Zoe talks about wild rice having 15 percent protein--I don't see where it says that the rice was wild, these people do have some exposure to our culture. Rice has less than half the protein of wild rice. Manioc root is about 3.5 percent protein, plantain about 4 percent--I don't think the numbers fail to add up as badly as she's saying. At any rate--things could be off, but probably not to the point where these people aren't eating a high carb diet by our standards. I remember the excitement over the Kitivan diet--and people in the low carb community saying that the Kitivans must be sneaking out back and living on coconut and fish, and less sweet potato, when the research team wasn't looking. I think it's fair game to discuss what the observation might mean, but it's a very slippery slope when you get to "this doesn't fit my world view, so probably it didn't happen."

I also wouldn't dismiss their high levels of activity too quickly. 17 000 steps does seem like a lot. Zoe calls it 7-8 hours of physical activity. A step is supposed to be about 1/2000th of a mile, so that's 8.5 miles a day. I read a book in the library, printed sometime in the 60's or 70's, the premise was that factory workers walked an average of 7 miles per day just going about their day at work--and office workers were a few short, it wanted them to make these up. At any rate--averaged out, you'd be talking slightly over a mile an hour. It's a ridiculous prescription for somebody who's very overweight--intensity goes up with load. A lot of people are probably a half hour, or an hour, away from matching Tsimane, step for step (assuming a speed closer to 3 or 4 miles an hour).