I’m currently reading Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mind, which helps understand how our brain copes with all the information we take in and how to improve our brains.
Then I came across this quote:
Out of 30,000 edible plants thought to exist on earth, just eleven account for 93% of all that humans eat: oats, corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, yucca (also called tapioca or cassava), sorghum, millet, beans, barley, and rye.
This figure (originally quoted in Bill Bryson’s At Home: a short history of private life) just goes to show how narrow-minded we are as a race, and also how difficult we find it to break out of the norm.
As an example at the opposite end of the spectrum, research from Nielsen in 2014 showed that despite having – on average – 189 TV channels to choose from, Americans watch only 17.
What’s even more interesting is that this figure (17) hasn’t barely wavered in 5 years, despite a huge leap in the number of available channels.
We cannot cope with any more information!
