Homo sapiens sapiens has existed on earth in approximately its current form for at least 100,000 years. And for at least the last 20,000 of those years, they have liked to eat. The evolution of eating, though, is a record of challenges overcome.
First, there was the difficulty posed by the mobility of potential foodstuffs. While a considerable variety of stationary edibles is available for human consumption, it's a well-established fact that the tastiness of a food is in direct proportion to its absolute land speed: Vegetables, bleah! Snails, only slightly better (and only if you're French). Cow, sheep, chicken? Yummy! Cheetah? De-fucking-licious! Still, as human beings developed in intelligence, they largely overcame this obstacle through steady innovation of hunting technology: clubs begat bows and arrows begat AK-47's.
Next, human beings had to deal with the fact that foodstuffs often proved deadly. The ratio between a food's tastiness and potential lethality is also apparently a direct one (see: fugu). Again, though, human ingenuity triumphed as people learned that cleaning and cooking their meals significantly reduced the incidence of post-prandial mortality.
(Digression: And you have to admire what this says about human determination. After the first fugu-eater died, people didn't stop trying to eat it. No! It moved, ergo, it was potential food! They just had to solve the mystery. So they went after that little blowfish! How many people were sacrificed in the name of culinary delight? It doesn't matter! Pass the wasabi! EOD)
By the time we reached the modern age, we had largely solved the problems of food-gathering and food preparation. Now, however, we faced the problem of inconvenience. After all, we were a society on the move. We could hardly be expected to sit placidly at a table just for the sake of eating. We had things to do. Thus the advent of hand-held food (sandwiches and the like). And it was not too long ago that man devised the ideal food design.
We speak, of course, of the nugget.
Seriously, is there any more perfect nutrient-delivery system? You can get all your basic food groups--meat, dairy, grain, uh. . . trans-fats--one finger-full at a time. We're not just talking chicken, you understand. Today we sampled an A&W special: the corn-dog nugget! (It's just what you think it is.) And why stop there? The possibilities are limitless:
The breakfast nugget: bite-sized portions of scrambled eggs, wrapped in bacon, dipped in corn meal and deep-fried.
The fruit nugget: strawberries stuffed with watermelon and apples and . . . and. . . and figs! (Dipped in corn meal and deep-fried.)
The nugget digestif: prunes stuffed with bran, wrapped in a corn husk, dipped in corn meal and deep-fried.
The nuggetberg: chopped liver mushed together with gefilte fish, wrapped in matzoh-meal and, well, you know. . . .
If humanity is to continue evolving, our foodstuffs must evolve with us. The nugget is the clear next step on the evolutionary ladder.
The perfect food? (Image from flickr.com)
Nice nuggets
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