Sharing the Space and Plate

By Rosalinda Rodriguez

Through contemporary fad diets like the paleo diet and an all meat-diet, we have tried to reconnect to our ancestry through our plate but how accurate are these replications?

Many of those who make the decision to be healthier do so by trying to eat diets that our hominid ancestors ate. These diets however fail to consider seasonality, social, and geographical differences in the diets that our ancestors were subject to. My painting is intended to make viewers think about their ancestry and consider the factors that these fad diets fail to expand on. Humans and our primate/hominid ancestors existed in different spaces, while in my painting they actually share this space. The things that they eat are depicted in this space also (the leaves, tree, and bugs around them, things that aren’t included in these fad diets). Eating what is appropriate in your geographical space is the reality behind “eating like our ancestors”.

Sources of inspiration:

Diet and the evolution of the earliest human ancestors Mark F. Teaford, Peter S. Ungar Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Dec 2000, 97 (25)13506–13511; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.260368897

Diet. (n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/animal/primate-mammal/Diet

25 primate pictures for World Primate Day. (2014, September 02). Retrieved December 17, 2020, from https://news.mongabay.com/2014/09/25-primate-pictures-for-world-primate-day/