Food which was intended as such by nature

Most vegetable matter is either leaf (analogous to the lungs, and can cause shock and death if removed from a living organism), root (analogous to the digestive system, and will also cause shock and death if removed), or trunk (the connector of the plant, whereby leaves get nutrients from the roots and the roots get air from the leaves, and obviously lethal if removed).

Now, we're all familiar with alimentary codes (like kosher) which seek to keep "pure" the diet. So I started thinking about what sort of diet one would have if one limited oneself to those foods which nature intended to be food and only food -- without any other function.

Here's the list I got:

1: Milk -- Produced by certain glands possessed by the females of all mammal species (including humans), milk is a nutritious secretion designed for young organisms, but which adults can also drink. Suck a teat near you.

2: Honey -- Produced by bees. Honey is nectar which has been processed by worker bees for use to feed the entire hive. In other words, bee barf.

3: Egg Yolk -- In egg-laying species, the incubating foetus has no access to the food of its mother. It therefore requires an alternative foodsource; that role is filled by that part of the egg called the "yolk," which is connected umbilically to the organism. Of course, if the egg is unfertilised, that's a lot of nutrients going to waste. In other words, a bird's menstruation.

4: Fruit -- In some species of plant, the fruit is the nutrients which feed the seed as it grows; in others, it is used to entice animals, who pass the seeds undigested. Either way, the fruit serves as ready nutrients.

(I'd also like to note that nectar is such a substance, which attracts insects, to which pollen will stick. However, nectar doesn't exist in sufficient quantities for anyone to use as a staple in their diet.)

Now, let it be known, I'm no vegetarian -- but if I were going to become one, I'd be consistent; I wouldn't eat anything that caused death. The whole "vegan" doesn't really make much sense to me, because on the one hand you're still causing the death of an organism (in this case a plant, but what's so special or not special about plants that you can run around chomping on them willy-nilly?) but at the same time, you're missing out on two of the three most nutritious foodstuffs with no real justification. After all, most vegans will eat honey....

I'm just saying, make up your mind, 'sall.

As mentioned above, the four main items that are actually intended to be food are milk, honey, eggs and fruit. Here's a breakdown of each of them:

Milk is produced by adult, female mammals, but only when they are lactating. It is intended for their offspring to digest when they are very young. It is certainly not intended for someone unrelated to consume, let alone someone of a different species. Cows are kept pregnant almost continually in order to produce the milk that ends up in supermarkets. They are expected to produce 12,000 litres of milk during their ten month lactation, causing them to carry ten times as much milk at any one time than would be required for their calves. After giving birth, the cow's calf is taken away and killed, to be sold as veal. Although the natural lifespan of a cow is about twenty-five to thirty years, the lifespan of a modern dairy cow is only five.

Honey is, similarly, food for young bees. It is taken by people and replaced by either sugar syrup or corn syrup. The bees are fed during spring to ensure that the bees work earlier in the year than they are supposed to. Queen bees are usually killed and replaced every two years, as opposed to living naturally for up to five. They may actually be artificially inseminated, just like cows.

Eggs, in the context of food, usually refers to the eggs of chickens. Different chickens are used for the purposes of becoming meat and laying eggs, which means that all male chicks of the egg-laying sort are killed within a few days of being born, usually by being gassed. Female chicks are put in battery cages about eighteen weeks later. Each shed usually has more than 20,000 hens in it, kept in cages that each hold four or five of them. These cages can be as small as three quarters of a sheet of A4 paper. Egg-laying, eating and drinking are the only things the birds can do, and the food and water supplies are automated. It is estimated that over two million battery hens die in their cages every year.

Fruit is eaten by various animals, who tend to eat and later excrete the seeds, far away from the original source. This enables the species to propagate.

So although all of the above can be classed as food that was meant to be eaten, only fruit and your mother's milk was actually meant to be eaten by you, and contrary to popular belief, eating milk, honey and eggs can contribute directly to animals being killed.