During millions of years of evolution, human beings were largely subject to low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets (the foods generally available to our ancestors). The Paleolithic diet was based on lean meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, root vegetables, eggs and nuts [1,2]. The diet of late archaic hominid populations and their contemporaneous modern humans included marine food supply [3]. Modern civilization was born around the Mediterranean Sea. Ancient Greeks and Romans created a culinary culture that lasted for centuries, into present times [4]. For example, the Ancient Greeks used olives as their main source of fat instead of animal meat; they believed – in contrast to those they deemed barbarians – that animal fat was an unhealthy food. Olive oil was created to help preserve the olives. Barbarians ate more meat and animal products such as milk and cheese because they were nomadic and had less opportunity to grow olive trees or to prepare olive oil.
The discovery of America lead to the incorporation of new fruits and vegetables that enriched European gastronomy: tomatoes, corn, potatoes, chocolate, etc. In the 5th century BC Herodotus mentioned a fountain in the land of the Ethiopians, whose healing water was responsible of the exceptional longevity of this people. In Spain, during Moorish rule (from the 8th to the 15th century), stories about the water of eternal life or youth were very popular, and would have been known to the explorers who journeyed to America. Thus, in 1513 the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León claimed to have found “restorative waters” in what today is Florida.
The importance of assets to well-being and economic security compels an interest by policy makers in low-income asset building (Sherraden 1991, Oliver and Shapiro 1995, Shapiro and Wolff 2001, Retsinas and Belsky 2002a). By one measure of asset poverty, as many as 41 percent of households in 1999 had inadequate savings or other liquid assets to cover three months of expenses at the poverty level (Caner and Wolff 2001).1 Even if households were to liquidate all their assets and use them to repay all their debts, one-quarter of them still would not have enough to cover three months of basic living expenses. Among those with the lowest incomes, asset poverty is more severe. Fully one-third of all homeowners and two-thirds of all renters in the bottom income quintile, for example, had $500 or less in savings and other liquid assets in 2001 (Chart 1).
Not all assets have equal appeal or priority as targets for policy. Of greatest interest are those with the potential to appreciate in value, such as real estate, or to enhance the income earning capacity of their owners, such as vehicles (under the assumption that they expand the range of locations over which employment can be found) or equity in a business. Among assets with the potential for appreciation, homes, transaction accounts and retirement accounts are the ones that are the most commonly held by low-income households (Chart 2).
Strategic marketing draws heavily from the field of strategic management (Day, 1994; Fahy and Smithee, 1999). A major shift in the field of strategic management has been towards searching competitive advantage from within the firm, in the form of resource-based view (RBV), core competenceand capability perspectives (Barney, 1991; Hoskisson et al., 1999; Penrose, 1959; Teece, Pisano and Shuen, 1997). This shift has also reached strategic marketing, as more research embrace these perspectives (e.g. Capron and Hulland, 1999; Fahy and Smithee, 1999; Srivastava, Fahey and Christensen, 2001; Vorhies and Morgan, 2005).
