I'm curious if anyone here has any idea what sorts of "vegetables" were even in EXISTENCE a million years ago. Most fruits and vegetables that we enjoy (or not) today have been bred and hydridized for thousands of years, and have little resemblence to what originated them.

Alot people malign the feed-lot cow, but how different are our modern vegetables, bred for disease/insect resistance, taste, size, color, transportability etc... with little concern for maintaining it's nutritive content. Eat five servings a day, and what are you really placing in your body? (not to mention the chemicals and bacteria)

Except perhaps in more tropical regions, most of early humans did not live in a Garden of Eden with plums, fresh heads of broccoli, and Granny Smiths dripping from the trees. I'm sure in the brief berry season they would eat many berries, probably realizing that "eat lots of berries- get fatter- good thing". They were early humans- they weren't stupid. Maybe that's the reason our bodies were designed to store excess carbs as body fat- in the past most high-carb vegetation (berries, fruit, tubers) was available in the fall when our bodies might need an extra layer of fat. Bears do that before they hiberanate.

Berries are fruit are very seasonal, however, and I think we ate mostly animals, insects, and grubs, and only ate non-sweet vegetation like greens as a last resort. In nature, most vegetation is bitter, very low-calorie, and will not satisfy hunger- not attractive to most anyone. It's like our deer here in PA- in a hard winter they will herd up in sheltered areas and eat hemlock needles and twigs. It provides them almost no nutrition, but it's better to them than eating nothing.

I think people forget that there were very few vegetables that were palatable to humans when we were evolving. Try eating dandylion leaves- a typical wild green that would have been around in prehistoric times- as an example of what I'm trying to say.