People, food, health and technologies

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the often complex relationships between people, their health, the food that they eat, and the many technologies that humans have used to obtain and manipulate food since the earliest stages of their evolution. Nowadays an increasingly varied mixture of technologies is routinely used in all aspects of food production and this frequently causes concern with sections of the general public. We often read or hear in the media about desires for more 'natural' food that is produced locally, is as fresh as possible, is 'uncontaminated' by chemicals, and is not the product of highly intrusive methods for the manipulation of plants or animals. However, in this chapter we will see that technology and the manipulation of other living organisms has been a necessary part of food acquisition by humans since the first hominids arose in Africa several million years ago. We will see how people used a wide range of often ingenious technologies to manipulate theplants and animals in their environment many thousands of years before they became farmers.