Food Habits, Old and New

THE ABUNDANCE and variety of man's food depend upon his control over environment. For primitive tribes this meant success in hunting and fishing, and discovery and discriminating use of roots, leaves, fruit, and seeds of wild plants. Later, as animals were domesticated and agriculture got under way, control over environment came to mean good management of crops and flocks. Today for a large part of the population, especially for city dwellers, it has an additional meaning—purchasing power, or the ability and the opportunity to produce goods or render services that can be exchanged for the varied products of agriculture, fisheries, and the food industries.