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Author Topic:   How did food evolve?
WS-JW
Junior Member (Idle past 6110 days)
Posts: 30
Joined: 06-04-2007


Message 1 of 86 (403561)
06-04-2007 12:37 AM


One thing i've not heard an answer to by evolution is where the food came from? Every creature needs food to finance it's energy usages. We humans have all the "keys" to open up all the different foods we eat and get the calories out. Thats how it works, on a lock/key kind of mechanism because burning the food won't get the calories out. how did all this food suddenly grow? This is a strong argument for design. These things need to be designed and won't arise by chance without a guiding hand over the lot. Isn't it also funny how alot of people enjoy eating food as God made a potentially annoying task of supplying ourselves energy and made it enjoyable?
answers on the evolution point of view would be appriecieated.

Replies to this message:
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Message 2 of 86 (403583)
06-04-2007 10:17 AM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
Codegate
Member (Idle past 817 days)
Posts: 84
From: The Great White North
Joined: 03-15-2006


Message 3 of 86 (403591)
06-04-2007 11:03 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by WS-JW
06-04-2007 12:37 AM


Hey WS - welcome to the fray!
The question you are asking actually does not make a lot of sense. It's a contextual thing.
'Food' persay, did not evolve. Life evolved to make use of the resources that were available to it. Initially, these resources consisted of non-living matter. Chemical soups and so on.
However, as life became more prominent it began to evolve to make use of this very convenient energy source that had all of the necessities - other life.
Some of these life forms that were being consumed were 'better' or 'more nutritious' then others. Because of this the predatory life forms evolved 'tastes' so that they would prefer to consume these 'better' life forms.
This is why I believe it is not correct to be asking 'How did food evolve?". We (and all other life forms) evolved to find the things that are 'best' for us the tastiest. Sugars and fats are abolutely essential for our survival (energy). This is why they are so attractive to the human palette.
Once you change your world view on the whole food question, it becomes pretty obvious (again, in my opinion) that the question does not make a lot of sense.
Hope this helps!

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Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 4 of 86 (403593)
06-04-2007 11:06 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by WS-JW
06-04-2007 12:37 AM


Hello!
Every creature needs food to finance it's energy usages. We humans have all the "keys" to open up all the different foods we eat and get the calories out. Thats how it works, on a lock/key kind of mechanism because burning the food won't get the calories out. how did all this food suddenly grow?
The answer lies in the food chain. In order to live, an organism needs energy. The primary ways of getting energy are from heat or light rather than 'food'. Living organisms had to be able to convert some source of energy into chemical energy which is used to 'live'. Such raw energy supplies include sunlight and the earth's warm core.
Once a population of organisms exists that exploits direct energy, a new niche becomes available: instead of taking the light/heat energy and converting it into chemical energy - the existing chemical energy stored in the cells of other organisms can be tapped into. When an organism dies, its chemical energy is just lying there waiting to be tapped.
So the first kind of food was simply other organisms that have either died (scavenger), or (alternatively) were killed by 'predators'.
Food is just other organisms. The food we eat are mostly animals and plants that have been killed by us. So whenever there has been life - there has been food. It didn't suddenly 'grow'.
Isn't it also funny how alot of people enjoy eating food as God made a potentially annoying task of supplying ourselves energy and made it enjoyable?
It seems logical that natural selection would favour organisms that 'enjoyed' eating over those that didn't. Likewise it would favour those that enjoyed eating high energy foods and disliked poisonous foods. There are parts of the brain that release 'feel good' hormones when eating. It is also one of the reasons we enjoy sex.

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Replies to this message:
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petrophysics1
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 86 (403594)
06-04-2007 11:13 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by WS-JW
06-04-2007 12:37 AM


WS JW,
Don't you realize "YOU ARE FOOD".
Also you don't have the "keys" to get nutrional value out of many things and some of them will even kill you.
Why would a designer put stuff here that will kill you? Why would a designer put things here which consider you to be food? Doesn't he/she/it like you?
If everything was edible you might have a point, but it's not.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 6 of 86 (403642)
06-04-2007 4:22 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by WS-JW
06-04-2007 12:37 AM


Is this guy for real? I guess some people have no idea where their food comes from except the supermarket.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by WS-JW, posted 06-04-2007 12:37 AM WS-JW has not replied

Replies to this message:
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AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 7 of 86 (403656)
06-04-2007 5:17 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by crashfrog
06-04-2007 4:22 PM


Foodstuffs Are Us.
I guess some people have no idea where their food comes from except the supermarket.
Frog, come on now. You're pulling my leg, right?
Every child in creation knows that food comes from numerous places, the supermarket being but one of them. There are things called restaurants where you can not just get get food but drinks as well. There are small non-supermarkets where, though the varity may be limited, you can get food, and there are places like Church's and Burger King (some might include McDonnald's but that really isn't "food") and Toco Bell and ... well the list goes on.
Ask any kid. Any one of them will show you where you can get some food.

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nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 8 of 86 (403657)
06-04-2007 5:29 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by AZPaul3
06-04-2007 5:17 PM


Re: Foodstuffs Are Us.
The other day I was ringing up a customer, a middle aged man. He was with a teenager, probably around 17 or 18 years old, and male.
I could tell they were tourists by the clothes they were wearing, and probably from a fairly metropolitan area.
At some point the teenage spotted the cluster tomatoes I was weighing on the scale:
The kid said "What are those?"
I answered, "Tomatoes."
"Really?" he said, somewhat surprised and dubious.
"Yes", I said, "That's how they grow, on vines."
I then blurted out, "Haven't you ever seen a tomato plant? Wow, somebody needs to visit a garden."
It's scary what people don't know.

