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Pseudograins, that thing I argue with myself about
10 months ago
At least when it comes to lore, and believe me when I say I tend to just think about little niche things about the general lore of the dragonscape (most of that has been set in stone for some time), or about the comic or some cultural group within the setting outside of my comic work.
Or I think about mudbricks, I like those things.
But of course also I try and work my way around lore issues I have with my own setting and one of those that has consumed my mind for the past month is an aspect of the drek and orm diet and it is something that's been around since about the beginning of the current canon and well before it. And that simple statement is that:
Drekir nor Ormer can process cereal grains
Now, I have never been a big cook guy, I didn't understand how damn nuanced cooking can be and, thanks to a lot of information from a family member who is very into food history, as well as thanks to my own efforts to cook and understand food better I learned a lot of things that were probably taught to me in middle school that had long since fallen under a pile of multiple decades of time. Namely of course how you cook different grains and why different cereals cook differently and the question hit me like a brick. That being:
"Why exactly can drekir nor ormer process cereal grains? what about their biology makes that impossible aside from an arbitrary 'said so'".
Now granted, That answer is likely plenty easy, drekir nor ormer likely can't eat cereal grains because they simply cannot process gluten. Which is true of a lot of animals that can't eat cereal grains due to their digestive systems not being really well evolved to digest it. That inability to digest it can lead to major digestive issues due to obstructing various parts of the digestive system. Pretty bad! But that would be what I would assume is the reason drekir nor ormer can digest cereal grains, they can't process gluten at all.
But that does beg the question. A pretty loud question.
So what about gluten free options?
As frankly there are a lot of gluten free cereals out there! I mean the most famous of course being Maize, Corn. But grains and pseudograins like Millet, Buckwheat, Quinoa, Amaranth, Oats and even rice, along with many more. If the case is that drekir and ormer cannot eat cereal grains due to gluten, then whats to say they couldn't theoretically eat things like Maize, Oats, Millet and Amaranth without issue? What about natively õndemic pseudograins?
I mean obviously with respect to our own pseudograins some of those species are simply extinct in the Americas, plants like Corn and Oats need humans to spread their seeds. Seeing as the product you want would be their seeds and, seeing that you don't want those seeds shedding early, they have been genetically tweaked to just not shed their seeds. But as a result should humans disappear for several years, or more seriously 100+ years those crops (and many others) will simply die out.
That said though, it could be the case that human colonials reintroduce plants like corn and oats into the Americas. Or that simply a similar plant, either õndemic or originally of our reality, is cultivated and domesticated over thousands of years to fill a similar niche.
Another issue however is the fact that drekir are mesocarnivores, Ormer granted are omnivores so I am gonna skip them. But drekir truly need to eat meat with some regularity. about 50-70% of a dreks daily calories had best come from meat. While that doesn't exclude them from eating gluten free pseudograins assuming the above becomes canon, it does make it hard to justify settling and cultivating large fields of oats or rice when, really, meat is the common staple crop.
Though Ormer have to be dedicated agriculturalists, they just need too many calories for a genetically viable population to do much else. So I imagine they would love growing pseudograins as an easy carbohydrate source. Drekir could get a hold of any variety of regionally cultivated flour from them, but perhaps the more horticultural drekir out there may supplement wild or herded meat sources, wild fruits and plants, etc. with a quick growing, short season pseudograin. It may even mix well with subsistence strategies like Insect farming, in which insect flour can be mixed in with a starchy flour to be baked into shelf stable flatbreads. So something more to compliment their staple meat sources with a high source of carbohydrates.
So not something drekir could live off of, but definitely something that I am sure they would happily have in their life alongside a consistent source of meat.
Though lastly is more of a writers reason, and it's mostly an effort to avoid an easy path to subsistence through agriculture and that is the question I can't answer for myself (hence why I am typing this whole thing out). I just think it would be lame for a setting of mesocarnivores to all become sedentary farmers. Horticulturalism is about as far as I would imagine a drek community would go in cultivating plants, and for larger sedentary populations Insect farming may turn into the go to engine of urbanized chiefdoms, protocities and city states.
With of course more contextually important things taken as needed, like how there were dense populations in the Pacific Northwest that had gotten by for most of the regions history on hunting and gathering. Just talking with broad strokes here to keep things short.
Now on one hand, I think just making the writing decision to allow drekir and ormer access to gluten free starches and pseudograins may not really change a ton of things, especially in the time of the Awakening comics like The Long Hike. Takes time for things like this to really pick up. And even then I doubt it would change long term cultural developments since regardless at the end of the day, drekir need meat and even something similar to Maize would just be a secondary, supplementary food source rather than a source of subsistence.
But something about just handwaiving gluten free pseudograins, however strange, feels like a slight to the identity of the drekir. but I dunno, it's something I am stuck on.
If you have read this far thanks for reading! If you have any thoughts let me know of course as frankly, I am stuck on this whole thing as what started as a simple explanation of why dragons can't eat bread has turned into a bit of a mudpit. In the mean time though be well! It's gettin cold out, so nab a jacket or something
Or I think about mudbricks, I like those things.
