I've been just reading and politely keeping my opinion to myself, which I must say I'm getting better at doing. It is totally against my nature!
Suffice it to say, you take my veggies away from me and you've ruined my self-concept of probably being the gatherer part of that hunter-gatherer clique. *hovers protectively over her asparagus, artichokes, lettuces, turnips and other... *harrumph* non-foods* |
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I think you're making a mistake when you try to extrapolate how one locality of people ate to the entire world. Conditions were different in the various places and that lead to various regional diets. Compare the aboriginal Inuit diet with the Masai, the Maori, and Amazaon and even the different areas inside of Africa.
I think that much like us, if it tasted relatively good and didn't cause you to double over in cramps or die, you ate it when it was around. |
I note the doubt that is beginning to develope in these posts on the authenticity of TheBear's opinionated views and I share Kallyn's concern on how some are being easily duped by him, yet, none seem to see him as I do, as an imposter! He is simply regurgitating what has been written by others and all that he has mentioned on dieting has already been discussed on these forms. He is not actually sharing views and experiences but rather pedantically lecturing us so may we be careful of false prophets!
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I don't think you can definitively state what the Paleo diet was because we don't have that much evidence that lasted for 10,000 years. Bones stick around for a long, long time, but discarded vegetable matter tends to break down pretty quickly. Probably the best way to figure out what they ate is by looking at what people who have had limited contact with civilization are (or were) eating now (or earlier in the century).
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Well, so far looking through actual archeological papers, not people publishing diet-books are speculations on web sites, it invariably mentions vegetation was part of the diet.
Go to scholar.google.com and search on paleolithic diet and maybe throw in the word anthropology. Here's one sample with three references (1-3): http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/76/6/1308#R1 Quote:
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Try on this logic. If a species can get all the nutrients it needs from hunting and consuming wild game, then they would opt to do this. It is far more "bang for the buck" energy for starters. And the larger the game, the more "bang for the buck". Also, the nutrition in this WOE is far superior to any other WOE. If you doubt any of this, just ask our friend, the cat! SO... unless there was not enough game to go around, as long as we had the technology (Ray's type of technology... the sharp stick), we would have opted to eat this way... PERIOD!
And, even before that, if we had the brains to crack open bones and skulls with rocks, we could get a lot of good nutrients from marrow and brains left over by our friend, the cat. The only question then, is when did we get away from eating this way? Because for a LONG time this would have been the most LOGICAL way to eat. Can anyone dispute this? Humans followed the herds. They were nomadic. They are now everywhere... no coincidence here. And, just because there is "food" in one's environment does not mean they will eat it! How many times have you pulled your car over (on your way home from the grocery store) and walked out to the field where you saw cows grazing and got down on all fours and started munching on grass?!!! Let's try to use some intelligence on this subject, OK? I mean, we obviously learned a lot from our friend, the cat, when it came to this hunting thing. And they are pretty intelligent if you ask me. They have this whole feeding thing down cold. My cats just sleep all day, and then I bring them raw meat to eat! Now THAT is the best "bang for the buck" going! ;) I guess that is the REAL reason we learned to hunt... it was simply for the benefit of cats! They actually taught our ancestors how to do it, so they could one day retire! Like I said... VERY intelligent! :) And, BTW... how does this change the assumption that primitive humans have always had a division of labor between the sexes. Perhaps that did not occur until "hunting-gathering" came about. The female lions are the hunters. I wonder how things were back in our pure "hunter" days? |
Theories like that sound great, Paleo. But it may not really reflect what happened at all. We can pull all kinds of stuff out of our parts of the anatomy we sit on, but just because they sound "logical" to us, doesn't mean it happened that way. That's why we need anthropological evidence.
You're assuming that hunting was easier than gathering. It might have been at times when game, especially big game, was plentiful and dumb, but their may have been other times, and locations, where gathering was as easy as climbing a tree, picking fruit up off the ground, digging up a root, picking berries off a bush or smashing some nuts with a rock. P.S. I was just teasing about my self-perception as a gatherer. I'm pretty sure I was probably the woman lounging on a rock supervising someone else and nagging the men to make themselves useful. :p I really agree with much of the paleo philosophy due to how my body is rejecting so many of the products of modern agriculture, but I don't see a lot of objective evidence that man was ever solely carnivorous. The best evidence I have seen in modern HG, our closest animal cousins is that humans eat a lot of different foods and, in fact, do best when they have that variety available. It is a little hard to compare though. Because we're living a lot longer than our uncivilized ancestors due to sanitation, improved child birth, disease control, insect control and stuff like that. I don't think you can even point at the Innuit and say they lived longer on their diets, if I recall correctly, they tended to die pretty young. Well... oops! I wasn't going to get dragged into a debate on the topic. And look what happened. Off to reform school with me. |
I reiterate:
I hate to be the one to bring some reality to this discussion but I used to be a bit of an anthropology buff. All my research, lectures, presentations I went to detailed that paleo man was an omnivore and an opportunistic diner. All the analysis that I've seen of paleo human coprolites (dung) included both vegetable and offal matter. In the case of vegetable matter, more or less vegetable matter in the dung was used to place the season. A lot of this dung was found preserved in caves. Analysis has gotten so good, via DNA, they were able to identify the type of matter and even sometimes the species. The coprolites contained protein (both muscle and offal), insects, berries, grasses and other vegetation. Further for paleo, depending on your timeline definition--mine is before settlement--the area of habitation was quite widespread and the resulting diet diverse. If you want to look at it as a time when there were still mastadons, they found vegetable matter and offal in those coprolites as well. Another idea to think of...before there could be agriculture, as primitive as the first agriculture must have been, there must have been a selection from the wild of what to grow. That means that certain grasses, bulbs, fruits, and yes vegetables were growing and available in the wild. And looking to todays woods and forests for sustenance is quite useless, the forests of today are domesticated and barren. And further, why limit yourself to this area/climate/continent. But you don't even have to look far past what was available in the forests and fields of North America when Native Americans were living in this country to see what might have been availble in the wild--onlions, garlic, cabbage, gourds, fruits and berries, greens, and yes even grasses/grains. Oh and another thing...the liver is a great source of vitamin A, and internal organs are concentrated sources of other nutrients. I hardly think there would be so many primitive peoples who had culteral traditions and ceremonies for the eating of brains, hearts, and livers if these things weren't part of a more ancient diet. |
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I still don't see the reason in eating anything but hunted animals. What possible reason would there be? Unless forced by necessity, it would have been ridiculous to eat anything else. And, until the game was scarce, there would have been no reason at all to eat anything else. Humans followed herds until one day they were (for whatever reason) scarce. ONLY THEN would there have been ANY reason for abandoning a far more efficient WOE! Besides, by then we would have grown big enough brains to build society and start taking in all the cats. That was our only reason for evolving anyway! Otherwise we would have just been cat food for the pre-historic cats. :lol: So, please pass that FATTY piece of pork!!!!! mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm :) |
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So why did Weston A. Price find the Dinkas healthier than the Masai? Dinakas' diet consisted mainly of fish and, now it comes, whole grains. http://www.westonaprice.org/traditi..._of_africa.html |
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