On Sun, 19 May 2002, Ray Audette wrote:

> > I suspect that for millenia our ancestors ate lean meat and body organs
>
> This contradicts eating patterns of contemporary hunter-gatherers who live
> under near Pleistocene ( ice age ) conditions.

Paul Shepard (Coming Home to the Plesitocene) argues that the
Inuit are as far from the Pleistocene norm as we are.  His
comment is not about diet, but should serve as a caution to using
them as a model.  Also, while it is true that the traditional
Inuit diet is a high-fat diet, it is different from other
high-fat diets in being especially high in unsaturated fats from
marine creatures.  These creatures cannot have high levels of
saturated fat, because saturates under cold conditions prevent
flexibility.

It's important to understand that the main point of Cordain's
argument is that most of the high-fat foods available to us today
differ from paleolithic high-fat foods in the *composition* of
the fats.  Feedlot-fattened cattle have high levels of palmitic
acid, especially, in their muscle fats.  Palmitic acid is the fat
to which excess glucose is converted.  There is evidence linking
palmitic acid with insulin resistance in those who consume high
levels of it.

> Ice age megafauna contained
> fat in far greater amounts than contemporary wild animals.  Ice age
> megafauna survivors such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats and camels also are
> capable of storing great amounts of fat - which is a legacy of their ice age
> origins.  Water fowl also contain great amounts of fat and were much more
> plentiful during most of the Pleistocene.

But humans also have the ability to be obese, which would suggest
that we have the same legacy, no?  Let's not forget that we are
megafauna survivors too.  The question we should be asking is:
How similar is the fat of a farm-fattened pig to the fat of a
Pleistocene wild pig?  And if they are very different, how
important is the difference?  Cordain argues that they are pretty
different, and the difference matters.

> From pollen samples, we have learned that trees and other woody and tubular
> plants were much scarcer during most of the Pleistocene.  On the remaining
> grass lands, vegetable foods would have been non-existent for much of the
> year.  On an all meat diet, humans must get the majority of their calories
> from animal fat.  That we have survived indicates the fallacy of such
> theories.

Root vegetables, rhizomes, tubers, etc. are a different story
altogether.  The wapato tuber, for example, proliferates in the
same marshy conditions in which water fowl thrive.  It is just
wrong to claim that vegetable foods would have been non-existent
during this period.

Todd Moody
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