---
title: "It's true that we still don't understand our own bodies very well. ..."
date: 2025-05-03
source: facebook
type: comment
context: "Michael Michalchik's photo"
fb_link: "https://www.facebook.com/dyi/l/?l=AYO8H7VY3GnBbWtq1-bVY3ww4FRAcD3Mymit4lgknC20nz0rRyjwRKscOTP3ns8CIOKigqh-BJa0Z9pv8UlcG8i7dzZ3fM0APSkApCTmdO75gOcVX65QKviFgPecw_ixbOPyM6LprygRDjBBVyeyPqGEks4gPwFrBJeltcn0Th8giW8LcgON4H8CSJABfqEgVJiKKJmGRxQ&s=519"
---

# It's true that we still don't understand our own bodies very well. ...

*May 3, 2025 — Comment Michael Michalchik's photo*

It's true that we still don't understand our own bodies very well.  And we should always be humble and on the look out for ways in which novel foods might be harming us. But it's ridiculous to claim that we can't re-engineer foods to make them healthier. For most of human history, simply acquiring enough calories to stave off starvation was difficult and time-consuming.  Many plants (strawberries, corn, potatoes, watermelons, etc) have been bred to produce crops that are bigger, tastier, more calorie dense, easier to grow, easier to harvest, etc. We've gone from a world where subsistence farming occupied most of the population, to one where 1% of the population can supply abundant food for everyone else.   That seems like a huge win in my book. Many human engineering processes make foods safer, tastier and more nutritious:  fermentation, dehydration, pasteurization, and  pickling, to name a few.   Some staple foods can't be eaten at all without careful processing.  Cassava, for example, is the third largest source of carbohydrates in the world (after corn and rice).  But raw cassava naturally contains high amounts of cyanide like compounds.  You'll get sick and/or die if you don't remove these poisons from the cassava first.