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Paleo diet - BBC news, Researchers found Neanderthal's teeth had cooked and uncooked grains. Neanderthal sites had large amounts of pollen, type not discernible. For the current definition of "forager" diet three groups have been studied in Africa still practicing their traditional living. On one of them, perhaps 70% of the diet is plant foods much gathered by women (a kid on one hip, another walking beside) also men. Discussion with one of the men about worldwide problems of food shortage he said (approximate) "How can that be. There are so many Lichi (sic) nuts in (his) world." The men try to catch some (very) lean meat with intermittent success. They are fit, lean, women nurse 3 years have a child once maybe every 4 or 5 years. Very healthy looking people. My impression from the article, they had enough plant food did some animal food just for taste. Another area for investigation might be the Australian natives highly successful at bush tucker.

All this is interesting in implications of what people evolved with over 4 million years. Physiologically we do very well with plant foods. People are prone to addictions and may have a taste for animal foods. We're vegans, in our 70's, no meds, my wife triathlons and I bicycle, BMI just fine.

Great article as usual. Anyway my hubby and I have been plant eaters for a few years now. Yes, we did get off the wagon for a while, but thanks to the DVD Forks Over Knives--that was more than enough to convince us to get back on track!! Our thanks go out to those good folks who made that film. And we purchased a copy for friends who need to get back on track as well.
Anyway the other day I had 3 friends visit my bookstore. One had JUST had a heart attack in his house. He ended up in the hospital and now has 2 stents. Yes, he has seen Forks Over Knives, but currently has NO intention of changing his diet. I have now told him at least twice that if he doesn't change his diet he can COUNT on being on someone's operating table in less than 5 years. He just laughs the whole thing off.
With this friend of mine were also a father and son. The son tried to tell me that because he works out with weights and such he needs a high protein diet. And of course to get all this high protein he eats plenty of meat, etc. Then he proceeded to take off his shirt and try and impress me with his muscles---as if I really cared!! Of course I told him that he's only in his twenties, and Jim who had the heart attack is 62!! Big difference, but you can get heart troubles in your twenties as well. But I was really wasting my words.
Than I told them all that if they ever watched a movie called Food Inc none of them would ever put a piece of meat in their mouth again. We rented it recently from out local library. Gross! I already knew much of what I was going to see--but I had only read about it. Actually viewing it on the tv screen was more than an education.

The trouble is that folks who want their meat really want it. We have made far too many excuses as to why we need to have it etc. Our friend with the recent heart attack is overweight. If he continues on his present course he will of course get sicker. He's healthy now temporarilly--but we'll see how long it lasts.

My favorite quote from the movie Forks Over Knives was made by Pam Popper--the dietician. She said if you eat SAD you will get sick. "It's not IF, but what and when." Couldn't say it better!

Interesting story Jerrylamos - thanks for that. Also good to read your story WendyJane - it always amazes me that people cling to their meateating so much. Maybe they should come to work with me as a nurse, and see all the side effects of the SAD, which certainly convinced me!

That surprised me too, Jerry. I did a little more digging and found this link on the Happy Herbivore blog:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/10/2 ... w&cc=share

That totally changed my thinking about what the cavemen and cavewomen really ate.

Djuna

I saw a video of the men of a tribe of hunter gatherers living in Namibia. The film was of them hunting. They walked for an hour and found the footprints of a porcupine. After they tracked it to its hole in the ground, it took them four hours to dig it out of the hole whereupon they killed it. They ate the skin and the heart there on the spot because evidently that was what spoiled fastest.

Probably when people think of a tribe of hunters, they think of men chasing after big game with spears. But the porcupine was not a very large animal and they took it back to the village where everyone partook of the meat. Considering the size of the animal and the number of people in the village, each person could not have gotten very much meat. When the hunters arrived in the village, the people all clapped and started singing. One got the impression that animal flesh was a rare treat.

I saw another film of a tribe of hunter gatherers out hunting monkeys. I believe they caught about seven or eight monkeys to take back to the rest of the tribe. Once again, there probably isn't a whole lot of meat in a few monkeys to satisfy the calorie requirements of a whole tribe of people and the monkey hunt was not something they engaged in with great frequency.

If meat were the main food on the menu of these hunter gatherers, the men would have expended hours of time and more energy than they would have recouped in eating the meat and the villagers would have been sadly lacking in enough calories to sustain them. Even carnivorous animals who depend on meat alone to survive are only successful in about one out of every ten times they go out to hunt.

Even in our modern world, there are about twenty thousand edible plants and parts of plants and only about one hundred and thirty are commonly available commercially and most people are familiar with and might regularly eat about 20 or 30 (and some only a very few!!). Nevertheless, with that actual abundance of edible vegetation and the time consuming and difficult task of acquiring meat, common sense and logic would tell you that our ancestors were almost certainly GATHERER-hunters who relied on plants for survival.

Didi

Back in he '70's I studied cultural anthropology in college. One of the tribes we studied lived in South America. They were still true hunter-gatherers. There was an interesting documentary. While the men were out hunting, the women and kids were out foraging for food or processing cassava roots into tapioca flour for bread. The men managed to bring down a single howler monkey with poison darts. This was devided between the whole hunting party. The majority of the calories came from the cassava and foraged greens. Afterwards, everyone lay around in hammocks and got stoned on homemade dope and booze. Not a bad life, actually.
Kate

lol.

Just saw another video on the Hadza of Tanzania. When women choose a husband they want someone who is a good hunter and who finds and brings back honey to the village. They say looks don't matter. However, despite the fact that they obviously value meat, we are told that they only bring back big game about one out of every twenty-nine times they go out to hunt. The video showed the filmmaker following a hunter when he went out. He was hunting small game and shot at several birds but didn't hit one. This was the best hunter in the village. I guess he never did get anything because they did not show it in the film. The women walked out gathering tubers which seemed plentiful. Some they ate on the spot and the rest they brought back to cook. All of this does not prove that a starch based diet is the ideal diet but it gives a pretty good clue that the paleo diet of our ancestors probably was not (except in areas where there is a very short growing season) meat based.

Didi