THE STRENGTH OF HUMAN SPECIES

"Hey dad, you'll never guess what? Yesterday, we ate lamb," Ousmane exclaimed, opening his eyes wide; they were shining with joy.

"Keep it quiet, please Ousmane, " Fatou said softly in Arabic, flashing a knowing smile at our son who was a young teenager then.

"And how did you get that lamb?" I asked, intrigued, and quite frankly envious. I hadn't eaten meat for several months already. 

Meat hadn't only become expensive, but it was especially rare due to the lack of pasture. Once unjustly blamed for climate change, animal husbandry had proven to be as victimised as we were in a system that was horrifically greedy and manipulative. The leaders who were forcing harsh sanctions on people to have them eat steaks and dumplings made out of insects and vegetables, stuffed their faces with meat in the comfort of their private homes. After feeding herbivores with soybeans and antibiotics, the rich men had started to feed men with insects and genetically modified vegetables.

And all that for what?

To save a planet that was dying of a completely different evil: human insanity.

"Family secret!" Fatou replied, smiling.

"Am I not part of the family anymore, now?" I retorted reproachfully.

"Of course, you're still family," Ousmane said, pulling a small pocket behind him and opening it in front of me with a broad smile.

"Thank you!" I sighed, taking the piece of cooked meat that my son was proudly handing to me. I smiled and looked gratefully at Fatou, who I knew had prepared this meat with a lot of love. The same applied to the farmer who had raised the animal of that meat.

***

Life resumed its course faster than human species had imagined. After the first years of shock, men pulled themselves together and adapted to their new environment as they had always done since the dawn of time. This is what makes us strong, isn't it? Men always find how to adapt to their environment. Unfortunately for humanity, adapting is the only thing men know how to do, adapting without learning anything, doomed to tirelessly repeating the same mistakes, differently, elsewhere until the day when it is finally the environment again and again that imposes real change.

In the four corners of the world, each nation began to develop with its own means the technology, the architecture and the way of life adapted to our new climatic conditions. The gap between rich and poor countries had been filled during the colonisation of rich countries by their artificial intelligence. From then on, most nations could afford all the means to more or less sort themselves out. The hardest thing for men was to adapt to their new habits. First of all, they had to forget the pleasures of meat (beef, chicken, lamb, etc.) to accept the reality of their impoverished, tired, and burned soil. After having satisfied men's gluttony for years, the soil could barely provide for men's basic needs. In my time today in the early 2080's, everybody including the rich men eats only one meal a day, usually either in the morning, at noon or in the evening depending on their own preference. 

How many times a day did we use to eat on average in the 2020s? 

Five to six times a day, didn't we? 

Unbelievable! It seems like that's all we were doing all day! 

Eating only once a day came easily to me since I had got into the habit of eating only twice a day like my father: at noon and in the evening. For many people however, the transition felt worse than torture. Many of them cheating and eating more than the authorised quota. So, governments organised advertising campaigns to educate the population how to eat less, but above all to eat better. Humanity who hadn't felt satiety for more than a century had to relearn how to eat without bursting its stomach. Eating had finally regained its original purpose: to nourish. Eating no longer consisted of a way to comfort oneself, to seduce, or to forget one's sorrows. Humanity definitely had to break out of this infernal circle if they wanted to survive long enough even to see the dawn of the 22nd century.

As a result, the food we began to eat became simpler and more natural. We mainly ate the food in its raw form without packaging, barcodes or cardboard boxes. When there were any ingredients, they essentially consisted of three elements: water, an added vegetable or fruit. Sworn enemies of satiety, sugar and salt had been completely banned from our plates unless already contained naturally in the food. Men's insatiableness went hand in hand with their gluttony which had stripped planet Earth.