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gert
Junior Member (Idle past 5772 days)
Posts: 8
From: Kokomo, IN, US
Joined: 02-08-2007


Message 9 of 86 (403675)
06-04-2007 6:56 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by Modulous
06-04-2007 11:06 AM


Hey!
In order to live, an organism needs energy. The primary ways of getting energy are from heat or light rather than 'food'. Living organisms had to be able to convert some source of energy into chemical energy which is used to 'live'. Such raw energy supplies include sunlight and the earth's warm core.
Once a population of organisms exists that exploits direct energy, a new niche becomes available: instead of taking the light/heat energy and converting it into chemical energy - the existing chemical energy stored in the cells of other organisms can be tapped into.
With the natural question of "where did life come from?" aside, I'd like to step forward. How did organisms develop this ability to convert raw energy to "life energy"? Such a process is awfully complex, so it must have taken a while to evolve, but before that happened, how did organisms get energy to live?

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Replies to this message:
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 10 of 86 (403694)
06-04-2007 9:02 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by gert
06-04-2007 6:56 PM


How did organisms develop this ability to convert raw energy to "life energy"?
There's no such thing as "raw energy" or "life energy."
Such a process is awfully complex
It's not that complex. It's just chemistry. Living things didn't evolve chemistry; they started as chemistry. Using available local energy sources for life processes is life, so the first living things started out being able to do this. As life evolved, it evolved a metabolism that could take advantage of more complicated chemical reactions and different energy sources - like the sun.
If you can imagine the first simple replicator, it would be something like an enzyme made of naturally-occurring building blocks (like those developed in the Urey experiments) that could catalyze more of itself from those same blocks. Its food source and its building blocks would have been the same thing. Indistinguishable. It wouldn't have needed any other energy because the catalyst would have made the reaction entropically favorable. The need to have energy for entropically unfavorable reactions would have come much, much later.
Ultimately, the source of energy for all living things on Earth is the sun. Plants store the sun's energy by using it to power a reaction that turns water and carbon dioxide into sugar and gaseous oxygen (photosynthesis), and then the plant - and anything that eats the plants - uses those sugars, combined with oxygen, to power cellular processes.
So, to answer your question - before photosynthesis evolved, organisms were chemosynthetic - they took advantage of the energy that comes from certain chemical reactions. This is fairly simple if all you are is a chemical reaction, as the first proto-life surely was.

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gert
Junior Member (Idle past 5772 days)
Posts: 8
From: Kokomo, IN, US
Joined: 02-08-2007


Message 11 of 86 (403697)
06-04-2007 9:11 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by crashfrog
06-04-2007 9:02 PM


Calling chemosynthesis simple is completely absurd. Taking anything and converting it to usable energy is incredibly complex. If you understand how organisms may have converted chemical reactions into life, do tell.
Taking a step back (to the other question), where did all of this come from?

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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 Message 17 by crashfrog, posted 06-04-2007 9:53 PM gert has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 12 of 86 (403700)
06-04-2007 9:17 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by gert
06-04-2007 9:11 PM


Cheese: The Atheists' Worst Nightmare
Scientists can't explain how cheese evolved.
It doesn't reproduce in any way, so how can it evolve?
And look at its behaviour. It tastes good and herds in supermarkets. Are you telling me that that came about by chance?
And look, on every packet of cheese it says "cheese". That's got to be the result of intelligent design.
Cheese disproves evolution. I'm smarter than every biologist in the last hundred years. I win.

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Replies to this message:
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gert
Junior Member (Idle past 5772 days)
Posts: 8
From: Kokomo, IN, US
Joined: 02-08-2007


Message 13 of 86 (403705)
06-04-2007 9:22 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Dr Adequate
06-04-2007 9:17 PM


Re: Cheese: The Atheists' Worst Nightmare
What's your point?

This message is a reply to:
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sidelined
Member (Idle past 5907 days)
Posts: 3435
From: Edmonton Alberta Canada
Joined: 08-30-2003


Message 14 of 86 (403706)
06-04-2007 9:28 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by gert
06-04-2007 6:56 PM


gert
With the natural question of "where did life come from?" aside, I'd like to step forward. How did organisms develop this ability to convert raw energy to "life energy"
The energy currency for living things is a molecule known as ATP {Adenosine 5-Triphosphate}
Wikipedia has an article giving a detailed intoduction to the means by which ATP uses chemistry to produce the energy for use by life. I hope this helps to give you some idea as to how such things work.
As an aside "raw energy" is not different from "life energy" as you called it.

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WS-JW
Junior Member (Idle past 6110 days)
Posts: 30
Joined: 06-04-2007


Message 15 of 86 (403707)
06-04-2007 9:33 PM


crashfrog,
"It's not that complex. It's just chemistry. Living things didn't evolve chemistry; they started as chemistry."
This is a ridiculous statement, it's the same as typing on a keyboard randomly to get out a book. It isn't complex, it's just computing. Where did this chemisty come from?
chance does nothing. No scientist would ever work on this basis. The American government doesn't work on this basis. You take a can of sardines with all it's proteins in it, if they though there was the slightest chance of you being poisioned by a new organism, they'd forbid all canning. Every knows that to get a machine, you have to have the know-how.

Replies to this message:
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