Tom Barber wrote:

>I, too, have been a bit confused by the Paleo Prohibition of New World
>foods. The reasoning I get - that we did not evolve eating these foods. But
>of course that means that we evolved eating only equatorial African foods
>and most of what everyone on this list eats is tabu.
>

This is a much-debated point, and since I'm the one who mentioned it I
don't want to be understood as advocating a blanket "paleo prohibition"
of New World foods.  But some do advocate it, and there is a certain
logic to it.  What is the justification of excluding *any* food from a
paleo diet?  The core principle is to exclude those foods to which we
haven't been exposed long enough for adaptation to have taken place.
 That is the rationale for excluding grains, for example.  Humans have
only been eating grains for about 12,000 years, and that isn't long
enough.  Well, according to most anthropologists, humans have only been
in the New World for about 15,000 years, which isn't much longer.  So
any food that was exclusive to the New World has only been part of the
human food supply for that long.  If the fact that we've only been
eating grains and dairy for 12,000 years ago is a good reason to exclude
them, then it is apparently also a good reason to exclude New World foods.

>From an evolutionary standpoint, we would have to go back a bit further than
>the paleolithic period to figure out what it was that we really ate as we
>were "evolving." as long as 40,000 years ago humans had already spread
>throughout most of the world, with the exception of the New World. Humans
>were already all across Asia and the Pacific islands as far as Australia.
>
>Those folks were eating a lot of food that had nothing to do with our
>evolution. If our bodies have evolved to be nourished by a variety of foods,
>the it seems reasonable to conclude that New World foods would be OK. The
>problems modern humans face seem more closely related to agriculture than to
>a variety of foods.
>
>

I agree, but your argument basically hoses the entire concept of
"evolutionary adaptation" to particular foods.  As you say, real-live
paleolithic people were eating foods for a long time that were
irrelevant to our evolutionary past.  Agriculture did more than just
introduce some new foods into the diet, which may not have been such a
big deal.  It completely rearranged things, both in dietary and
non-dietary ways.

Todd Moody
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