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Could we live on grass?

Iamme

Philosopher
I
Joined
Aug 5, 2003
Messages
6,215
If not...WHY not?

How can a cow survive on grazing, and we have to have all this STUFF: Grains, fruits, vegatables, meat?

And we are supposed to get all these servings of each, daily, else we could be calcium defficient, get scurvy, have iron-poor blood, , Not get enough Omega-3 or folic acid, or not metabolize calcium if we don't get the vitamin D and zinc to metabolize it, etc., etc.,to the point we pop pills, visit health food stores, etc..

I have actually theorized that we are creating for ourselves a viscous evolutionary process that wil require our offspring to need at least all the nutrients that we are consuming. So the more we go overboard with all these mega doses of this and that...the more the baby will require and grow up to need.

Are we somehow so far more up the evolutionary ladder so that cows can get by on grass...but where we need a whole lot more in order to live a long healthy life? What has caused us to need all this stuff? What about people in Ruwanda and thrird world countries...people that are nomads...Don't these people just get along fine on porridge or bread? I have seen dying Biafran's, etc., on magazine covers who look like a living skeleton. But they are still alive yet. Where, in this country, if someone loses a few pounds due to say Bulemia/Anorexia Nervosa...they develop a heart arrythmia and die. What's with this?!
 
Iamme said:
If not...WHY not?

How can a cow survive on grazing, and we have to have all this STUFF: Grains, fruits, vegatables, meat?

And we are supposed to get all these servings of each, daily, else we could be calcium defficient, get scurvy, have iron-poor blood, , Not get enough Omega-3 or folic acid, or not metabolize calcium if we don't get the vitamin D and zinc to metabolize it, etc., etc.,to the point we pop pills, visit health food stores, etc..

I have actually theorized that we are creating for ourselves a viscous evolutionary process that wil require our offspring to need at least all the nutrients that we are consuming. So the more we go overboard with all these mega doses of this and that...the more the baby will require and grow up to need.

Are we somehow so far more up the evolutionary ladder so that cows can get by on grass...but where we need a whole lot more in order to live a long healthy life? What has caused us to need all this stuff? What about people in Ruwanda and thrird world countries...people that are nomads...Don't these people just get along fine on porridge or bread? I have seen dying Biafran's, etc., on magazine covers who look like a living skeleton. But they are still alive yet. Where, in this country, if someone loses a few pounds due to say Bulemia/Anorexia Nervosa...they develop a heart arrythmia and die. What's with this?!
Click to expand...

Cuz a cow's a ruminant, and your name should only have one 'm'. Go away.
 
Re: Re: Could we live on grass?

BillHoyt said:
Cuz a cow's a ruminant, and your name should only have one 'm'. Go away.
Click to expand...
While I agree with your sentiment, I must correct you on one point. His name starts with an upper case 'i', not a lowercase 'L'. It's "I am me."
Iamme: Please, read a book. Honestly. Read what the digestive system of a cow is like. Then read what yours is like. And read about evolution.
 
Re: Re: Re: Could we live on grass?

Donks said:
While I agree with your sentiment, I must correct you on one point. His name starts with an upper case 'i', not a lowercase 'L'. It's "I am me."
Iamme: Please, read a book. Honestly. Read what the digestive system of a cow is like. Then read what yours is like. And read about evolution.
Click to expand...

You're right. d**n contacts! I preferred "lame."
 
we could live on grass no problem. it's just that it is easier to maintain outside your house rather than under or inside it.
 
Iamme said:
If not...WHY not?

How can a cow survive on grazing, and we have to have all this STUFF: Grains, fruits, vegatables, meat?

And we are supposed to get all these servings of each, daily, else we could be calcium defficient, get scurvy, have iron-poor blood, , Not get enough Omega-3 or folic acid, or not metabolize calcium if we don't get the vitamin D and zinc to metabolize it, etc., etc.,to the point we pop pills, visit health food stores, etc..

I have actually theorized that we are creating for ourselves a viscous evolutionary process that wil require our offspring to need at least all the nutrients that we are consuming. So the more we go overboard with all these mega doses of this and that...the more the baby will require and grow up to need.

