I'd like to invite some comments on the question of human adaption to
spice herbs.

First, let me set this up.  I'm accepting as a premise the
proposition that the less exposure a population has had to a
given food, the less likely that population is to be well adapted
to it.  This, I take it, is the basic premise of attempts to
emulate or implement paleolithic diets in the modern world, for
health purposes.  It implies a second premise, namely that lack
of adaptation to a food makes it more likely to cause health
problems.

Now, there appears to be general agreement that paleolithic
humans didn't eat *much* in the grain and dairy categories, but
they might have eaten small amounts of each.  For example, raw
"green" wheat kernels are edible for a short time, before they
fall off the stalks.  The rennet-fermented cheese in the stomach
of a young killed animal would also have been eaten occasionally.
But, as I understand it, these foods would have been a very small
part of any paleolithic diet.

Optimal foraging theory indicates that hunter-gatherers will
always favor calorically denser foods when they can get them, and
certainly avoid foods that require more energy to gather than
they actually provide.

This brings us to my question.  The various spice herbs are
mostly vanishingly low in calories, and are pungent enough in
taste that it seems doubtful that anyone would eat very much of
them at a time anyway.  Many spices have potent health-promoting
effects, it seems, because of antioxidants and other ingredients
present in them, but prehistoric humans wouldn't have known of
that.  Indeed, it's hard to see why they would have bothered with
these plants at all.  If that is correct, the contribution of
these plants to their diet would have been at least as negligible
as that of grains or dairy foods.  Therefore we shouldn't be very
well adapted to them.  Nevertheless, they seem to be good for us.

What is the explanation?

Todd Moody
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