• Dave@lemmy.nz
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    2 days ago

    Do people (in general) really only eat 100 different plants? I feel like that number must be too low. Surely if you listed out all the plant foods that people consider “normal”, there would easily be more than 100.

      • Dave@lemmy.nz
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        19 hours ago

        I’m tempted to start a list. Sure, the majority of our food will be a handful of staples, but I feel like the average person from a rich country must eat quite a variety between seasonal variations of the food they eat at home, eating out, eating at a friends place, fast food, slow food, etc.

        If I wrote a list, I think I would find over 100 different plants in the last year. If I have take out dumplings, I’d probably be eating onion, garlic, a couple of kinds of cabbage, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper, carrot, ginger, maybe more.

        It might be a shorter list without the flavourings but I still think I’d hit 100.

        • AceOnTrack@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          19 hours ago

          I guess it also depends if you consider different lettuce/cabbage varieties as different plants. Which I guess is the point of the discussion! so fair. I also dind’t really think about stuff like soy sauce and oils as plants but I guess they are

          • Dave@lemmy.nz
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            16 hours ago

            Yeah you’d have to set some criteria for the list! Does any amount count or do you set a minimum that eliminates many spices? And if you do, then you’re counting things on one person’s list that aren’t on someone else’s.

            People probably eat 1000 foods in a year if we have no minimum amount!