On Monday, September 27, 2004, at 09:00 AM, Manuel Bello wrote:

> I do not understand why so many people on this list make a distinction
> between
> foods native to different continents as more or less paleo. We have
> the "new world"
> label thanks to Europeans who were simply not familiar with people
> beyond the
> reaches of their land and seafaring technologies.

The reasoning is that humans are an old world species. The new world
and the old world were separated many millions of years ago, and the
plants that we are adapted to eat are the ones that were in our long
term home, Africa, and later Asia and Europe. Humans moved to the
Americas at most a few tens of thousands of years ago, and then, only
the Native Americans would have any adaptation to new world foods.

Personally, I am not sure I buy the argument. We seem to have adapted
to every climate and food quickly enough since leaving Africa.