire a taste for them during times of famine, and convince ourselves to continue eating them when the famine is over. I don't think primitive man/woman went out into the wilds, discovered spinach and said "wow, this tastes disgusting, I think I'll eat lots of this". I think she/he probably went hungry for a while, ate some spinach, desensitized to the taste and forced her/his kids to eat it later on! (You should see me trying to get my kids to eat green leafy vegetables!)
Can anyone think of anything other than fruits that encourage us to eat them?
