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Why do we eat the way we speak? The question posed in the subtitle of the book “A spasso con Lucy. Perché mangiamo come parliamo? Virtù e valore delle proteine animali” (Guerini e Associati edition), edited by Pietro Paganini in collaboration with Carola Macagno, is only apparently a play on words: in reality, it opens a new scenario of evolutionary convergence in the human species, between the primordial and natural act of feeding and the sophisticated ability to communicate through languages.

Many animals possess a language, but only Homo sapiens has been able to differentiate his vocal modulation into an increasingly diversified quantity of languages, up to the current 7,159, excluding dialects. In parallel, there exists an incredible variety of dishes closely linked to traditions: in Italy alone, as many as 5,047 traditional food specialties have been recorded. Let us try to understand the reason for this great variability peculiar to humanity, both in food and in language.

Language, in its evolution towards different languages, has intertwined with nutrition since the origin of our species. Both arise from the double cognitive inheritance, which we share with great primates, and cooperative inheritance, which distinguishes us from them. As Judith Burkart shows, it was the combination of intelligence and motivation to share, first food, then information, that laid the foundations for the evolution of human language. The primordial language, and those deriving from it, emerged in a context in which the cooperative care of children made the sharing not only of nourishment but also of experience natural.

This motivation to share evolved along with the ability to transmit knowledge. And so, over time, geographically isolated human groups developed distinct genetic traits, as demonstrated by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, but also different languages and, consequently, different cuisines. The “genetic clusters” that form through genetic drift or natural selection often coincide with the “linguistic clusters” and with distinct cultural models. In other words, “genes, languages, and diets travel together.”

But biology, without history, is not enough to explain what we put on our plates. As John R. Krebs points out, food preferences are the result of a co-evolution between genes, culture, and ecology. The example of lactase persistence (that is, the ability to digest milk in adulthood) shows how a cultural habit, such as the consumption of milk in populations that were the first to domesticate ruminants, can modify our DNA within just a few thousand years.

Not only what we eat, but also how and with whom we do it is a distinctive trait of Homo sapiens culture. Massimo Montanari reminds us that food is never only natural, but is always transformed, chosen, and narrated. Preparing a dish is like constructing a sentence: it requires grammar, syntax, and meaning. For this reason, every cuisine has its own lexicon, its metaphors, its rules, for which every meal is a discourse, made up of words and dishes, of silences and rituals.

Thus, around the fire first and the table later, food and linguistic codes have been intertwined. Again, Montanari tells us how food has, over time, become an instrument of belonging, resistance, and identity, because it reveals who we are, where we come from, and with whom we choose to share bread.

At the end of our journey with Lucy, we discover that speaking and eating are the two great tools with which we have built our humanity: both serve to bind us to others, to transmit knowledge, and to recognize ourselves as part of a group. And the Mediterranean Diet, with its harmony of flavors and landscapes, is perhaps the most successful chapter of this long story made of alliances between nature and culture, between body, thoughts, and words.”

A spasso con Lucy – available from September in all bookstores and online stores – gathers this reflection and transforms it into a new perspective on food: not only a source of nourishment, but a key to better understand our relationship with the world and with others, among sustainability, health, and shared identity.

*This text is taken from the afterword of the book A spasso con Lucy. Perché mangiamo come parliamo? Virtù e valore delle proteine animali, written by Professor Giuseppe Pulina, full professor of Ethics and Sustainability of Livestock Farming at the University of Sassari and President of the Sustainable Meat Association.

Read Animal Proteins, Science, and Identity: Let’s Find Out Together!>>>