Ertakar and Food
I find myself continually thinking about like domestic, industrial and agriculture elements of a setting. They matter so much and do so much for the overall culture of a place in ways people don't notice until they sit down and think about it.
So we all know that major war can cause great changes in rules, structure, society and other things. Most people also acknowledge how war can create great leaps in technology. But less commonly do I see people talk about the ways in which War affects agriculture and the food industry.
In our own society, the reason why processed foods really took off was because of the world wars. It was technology developed to deal with resource issues that occurred during the wars, both for feeding troops and dealing with resource limitations. After the conclusions of the war, it was realized there was big money in food processing, more than what many of these companies were making before, and it changed things forever. Companies looked for new ways to process things, new ways to use those processing techniques, and new ways to market and sell them. This has changed the entire landscape of how we purchase our food and what we determine as food. SO that always leads me to think: What happens when a society never needs to turn to mass processing of any kinda and how does that guide the society.
I've been thinking about this a lot for Ertkar. First and foremost, Ertakar are carnivores with some omnivorous supplementing, similar to canines. As such, their society always leaned toward and favored active hunting and fresh kills, with added foraging and fresh produce. Because personal hunting was a common staple of even modern society, when war happened there was little need for large scale rations as most soldiers took care of their own meals and hunted together. Not only that, but they could eat the bodies of enemies and allies in a pinch with little risk to their own health. So with all this in mind the act of food processing demand would be minimal to non-existent depending on the location.
Ertakar also do not reproduce at the nearly the same rate that humans do, so their population naturally is a fraction of human society, so their demand for food and how much of it would be different. However I still think there would be concerns regarding environment resources. Over time they'd likely have to intentionally foster growth for prey animals in the surrounding environments. There'd likely be rules and restrictions on hunting how much and how often. Livestock duties would be more about maintaining numbers of a population in a given area, not so much strictly enclosed farms. Wars come with their own issue of ecological destruction, as over-hunting would be a form of choking out the resources of their opponents, leaving long term consequences for the surrounding land.
I think about day to day modern lives, where they keep jars of glass, plastics or clay depending on their preference, filled with stables, oils, spices, and other such things they get in bulks at distributors. They just keep them clean and re-fill them, no purchasing of individual containers each time. The Kitchens with built in standard equipment for food drying and preserving done at home. Ice boxes are around more than actual refrigerators, most never saw the need for anything more robust, and still get used to this day. (I also babbled about Ertakar kitchens in the past) There's butcheries even if hunting for the self is a pretty common skill, it came about with busier and busier modern work. The denser the city the more demand for butcheries with fresh kills to make up for lost time with work. Cooking is more for the purpose of preservation and storage, such as taking meals with them to work or long journeys. Eating meat and produce raw is the common way to do it.
Also I get the feeling that social or gathered eating is hit or miss in certain societies, but leaning into the uncommon. Since there are atypical family units there was never the sort of need for family dinner, so to speak, and most eat in their own time. I'm still figuring my way around general life structure and how work factors into day to day life.
The introduction of humans to their society dramatically changed the way they approached prepared food for sale, but not in the way of typical food processing. There are a few things that they carried over, I'm going to say sodas or the concept there of wasn't very common until humans came about, but the process of making them is different, and they favor reusable glass over disposable containers. (yes, you could say they have soda parlors) I also think iced treats were brought along with humans. Northern Ertakar groups have had treats with ice and snow but not in the same way that humans did. Though there is a demand for street food before humans, most of it was easy to purchase raw cuts from butchery stalls, cooking or light searing happened for presentation, novelty and texture. As the human population grew and integrated into Ertakar society, the demand for prepared and cooked food exploded, leading to food districts that just specialized in prepared foods. There are no fast foods, just food street carts. Restaurants didn't happen until the integration of humans into Ertakar society, and are still considered more of a human thing but some Ertakar visit them with a taste for human preparation practices.
They don't have industry in the same way we do, their most advanced departments are biological, historical and medical. This is not the same literally everywhere, but they're still pretty prominent across the board. Because of this, lab grown meat became a common part of food options available around the time of the comic I'm working on. Lab grown meat are a common staple used for prepared foods, mostly human foods, as most Ertakar don't like the texture of eating it raw and find it lacking in flavor on it's own.
Most food sales are done directly from distributors, farms, that sort of thing, as direct a point of sale as possible with produce stalls in residential districts. There was never much demand for year round produce, due to meat being their primary food source, all produce was supplementary and changed with the seasons. The concept of year round produce, even produce from other vastly different climates that wasn't dried or preserved in some way, was a strangely foreign concept. Some places experimented in human provided agriculture techniques but it never caught on in a wide scale, as it was often seen as unimportant or even wasteful. It was mostly the northern establishments that really saw the benefit of human agriculture 'lifehacks'.
