Most animals have a fairly simple diet, carnivores eat only meat their whole life, cows eat exclusively grass etc. So why are human bodies so picky and need a balance of protein, fat, carbs etc from different sources to perform well?
In: Biology
**Simply put, because we’ve changed our own environment the most. (Also animals care.)**
A dog is still eating meat, but *you’ll see the difference* if you feed dogs cheaper grade food full of fillers. They literally won’t live as long. If you want your dog to live a long, healthy life, you want to give them expensive vet-grade food, not cheap crap. We think of ourselves and our ‘balanced diet’ from the perspective on one who can *feel* an unbalanced diet, so we’re more strict on ourselves. And in countries where cattle can’t be grassfed year-round, they are absolutely given supplementary grain-fed while barned in winter – *and it’s still* not as healthy as being grassfed all year-round in more temperate climates. And you’re looking at animals as a collective, not the livelihood of each individual cow, deer, dog. So when they’re fine enough as a whole, we don’t think about it. We *do* think of *ourselves* in the individual.
But humans? We’ve bred our crops for size and yield. We’ve processed our food for shelf-life and flavour. Our food is now REALLY good at hitting that dopamine – fat, sugar, salt, proteins – as easily as possible, as cheaply as possible, for as much of the year as possible. Sugary foods that used to be seasonal and rare (honey, fruit) are now available all the time. We want to eat these things as much as we can because historically, sugar was valuable and hard to get. Now it’s the cheapest thing there is, it’s everywhere, it’s easy to get – but our bodies are running old software and haven’t gotten the memo. Same thing for the amount of meat we eat – it’s *good diet* to eat meat! But a lot of us eat *way too much* of it.
**Humans have to make a deliberate decision to get a balanced diet because we’ve spend generations making an *indulgent* one more attainable.**
A lot of animals have processes inside them that can convert and produce some of the things they’re missing in their diet.
Cows and other herbivores do not eat “just grass”. A natural pasture large enough will grow hundreds or thousands of different varieties of grasses, herbs and other plants that provide most of the nutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, fatty acids, vitamins, etc) that the animals need. Animals will also straight up eat dirt in small amounts to gain minerals. Every species of animal has their own digestive system (including microbiome) specialised on a diet that provides them with what they need. “Balanced” is different for different animals.
Your question includes a few common misconceptions, one that’s been addressed already.
Humans need a balanced diet, but that doesn’t necessarily imply a vast array of food types. That simply means the nutritional value of our food has to cover our needs.
It doesn’t have to be varied. You can very well thrive by eating the same handful of things every day.
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