I think a lot of that bloat might be due to parasites and/or protein deficiency (kwashiorkor), just depends on who you were looking at. I seem to recall the Kitavan pictures they were flat bellied.

Are you getting pictures of impoverished starving people in Africa confused with HGs? They're definitely not the same!

Zero fiber. Fatty meat.

Zero thought. Wrong section.

How is that zero thought, or the wrong section?

It seems to be a valid answer to the original question.

The comment seems to apply more to your own post...

Here are the bloaty tribes
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=396491
No doubt most contemporary hunter-gatherers get plenty of fiber.

No, I'M in the wrong section. Sorry, never happen again!

Well, that's interesting that this cave where they found the "specimens" is in Texas, where it is warm all year. But human lived in many different areas, and many of those were harsher climates.

There is no plant food available in winter in most areas that get snow for around six months out of the year. Where I live, we have plenty of snow, and in a bad year, lots of deer and other wildlife die because they can't find anything to eat. So if paleoman had been living in this area, how would he be magically finding plant foods to gather through the deep snow?

And I can't believe they all survived on stored nuts and such. There just aren't enough trees growing wild to produce enough nuts to sustain a group of humans all through the winter.

Most likely paleoman's fiber intake was seasonal. Perhaps he ate plenty in the summer and early fall, but very little in the winter and early spring while they were living strictly off the animals they could hunt.


Edited to add: I want to mention that there were bands of Native Americans that used to live in the area I live in, so yes, people were surviving in this harsh climate with no plants all winter long.

You're right - these calculations just don't make sense. They'd be digging and grinding all day!

I suppose without all the selective breeding that our vegetables have undergone, the foods they were eating might have had much more fiber and much less starch or sugar.

Eh. The article's from a legit journal, so I trust their calculations. Reviewers usually go through these things with a fine tooth comb. If you are really concerned about the way they did the calculations, I'm sure you can look up the supporting information for the article(s) and find out exactly how they were done.

I thought about that, but even modern vegetables are 80-90% water. Radishes are low in starch, for instance, but to get 200g of fibre you'd have to eat 2800 medium radishes. Clearly impossible. What could they be eating that had little water and little starch? Tree bark?

Paleoman lived off the mega fauna. The native americans relied on the bison after the mega fauna died out. But the mass extinction is what drove humans to agriculture and (I think) to vegetable matter as a primary food source.

That's one theory, Mike, but I think it might be the other way around - the viral effect of agriculture drove armies of starving peasants to wipe out the HGs and destroy the habitats of their prey.

Has anyone read "Fiber Menace"?

http://www.amazon.com/Fiber-Menace-...61816027&sr=1-1

Farm School: I want to read it! Looks like fun. Will you summarize?

I think early humans probably just got tired every once in a while. I mean, think about, hunt down a deer using a spear, or wolf down some nuts? Obviously, they could not survive on just that, but I'll bet they snacked on that stuff CONSTANTLY, to tide them over until they could get some meat.