Also Ertakar find dairy products really weird. Like gross weird. Every so often you'll find one or two that actually like dairy products but it's considered pretty gross, socially.
So we all know that major war can cause great changes in rules, structure, society and other things. Most people also acknowledge how war can create great leaps in technology. But less commonly do I see people talk about the ways in which War affects agriculture and the food industry.
In our own society, the reason why processed foods really took off was because of the world wars. It was technology developed to deal with resource issues that occurred during the wars, both for feeding troops and dealing with resource limitations. After the conclusions of the war, it was realized there was big money in food processing, more than what many of these companies were making before, and it changed things forever. Companies looked for new ways to process things, new ways to use those processing techniques, and new ways to market and sell them. This has changed the entire landscape of how we purchase our food and what we determine as food. SO that always leads me to think: What happens when a society never needs to turn to mass processing of any kinda and how does that guide the society.
I've been thinking about this a lot for Ertkar. First and foremost, Ertakar are carnivores with some omnivorous supplementing, similar to canines. As such, their society always leaned toward and favored active hunting and fresh kills, with added foraging and fresh produce. Because personal hunting was a common staple of even modern society, when war happened there was little need for large scale rations as most soldiers took care of their own meals and hunted together. Not only that, but they could eat the bodies of enemies and allies in a pinch with little risk to their own health. So with all this in mind the act of food processing demand would be minimal to non-existent depending on the location.
Ertakar also do not reproduce at the nearly the same rate that humans do, so their population naturally is a fraction of human society, so their demand for food and how much of it would be different. However I still think there would be concerns regarding environment resources. Over time they'd likely have to intentionally foster growth for prey animals in the surrounding environments. There'd likely be rules and restrictions on hunting how much and how often. Livestock duties would be more about maintaining numbers of a population in a given area, not so much strictly enclosed farms. Wars come with their own issue of ecological destruction, as over-hunting would be a form of choking out the resources of their opponents, leaving long term consequences for the surrounding land.
I think about day to day modern lives, where they keep jars of glass, plastics or clay depending on their preference, filled with stables, oils, spices, and other such things they get in bulks at distributors. They just keep them clean and re-fill them, no purchasing of individual containers each time. The Kitchens with built in standard equipment for food drying and preserving done at home. Ice boxes are around more than actual refrigerators, most never saw the need for anything more robust, and still get used to this day. (I also babbled about Ertakar kitchens in the past) There's butcheries even if hunting for the self is a pretty common skill, it came about with busier and busier modern work. The denser the city the more demand for butcheries with fresh kills to make up for lost time with work. Cooking is more for the purpose of preservation and storage, such as taking meals with them to work or long journeys. Eating meat and produce raw is the common way to do it.
Also I get the feeling that social or gathered eating is hit or miss in certain societies, but leaning into the uncommon. Since there are atypical family units there was never the sort of need for family dinner, so to speak, and most eat in their own time. I'm still figuring my way around general life structure and how work factors into day to day life.
The introduction of humans to their society dramatically changed the way they approached prepared food for sale, but not in the way of typical food processing. There are a few things that they carried over, I'm going to say sodas or the concept there of wasn't very common until humans came about, but the process of making them is different, and they favor reusable glass over disposable containers. (yes, you could say they have soda parlors) I also think iced treats were brought along with humans. Northern Ertakar groups have had treats with ice and snow but not in the same way that humans did. Though there is a demand for street food before humans, most of it was easy to purchase raw cuts from butchery stalls, cooking or light searing happened for presentation, novelty and texture. As the human population grew and integrated into Ertakar society, the demand for prepared and cooked food exploded, leading to food districts that just specialized in prepared foods. There are no fast foods, just food street carts. Restaurants didn't happen until the integration of humans into Ertakar society, and are still considered more of a human thing but some Ertakar visit them with a taste for human preparation practices.
They don't have industry in the same way we do, their most advanced departments are biological, historical and medical. This is not the same literally everywhere, but they're still pretty prominent across the board. Because of this, lab grown meat became a common part of food options available around the time of the comic I'm working on. Lab grown meat are a common staple used for prepared foods, mostly human foods, as most Ertakar don't like the texture of eating it raw and find it lacking in flavor on it's own.
Most food sales are done directly from distributors, farms, that sort of thing, as direct a point of sale as possible with produce stalls in residential districts. There was never much demand for year round produce, due to meat being their primary food source, all produce was supplementary and changed with the seasons. The concept of year round produce, even produce from other vastly different climates that wasn't dried or preserved in some way, was a strangely foreign concept. Some places experimented in human provided agriculture techniques but it never caught on in a wide scale, as it was often seen as unimportant or even wasteful. It was mostly the northern establishments that really saw the benefit of human agriculture 'lifehacks'.
Also Ertakar find dairy products really weird. Like gross weird. Every so often you'll find one or two that actually like dairy products but it's considered pretty gross, socially.