Phosphor wrote:

>>What basis do you have for your claim that they are a famine >food?  It
>>
>>
>certainly doesn't follow from the fact that they are >available only six
>months out of the year, so you must have >some other fact in mind.
>
>

>since the calories required to dig out, clean, and prepare plant foods is
>very considerable compared to the caloric payoff. for calories expended a
>pile of eggs or a river eel will yield a much greater percentage of
>calories.
>

You'll need to better than that.  Eggs, like yams, are a seasonal food.
 River eels may or may not be where you are looking for them when you
happen to be hungry.  You persist in describing the gathering of plant
foods as laborious and dicey while the obtaining of animal foods is
effortless.  And you argue that for these reasons paleo people ignore
plant foods unless starving from lack of animal foods.  If you have
specific information to support these claims, please provide it or
concede that you don't. For example, can you cite any actual population
of hunter-gatherers who do this?

>having said that, it may be an issue that paleo man often went for more than
>one day or two without any significant animal meal.  so any plant food
>available would have to help.  but its no use quoting junk sources which do
>not provide any figures on how much calories a given plant has. which yam
>are u talking about? and how many calories does it have?
>
>

I'm sorry Andrew, but the standard of evidence for my claims is not
higher than that for yours.  I have provided, on more than one occasion,
sources that suggest that Australian aborigines make use of a variety of
wild plant food sources.  Hunter-gatherers elsewhere are known to do the
same, when plant foods are available.  That's good enough.  You, on the
other hand, are making the rather extraordinary claim that even when
plant foods are available, hunter-gatherers spurn them unless they are
starving.  The burden is on you to provide some evidence for that claim.

Todd Moody
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