On Friday, June 27, 2003, at 12:38  AM, E. McCreery wrote:

> "Wild" watermelons

Thanks for a nice bit of research.
>

> Many plant species have been around, mostly unchanged, for millions of
> years. That does not mean that we or our ancestors ever took them as a
> significant portion of the diet, that they are/were healthful, or that
> they
> were even eaten at all.

Good points. I am interested in the ones that WERE eaten.

> There is also no reason to assume that just because a species exists
> now
> (even solely) in Africa, that it did not "initially" evolve on any
> other
> continent, or that genetic drift did/does not occur within that family
> or
> genus across continents.

Another good point.

> Many plant genera cover the globe and more than a few *specific*
> species
> exist within a latitude range all the way 'round (panarctic,
> pantropical,
> etc.). Certainly, locality (and thus local evolution) exists, but it
> is not,
> in general, nearly as limiting as many on this list seem to assume.
>
I agree. I think humans are generalists, well designed to take
advantage of many kinds of foods, especially after cooking. The main
problem even with grains is over-dependance on a very few plant foods.
Foods that it may be perfectly fine to eat occasionally, have become
daily staples, so whatever negatives become amplified. I don't doubt
our paleo ancestors ate the occasional toasted grain, and that it had
no negative effect, because they just didn't do it all year long, every
meal.

But I am still interested in what plants still existing today formed
the early diets. We get some idea from chimp and baboon diets, but they
both eat things we can not now digest. My guess is that a lot of the
things eaten 3-400,000 years ago we simply can't eat raw now, because
we have adapted to the lowered poison content of cooked foods. All
those tubers Amadeus keeps reminding us of, may well have been eaten
raw then, but we shouldn't now. We are very similar in digestive
apparatus to pigs, but they can eat many things we can't, raw manioc
for example. (I read something the other day about a feral pig that was
hunting and eating neighborhood dogs and cats, the pig was over 600
pounds!)

People who argue for an all-raw diet I think are slightly off base. We
have come a long way from the all-raw days. We can do that now mainly
because we have lots of domesticated plants that have had their
defenses artificially reduced to the point that we can stand them. It
is an odd evolutionary path. The all raw meat eaters may be closer to
the point.

Sorry, I have kind of meandered around in this post.