But of course also I try and work my way around lore issues I have with my own setting and one of those that has consumed my mind for the past month is an aspect of the drek and orm diet and it is something that's been around since about the beginning of the current canon and well before it. And that simple statement is that:
Drekir nor Ormer can process cereal grains
Now, I have never been a big cook guy, I didn't understand how damn nuanced cooking can be and, thanks to a lot of information from a family member who is very into food history, as well as thanks to my own efforts to cook and understand food better I learned a lot of things that were probably taught to me in middle school that had long since fallen under a pile of multiple decades of time. Namely of course how you cook different grains and why different cereals cook differently and the question hit me like a brick. That being:
"Why exactly can drekir nor ormer process cereal grains? what about their biology makes that impossible aside from an arbitrary 'said so'".
Now granted, That answer is likely plenty easy, drekir nor ormer likely can't eat cereal grains because they simply cannot process gluten. Which is true of a lot of animals that can't eat cereal grains due to their digestive systems not being really well evolved to digest it. That inability to digest it can lead to major digestive issues due to obstructing various parts of the digestive system. Pretty bad! But that would be what I would assume is the reason drekir nor ormer can digest cereal grains, they can't process gluten at all.
But that does beg the question. A pretty loud question.
So what about gluten free options?
As frankly there are a lot of gluten free cereals out there! I mean the most famous of course being Maize, Corn. But grains and pseudograins like Millet, Buckwheat, Quinoa, Amaranth, Oats and even rice, along with many more. If the case is that drekir and ormer cannot eat cereal grains due to gluten, then whats to say they couldn't theoretically eat things like Maize, Oats, Millet and Amaranth without issue? What about natively õndemic pseudograins?
I mean obviously with respect to our own pseudograins some of those species are simply extinct in the Americas, plants like Corn and Oats need humans to spread their seeds. Seeing as the product you want would be their seeds and, seeing that you don't want those seeds shedding early, they have been genetically tweaked to just not shed their seeds. But as a result should humans disappear for several years, or more seriously 100+ years those crops (and many others) will simply die out.
That said though, it could be the case that human colonials reintroduce plants like corn and oats into the Americas. Or that simply a similar plant, either õndemic or originally of our reality, is cultivated and domesticated over thousands of years to fill a similar niche.
Another issue however is the fact that drekir are mesocarnivores, Ormer granted are omnivores so I am gonna skip them. But drekir truly need to eat meat with some regularity. about 50-70% of a dreks daily calories had best come from meat. While that doesn't exclude them from eating gluten free pseudograins assuming the above becomes canon, it does make it hard to justify settling and cultivating large fields of oats or rice when, really, meat is the common staple crop.
Though Ormer have to be dedicated agriculturalists, they just need too many calories for a genetically viable population to do much else. So I imagine they would love growing pseudograins as an easy carbohydrate source. Drekir could get a hold of any variety of regionally cultivated flour from them, but perhaps the more horticultural drekir out there may supplement wild or herded meat sources, wild fruits and plants, etc. with a quick growing, short season pseudograin. It may even mix well with subsistence strategies like Insect farming, in which insect flour can be mixed in with a starchy flour to be baked into shelf stable flatbreads. So something more to compliment their staple meat sources with a high source of carbohydrates.
So not something drekir could live off of, but definitely something that I am sure they would happily have in their life alongside a consistent source of meat.
Though lastly is more of a writers reason, and it's mostly an effort to avoid an easy path to subsistence through agriculture and that is the question I can't answer for myself (hence why I am typing this whole thing out). I just think it would be lame for a setting of mesocarnivores to all become sedentary farmers. Horticulturalism is about as far as I would imagine a drek community would go in cultivating plants, and for larger sedentary populations Insect farming may turn into the go to engine of urbanized chiefdoms, protocities and city states.
With of course more contextually important things taken as needed, like how there were dense populations in the Pacific Northwest that had gotten by for most of the regions history on hunting and gathering. Just talking with broad strokes here to keep things short.
Now on one hand, I think just making the writing decision to allow drekir and ormer access to gluten free starches and pseudograins may not really change a ton of things, especially in the time of the Awakening comics like The Long Hike. Takes time for things like this to really pick up. And even then I doubt it would change long term cultural developments since regardless at the end of the day, drekir need meat and even something similar to Maize would just be a secondary, supplementary food source rather than a source of subsistence.
But something about just handwaiving gluten free pseudograins, however strange, feels like a slight to the identity of the drekir. but I dunno, it's something I am stuck on.
