Before farming, many people lived as hunter-gatherer groups and had a diet of mostly fruits and vegetables with occasional meat. While farming provided a stable food source by allowing groups to grow food near their homes, the crops farmed, such as corn, lacked nutrients and led to health issues like tooth loss and may have contributed to the decline of societies like Cahokia. Farming presented the novel idea to hunter-gatherers that they no longer had to search for food and could instead produce it themselves locally.