• ArumiOrnaught@kbin.social
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    6 months ago

    Every plant is poisonous. Humans are basically the only mammal that eats capsaicin, caffeine, menthol. Grapes are toxic for everything except a few things. Plants don’t have the ability to pull out a gun to defend itself and so it uses poison, or irritants like thorns. This isn’t limited to pants with animals. Plants are also toxic to other plants. The example that I deal with the most is black walnut. I tried growing plants and when I used the walnut leaves for mulch it would kill the plants I tried growing.

    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Seriously, everyone points to our brains and thumbs as to why we’re the dominant species on the planet, but our ability to eat damn near everything is also a major factor. We can eat a wide range of plants and animals native to every region of every continent. Wolves/dogs are our closest competition there and they can only eat a fraction of what we can eat. This made us completely unlimited in where we could go and colonize way back in the stone age.

      • Kiosade@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        What I don’t get is how there seem to be only a few remaining food types that people of certain ethnicities can’t tolerate. Like, some people can’t tolerate cow milk, some can’t tolerate wheat, because they didn’t have those things thousands of years ago. But like, most of the planet didn’t have most of the types of food available now until relatively recently, so why don’t you hear of more people being allergic to tomatoes, potatoes, mustard, etc?

        • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Best to remember that certain sensitivities, like lactose intolerance, are actually the rule rather than the exception. Lactose tolerance is only the majority in certain populations of European or Middle Eastern origin. A bunch of them are also mostly harmless and just cause indigestion rather than anything serious. I am lactose intolerant and eating cheese just means I’ll be gassy and spend more time on the toilet later, so long as I’m not eating to excess. Since they don’t actually kill you most of the time, they get selected out at a very slow rate.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      This is amazing to me. We’re immune to so many things that are dangerous/toxic/deadly to other biological life on the planet. We’ve evolved to an amazing extent, and yet, pick the wrong variety of berry and you’ll die writhing in agony.

      They’re all trying to kill you, it’s just that some of them, still can.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        You can’t be immune to everything and it all comes down to your genetics (lactose intolerance being the most famous example) and what you ate since childhood. One extreme example of what some groups of people can eat is kopalhen, which is deeply fermented meat full of ptomaines, which will kill most humans very fast. It also comes with botulism risk.

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Humans are basically the only mammal that eats capsaicin

      I had a dog who liked pepper sauce.

      Story time: I was 14 or so. Eating fish patties. As usual, drowning them in pepper sauce. Lana (my dog, a mid-large poodle) kept nagging me for food, it was annoying. I offered her a tiny bit of the patty, with pepper sauce. I expected her to smell it and think “eeew, humans eat this? Human food is inedible!”. Instead she ate it, licked the floor, and asked me more.

      I miss that dog.