I did not say that it WAS starvation food… i said it may have been… and this is based on what we see from more more modern incarnations of h-g peoples…

As far as toxins… it is quiet well established that grains are hard to digest, that they contain anti-nutrients and that they are high in various toxins. It is the plants natural defenses to being eaten.

Primarily I was responding to your unstated assumption that the paleo diet required eating only meat — or even almost only meat. That is not the case. There are a couple very specific plant families that have become agricultural staples that are not really terribly healthy. Beyond those, eat anything you want. Myself, I eat roughly six servings of vegies a day, with a minimum of ten different vegetables, a couple servings of fruit and at least one starch — usually a tuber of some kind — even when I am specifically trying to lose weight. When I am maintaining, the starch and fruits are increased….. that’s a far cry from your ‘three steaks a day’ comment.

Janene

The Paleo diet in NOT about eating ONLY meat products, dude. In fact, it is about eating the widest variety of foods possible, in most cases, instead of relying on only a few staple crops (as agriculturalists do). Sure, even grains were harvested and eaten prior to the ag revolution…. but they were likely eaten seasonally at most, but in many cases may have been used as starvation foods………..

Janene

I strongly disagree with the theory behind the “Paleolithic Diet.” I think the authors have missed out on some of the more recent archaeological findings about ancient diets. Grinding stones are found in the Upper Paleolithic sites of Molodova I and V, Korman IV, Kosoutsy, and Ataki I and II, as well as many others in the Russian Plain, from 23,000 to 10,000 years ago. Many have microwear traces that match grass or other seed grinding practices, as well as possible nuts and roots. Bone digging implements may have been used for digging roots and bulbs, and stone cutting tools show wear indicative of cutting grass. Such stone plant processing tools go bak to the Middle Paleolithic in the Dnestr River area. These were people who hunted mammoth, horse, and reindeer. (Ilia Aleksandrovich Borziyak, Subsistence practices of Late Paleolithic groups along the Dnestr River and its tributaries, In, From Kostenki to Clovis: Upper Paleolithic Paleo-Indian Adaptations, edited by Olga Soffer and N. D. Praslov, Plenum Press, New York,1993.

At the Mesolithic (early Holocene, pre-Neolithic) hunter-gatherer site of Mirnoe in the northwest Black Sea region, archeologists have found thousands of small flint cutting blades that were hafted with bitumen into bone handles, and microwear studies show polish matching cutting of grasses and cane. The author theorizes wild grain harvesting with these sickle-like tools, and the species in this steppe environment may have included wild grasses, lambs quarter, knotweed, golden vetch (related to wild pea), providing the “Mesolithic hunters with the necessary carbons, starches, and vegetable fats missing in animal products. It is possible these seeds were stored in years of high yield” (p. 168, Galina Fedorovna Korobkova, The technology and function of tools in the context of regional adaptations, In, From Kostenki to Clovis: Upper Paleolithic Paleo-Indian Adaptation.).

The mammoth hunters of the Upper Paleolithic site of Dolni Vestonice, Moravia (eastern Europe), had sickle blades and grinding stones, and Walter Fairservis thinks these people could have harvested such edible seeds as Wild cereal grass (Glyceria fluitans), Common reed (Phragmites communis), Bog bean (Menyanthes trifoliata), water nut (Trapanatans), as well as arctic berries (The Threshold of Civilization: An Experiment in Prehistory, Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1975). Identification of a plant food mush found amazingly preserved by a hearth at Dolni Vestonice II contained wood charcoal, tissues from roots and tubers, one seed, and possible acorn mush. These sites date from 27,000 to 24,000 years ago. The main animal food hunted was reindeer, but mammoth remains are common also. (Clive Gamble, The Palaeolithic Societies of Europe, Cambridge World Archaeology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 2002.)

This was BEFORE agriculture, before the Neolithic, during stone age hunting phases.

Many Paleolithic sites also have pits dug into the ground in settlements, perhaps used for food storage, either frozen meat, bones full of marrow, or possibly grains or nuts.

In addition, Clovis hunters in North America (ca. 11-12,000 years ago) also used plant foods, something which is just coming to light with better archaeological methods: Seed-grinding stones have been found at Medicine Lodge Creek, the Betty Green site, Lookingbill, and the Myers-Hindman sites in the High Plains. The Medicine Lodge Creek site has at least 14 storage pits with the remains of food seeds: pine, juniper, Opuntia cactus, prune, sunflower, and amaranth — some charred. (Marcel Kornfield, Are Paleoindians of the Great Plains and Rockies subsistence specialists?, In, Foragers of the Terminal Pleistocene in North America, edited by Renee Walker and Boyce Driskell, University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, 2007.)

These new findings are overthrowing the biased view of Pleistocene hunters as subsisting only on big game and meat. Plant foods do not preserve as well as bones, and just now are fine screening, delicate recovery methods being used to recover plant tissues.

