REAL LIFE, CONNECTED TO NATURE.

Bees and birds are able to detect the scent, shape, and color of flowers, sorting out which ones are safe to visit. Herbivorous mammals detect, by smell, the patterns of plants fit for consumption, avoiding the poisonous ones.Carnivorous mammals learn to identify the traits of their prey. Amid an entire herd, they can pick out the potential victim by its wounds and illnesses.

Our ancestors did the same, internally registering the features and weaknesses of other beings in order to choose the viable ones and steer clear of the disposable ones. We still do this — or at least, we should.

That powerful intelligence was scattered by civilization's stimuli. We lost our original sense of smell, taste, sight, hearing, and touch. Our senses became half-functioning, anesthetized by an excess of artificiality.

Instead of connection with nature, we've absorbed unease, fear, and allergies. Any insect bite can trigger a chain reaction that ends up in a hospital. We've grown fragile, insecure, sick, and distant.

INTELLIGENT INSECTS

I only notice there are insects in the air when friends or more urban visitors arrive at the wilderness where I live. They get bitten right away. To protect themselves, they reach for repellents that need constant reapplying.

The other day I took a family from São Paulo on a trail down to the river. At the edge of the Pojuca, a cloud of insects surrounded the couple and their two children. Not a single insect on me. They noticed the phenomenon and chalked it up to some kind of magic. Why does this happen, they asked. I'm not sure, but I imagine the insects sense you as enemies, carrying the strange smell of the city. So they attack.

Smelling like the city isn't just giving off the scent of urban stress — it's exhaling sugar, alcohol, spoiled meat, nicotine, caffeine, antibiotics, anti-anxiety medication, hypertension, and fear. Smelling like the city means standing on the opposite side from any resemblance to wild nature — the dissimilar, the disconnected.

Modern civilization pulled the plug and unplugged us from the earth. It put us in rubber sandals, sat us down in plastic chairs, and laid us down on foam mattresses. On top of that, it started feeding the masses fake food — processed meats, modified wheat, corn, soy, oats — all packed with chemical additives, colorful poisons.

Industrialized foods are all dissimilar, meaning the body doesn't recognize them. They're like enemies with the smell of the city, standing at the riverbank. More than 90% of products in supermarkets are like this — disconnected. They're easy to identify: they all carry labels on their packaging. There, in fine print, every poison is listed — meaning the industry doesn't even hide its potential for death.

The recognizable ones, on the other hand, are the similar ones — they carry living molecules, the smell of the wild, the smell of life. The human body identifies them right away and welcomes them with the tribe's full honors.

These foods are easy to recognize. Unlike the others, they have no fine print, no instructions or warnings about use. No acidifiers, no preservatives, no artificial coloring. These similar foods have curves, bulges, expressions, flexibility, and fragility, just like us. Some are abundant, others small; some are calm, others exuberant, just like people. And finally, they are naturally perishable, just like all of us.

So if one day something labeled "long shelf life" turns up in front of you, run — because it means a quick death.