Are we somehow so far more up the evolutionary ladder so that cows can get by on grass...but where we need a whole lot more in order to live a long healthy life? What has caused us to need all this stuff? What about people in Ruwanda and thrird world countries...people that are nomads...Don't these people just get along fine on porridge or bread? I have seen dying Biafran's, etc., on magazine covers who look like a living skeleton. But they are still alive yet. Where, in this country, if someone loses a few pounds due to say Bulemia/Anorexia Nervosa...they develop a heart arrythmia and die. What's with this?!
Click to expand...

A cow has a significantly different digestive system than you do. Do you have the seven stomachs necessary to extract the appropriate amount of nutrition from grass? If you did would you like to spend most of your life grazing to get your nutrition?

Also, you seem to have a misconception about evolution. There is no "up on the evolutionary ladder". Each creature is evolved to fill it's own niche. You might wish to try

Talk origins if you honestly wish to learn more.
 
Iamme said:
If not...WHY not?

How can a cow survive on grazing, and we have to have all this STUFF: Grains, fruits, vegatables, meat?
Click to expand...
Well for starters, animals can digest cellulose (indirectly at least, as BillyHoyt alluded to); humans cannot. That's why for us it's called roughage, because it goes right through you, cleaning you out like a bottle brush.
What type of enzyme is needed to break down grass
I think every time one of us does your homework for you, you should send $1 to the JREF.

Personally, I like ungoliant's answer the best (mainly because I wanted to say something along those lines, but he beat me to it :( ).

ETA: I found that link above in less than 3 seconds by typing into Google: "enzymes digest cellulose". It was the first hit on the page.
 
Re: Re: Could we live on grass?

Psi Baba said:
Well for starters, animals can digest cellulose (indirectly at least, as BillyHoyt alluded to); humans cannot. That's why for us it's called roughage, because it goes right through you, cleaning you out like a bottle brush.
Click to expand...

Yep. Down-easters have an expression for it: "Like green corn through the new maid."
 
Iamme said:
If not...WHY not?

How can a cow survive on grazing, and we have to have all this STUFF: Grains, fruits, vegatables, meat?...
Click to expand...

Our local zoo has a farm display. In it they have a good explanation of why a cow has a multi-chamber stomach.

Visit a zoo... ask why the grass eating animals are different than the big cats.

Or just read a comparative biology book.
 
I was taught that the bacteria in the cow's stomach broke down the grass with whatever enzyme. The bacteria feasted, and then the cow digested the bacteria.

So, we just need to get us some of those bacteria in a jar and give them grass. Well, use a food processor to chop the grass up a bit first. Then collect the oozy stuff that results and make some kind of milkshake out of it.

mmmmm
The rumen is a microbial fermentation chamber in animals like cows. These chambers are occupied by fungi, protozoa, and bacteria that breakdown plant matter.
Click to expand...

http://bio-ditrl.sunsite.ualberta.ca/search/results/?p_field=keywords&p_find=Ciliata

http://www.tqnyc.org/NYC051525/digestivesystem.htm
 
I think of it in terms of synthesis. Everybody made of protein needs all 20 amino acids. We also need ATP and a whole host of other molecules of various complexity. We up here near the top of the food chain can hardly synthesize any of it and have to rely on eating other things that can.

Down there at the bottom, the grass can make molecules out of simple inorganics found in dirt, plus energy from the sun. In fact, I think the energy that fuels almost everything alive on earth starts with sunlight captured by simple organisms.

I guess a cow is somewhere in between, able to synthesize everything it needs just from the limited stuff available in grass. Is grass really enough to sustain a cow or do they eat other stuff too?
 
rppa said:
Is grass really enough to sustain a cow or do they eat other stuff too?
Click to expand...
I'm not an expert but I grew up accross from a dairy. I don't know if they can subsist only on grass. The dairy near me fed the cows silage (wheat and corn) along with whatever they grazed on. Silage is everything chopped up including stock and chaff.

They also need salt which makes me wonder where ruminants in the wild find salt? Walking through the fields I don't see any salt lying around unless a farmer puts it there on purpose for the cows or horses. Come to think of it I don't remember salt licks being used in my later years on the farm. Maybe farmers don't use them anymore but add the salt to the silage. I'll have to ask my father who still knows some farmers who have cows and horses.
 
Re: Re: Could we live on grass?

BillHoyt said:
Cuz a cow's a ruminant, and your name should only have one 'm'. Go away.
Click to expand...