I recommend the book Tending the Wild, by M. Kat Anderson, University of California Press: Berkeley, 2005, for detailed descriptions of the diets of stone age hunter-gatherers: California Indians used a huge variety of plant foods, including digging for potato-like tubers, bulbs, rhizomes, and collecting grass and wildflower seeds to make into pinole flour, unleavened bread cakes, and mush. Native grass grains collected include: Blue wildrye (Elymus glaucus), Desert needlegrass (Achnatherum speciosum), Purple needlegrass (Nassella pulchra), Wild barley (Horeum brachyanttheum), Fescues (Festuca spp.), Lovegrass (Eragrostis spp.), brome grass (Bromus spp.), Melic grass (Melica spp.), and others. Seeds were often stored in granaries, and have been found in archeological contexts 1,000 year old.

Grains are not bad! Tubers are not bad! Humans have been collecting them for tens of thousands of years. Yes white flour is not good, but whole grains are a good potential Paleolithic food.

Many groups of San of southern Africa actually used to depend on tubers dug from the ground as their staple. Meat was a nice meal once or twice a week, a treat much appreciated.

Savanna baboons thrive on picking up and eating fallen grass seeds to eat. Why not Australopithecus?

Negative evidence is not evidence in my book. We may never know what was going on with hominids a million years ago because so few things preserve in the fossil record that long ago. All I am saying is the picture looks more complex to me about our ancestors.

On thing I learned while working in the field of biology for years is that nothing is proven in science. There are theories, and the information presented about the “Paleolithic Diet” are interesting theories. I just wanted to alert people to OTHER theories that say grains, legumes, and tubers are good in the diet, and may be very ancient for Homo.( I eat a lot of these things and am quite healthy and happy by the way. I eat meat, greens, fruit, and grains.)

I do agree that Neolithic agriculturalists had more diseases, they even had decreased stature. But I would not credit this to grain consumption, but a monotonous diet. Instead of wandering over a wide area gathering many leafy greens, digging roots and tubers, collecting nuts and berries, and harvesting wild grasses, as well as hunting, they reduced down to a few species of domesticated plants. Diversity is the key to health, and that can include grains (in my theory).

Reference for this please? What chemical products in the dandelion leaves/flowers are going to cause this illness? What in lettuce is inducing sleep?

well, considering 1kg of lettuce is over 27 cups and 1kg of raw dandelion greens is over 18 cups, i suspect the veracity of the statements are fairly pointless. it’s perspectives like this that make any practical discussion of diet so damn difficult.

just my $2.28 (adjusted for inflation)

In fact plants have co-evolved with animals. The plants are highly toxic but the animals to a certain extent have biochemical adaptations to eating these plants.

And why do you exclude Humans from this coevolutionary adaptation?

There is almost certainly NO wild plant in the entire world that can safely eaten in large quantities for an extended period by humans without ill effect.

I’m fairly certain that the veracity of this statement depends entirely on your personal definitions of “large quantities” and “extended period”. If we go to the extreme: “No plant can be safely eaten exclusively forever”, then no one disagrees but it is a ridiculous statement. Thus, you need to be a bit more specific about this claim. Be sure to address fruit as a plant food. I’m fairly certain that you can safely eat, e.g. apples, in large quantities for an extended period without ill effect. If you are claiming “plant” as in eat the entire plant, then this is again a strawman that no one is suggesting.

The reason you can eat dandelions is because you only have a small amount,if you were to to eat a 1kg of them you would become extremely ill. Eating a kilogram of lettuce will induce extreme sleep for as long as 36 hours.

Reference for this please? What chemical products in the dandelion leaves/flowers are going to cause this illness? What in lettuce is inducing sleep?
–
JimFive

You cannot make any authoritative conclusion about an animal’s diet from it’s teeth or gut anatomy. Giant Panda’s, Black, Brown and Polar Bears have virtually identical teeth and gut anatomy. The Panda (which is also a bear) obtains 98% of it’s food from bamboo. The Black Bear is 95% vegetarian. The Brown Bear is an omnivore and the Polar Bear is totally carnivorous.

but don’t you think it’s telling that the bear family tends towards omnivory and that each species which you listed more or less eats whatever is available?

i think that, if anything, this only supports the idea that humans have the capability of eating a diverse diet. i’m not saying it proves it, but it certainly doesn’t disprove it.

i confess tho’, that you may have a fair point in that what is possible for an animal to eat may not be what the animal tends to eat. Similarly, what an animal eats may or may not get digested efficiently by that animal. hmm, interesting implications, why don’t we all take the time to meditate on that a bit today?

Comment by Dana — 23 January 2007 @ 5:32 AM

You cannot make any authoritative conclusion about an animal’s diet from it’s teeth or gut anatomy. Giant Panda’s, Black, Brown and Polar Bears have virtually identical teeth and gut anatomy. The Panda (which is also a bear) obtains 98% of it’s food from bamboo. The Black Bear is 95% vegetarian. The Brown Bear is an omnivore and the Polar Bear is totally carnivorous. Mountain dwelling Gelada Baboons eat only grass and have virtually identical teeth and guts to regular omnivorous baboons. Ocelots eat fruit unlike other cat species. Foxes are highly omnivorous despite being closely related to carnivorous dogs.

It was shown in the mid 1800s that grain consumption was strongly positively correlated with cancer rates in European cities. Those with the highest grain consumption had the highest cancer levels. Cancers were unknown amongst traditional Inuits. Cancer cells require glucose in higher levels than regular cells. Cancer patients often have an extreme loss of appetite known as cachexia. It is almost certainly an evolutionary mechanism to deprive cancers of glucose by inducing starvation.