Of the things available to most of us, what are common and the oldest things we might find on a store shelf?
I’m going to suggest food items that we still take from nature and eat with minimal preparation:
- Honey
- Fish like salmon, trout, grouper
- Shellfish (eg oysters)
We have evidence of shellfish and fish being eaten for a very long time - at least the middle stone age at 140kya - in middens which are 10s of thousands of years old.
Honey is likely to have been a food source - a treat even - even before humans left Africa (so before 100kya) but sadly this would be invisible in the archeological record
I was going to say oatmeal, but honey is actually a better answer, since it predates even agriculture as a major food.
If you live somewhere with fresh seafood that’s also a great answer. I wonder if grocery stores somewhere sell fresh insects, although that wouldn’t be the West as per OP.