If you have read this far thanks for reading! If you have any thoughts let me know of course as frankly, I am stuck on this whole thing as what started as a simple explanation of why dragons can't eat bread has turned into a bit of a mudpit. In the mean time though be well! It's gettin cold out, so nab a jacket or something
Honestly, I would like to have more variety in food, especially for Thalmvaric's time or for the DCA canoe (I may be the only person who is interested in making a story with that canoe, but if I became a drekir I would just want to continue eating Venezuelan chorizo empanada) :google translator
Y de que sepa yo, eres la sola persona interesada en el canon DCA yeah
con los drekir si no pueden comer los granos, va a ser una montaña de trabajo sin un garantizo de una comida. Es por eso que usualmente los reseros/pastores/cabreros/ etc. son nómadas. Por que pueden alimentar sus ganados por hierbas salvajes, que sería más fácil y más eficiente por los drekir, con la suposición que no podrían comer los granos
Cats are obligate carnivores. They must have meat in order to survive, as their bodies cannot synthesize certain nutrients on any diet other than pure meat. And yes, you only need to take a walk down the pet food aisle to see hundreds of bags of convenient, tasty, dry cat food!
This is because if you blend enough meat, meat products and essential nutrients into the mixture, cats *can* consume pseudograins like rice and peas. Indeed, if you read the labels, the higher-end cat foods strive to avoid grains like maize and wheat. And while cats, my own especially, may be able to safely eat such foods, they absolutely prefer meat! Believe me, Winnie sings me the Song of Her People every time I open a can; any can! That means that drekir could quite probably consume certain types of pseudograins, like rice, peas or potatoes.
However...
Just because they can, doesn't mean they should.
Indeed, every vet will tell you that felines should be fed a 100% meat diet, and nothing else. And the medical science backs it up, too. Cats fed on dry food have all kinds of problems, ranging from allergies to serious, life-threatening diseases, such as diabetes, liver disease and renal failure, and that's just the start.
But for short-term dietary needs, non-gluten grains can absolutely serve as a filler, especially when mixed with things like dried meat and fish powder. Indeed, grains like rice, millet, aramanth and quinoa, which already grow wild, without human assistance, could be ground up, mixed with powdered meat, and turned into "kibble". No actual farming would be required, perhaps other than simply scattering the grain in areas where you know you're going to be traveling during seasonal migration. Which is pretty much how human hunter-gatherers did things for many thousands of years.
Indeed, the manufacture of kibble would most likely be a very seasonal event. You'd spend the spring and summer hunting and fishing, collecting as much meat and fish as possible, and dry it. Then you'd either move to the areas where you expect the autumn grains to be ready for harvest, or you'd send harvesting groups to those locations to bring the grains back. The grains get ground into flour and/or meal, mixed with the powdered meat and fish you've been stocking up on, and processed into kibble.
That is now either the primary, or supplementary food for the winter. Up the fat content a bit, and now you have "iron rations", meant for those who are engaged in travel or war parties.
You'd also want to do this during the cooler months, as kibble would be prone to turning rancid if exposed to heat, air and moisture. Or, you could specifically render fats into oil, and allow them to become rancid! Because one of the products of rancid animal fat is vitamin C, which is still an essential nutrient for all creatures.
For the drekir living in regions where winters are cold, this could be a very valuable source of food. But for those living in warmer climates, or particularly humid ones, I don't see it working out well for them at all, as it would quickly become moldy.
This sort of system would also be a veritable gold mine for lore.
No matter how you cut it, kibble is *not* going to be a popular food. It's just one of those things you have to endure in order to survive. Indeed, even among the Aboriginal Americans and Canadians, pemmican was not something you ate because you liked it, it was because you had no choice. As such, you did everything and anything you could to "dress it up" or "thin it out". As a travel food, kibble would be the butt of many jokes, stories, songs and poems about the misery of eating it on the trail. You could even compose songs, meant to be hummed to the accompaniment of *CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRONCH-MUNCH*. They could even be songs about better days and tastier food of summer.
But much like pemmican would get turned into a stew like rubaboo, kibble could be mixed with hot water and turned into a semi-soft stew, or cooked down into a warming mush. And much like rubaboo, it could be "dressed up" with things like maple syrup, honey, or even powdered honeypot ants.
So to summarize, I agree that grains of any kind would not be something the drekir would settle down and farm. Rather they would be a valuable resource, meant to be collected during seasonal travel, and utilized to extend an otherwise limited resource (meat).
Drekir can live off of just meat of course, in fact many do. But a majority tend to live off of around 50-70% of their diet being meat, and the remainder being, fruits, vegetables, and starchy non cereals like potatoes and starchy roots like cattail.
And as it stands they still won’t eat anything with gluten. It’s just about the extension of “they can eat a potato, why not other gluten free starches?”
All that said I do agree overall with the comparison, too much starch and not enough meat would certainly hollow a drek out fast.
Of course as you mentioned things like pemmican and jerky, be it of fish, bug, or red meat is about the best food preservation drekir may have aside from smoking and drying for meats. So the role a starch would likely play, as you mentioned, is just a side thing to go with it.
I think, even without the change of diet listed in the journal above, a drek food pyramid would and likely always will be (in order of importance) meat, vegetables, fruit, and then a hint of starch.
Of course that being a healthy diet and assuming drekir would all eat it is another matter.
I would assume also as you pointed out and as I think is in the journal, that those starches if not gathered would be cultivated horticulturally. I imagine that sort of seminomadism would innately compliment livestock herding and/or hunting and gathering well