Bill, I'm disappointed in you. I thought you might have turned into a tolerant person. I was wrong.
Sigh.:rolleyes:
 
rppa said:
I guess a cow is somewhere in between, able to synthesize everything it needs just from the limited stuff available in grass. Is grass really enough to sustain a cow or do they eat other stuff too?
Click to expand...

Take into consideration what the microbes, that do most of the digestion of grass, are made up of. The cow digests mostly microbes after the microbes digest the grass.
Regarding protein, the bodies of microbes in the fermentation vat represent a large source of high quality protein. In ruminants, those microbes flow into the stomach and small intestine, where they are digested and absorbed as amino acids and small peptides
Click to expand...

http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/herbivores/overview.html
 
quote:
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Regarding protein, the bodies of microbes in the fermentation vat represent a large source of high quality protein. In ruminants, those microbes flow into the stomach and small intestine, where they are digested and absorbed as amino acids and small peptides
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You mean all those vegetarian, brown eyed, bucolic critters, are MURDERING MILLIONS OF DEFENCELESS MICROBES???

Does PETA know this? Is that why they are against raising animals for food? Not for the cows sake, but to protect the downtrodden microbes? Don't microbes have feelings too? If you cut them, do they not leak Cytological fluids?

Sooo, PETAns shouldn't just be Vegans, oughten they be Breatharians, in order to spare the lives of the microbes in their own stomaches...but what if we all have symbiotes in our lungs...do macrophages count as murdering bastards? Do we then muder defenceless macrophages when their usefulness to use is over?

Credit Ogden Nash for inspiring this:

"Little critters have littler critters that in their stomaches ride them,
And these littler critters have littler critters,
And on, ad infinitum."
 
espritch said:
Of course we can live on grass. We just have to turn it into cow first.
Click to expand...

Because, as we all know, the grass turns into blood which is directed outward to become more cow. Good old Gaelan...
 
Iamme, I like the question you ask.
Pure plain innocent and yet just the type of question that reveals simple truth.

With regard to "Could we survive on grass? "
I think the answer is "yes", but probably miserably in terms of quality of life, with less than "optimal" chances of survival.

Herbivores and carnivores are specialist. So the herbivores and carnivores should be better at their own specialisation. So they eat junk(grass) and get bigger than us on "poorer food".

Humans on the other hand, is an omnivore, a generalist. We have better chance of survival because we can eat a more variety of food. Evolution is the survival of the fittest, which could mean the ones most able to adapt.

So the herbivores and carnivore might sees humans as inefficient, undecisive, non-pure-bred-hybrid-"mongrel" that is part-herbivore, part-canivore. But we know we are more adaptable.
--

I noted that little children who are fussy eater, can grow eating only rice everyday. If we ignore of illnesses due to malnutrition, and just count the number of years they can survive, they could live quite a few years.

Advancement of Medical science and health care also made many be able to survive longer, despite deficiently.

--

I agree with your theory that we risk making our species to be dependent on a variety of food to survive. Indeed we are already in danger. Consider our definition of "to survive". If we define to "survive" as to be able to live 70 years. I think we have set ourselves up for disappointment.

I suspect that humans life span is getting longer and longer.
we all think we ought to live 60 years and beyond.
Perhaps a century ago most people is happy just to be live up to 40 years. And then we were less savvy of nutrition and medication.

So although those people in very poor countries seems to survive on simpler food. But they probably have poorer quality of life and live shorter.

---
Moreover, living longer is human's strategy to populate the earth.
We don't reproduce faster than a rabbit. But we make sure our offspring have a better chance of survival through care and nutrition.

----
Consider this ....
"Aggressive dog ?? We don't have aggressive dogs around. Any aggressive dogs that bite any person ends up being stew the next week".

The environment does have some impact on the gene pool.

Iamme, I agree with your theory that our "success" (dependence on nutritious food) does put us at risk in times of crisis. In the same way the success of cows' herbivorous specialist ability, put it at risk if supply of herb is halted.

That seems to point out one basic assumption.
That there will always be abundant supply of grass.
Put cows and humans on deserted island without grass, and full of fishes in the seas around, and it should be quite clear who will survive.
---
Iamme,
you might be right about the "vicious evolutionary process" but I don't think we have a choice.

Or do you think we have a choice?
I would gladly hear them or discuss them.
 
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