On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 08:10:23 -0500, Todd Moody <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


>
> 1. If paleo = edible raw, then yams are not paleo (but sweet potatoes  
> are).
> 2. If paleo != any New World food, then sweet potatoes are not paleo.
> Therefore, if 1. and 2. are true, then neither yams nor sweet potatoes  
> are paleo.
>

If tubers existed in paleolithic, then they are as paleo as meat. IMHO


> I don't see the two as in competition.

I do.

   I imagine
> paleo people exploited edible tubers, rhizomes, etc, starting with those  
> that are edible raw.

Maybe when they had a bad year for hunting.



   The invention of cooking (certainly a paleolithic
> invention) would have made other tubers, such as yams, exploitable.


Yes, however the consequence of a relatively high carbohydrate diet would  
be that the groups who tried it and became addicted became fat, slow,  
stupid and extinct.
The wages of sin is death.

Proposition: it wasn't until the invention of cereal farming that  
carbohydrate eaters could breed fast enough to avoid extinction.
So far.





>
> Off-topic:  I have a student who is from Singapore, who was telling me  
> about some of the exotic foods she has tried.  She's quite  
> "Americanized" and so had to be tricked into trying some of these  
> foods.  One such food was fried bees, which her grandmother got her to  
> eat by telling her they were peanuts.


Does the grandmother's culture include a story such as "The Goose that  
laid the Golden Egg"?
Honey seems to me more valuable as medicine (used in burn wards & other  
wound healing), keeping ants off your picnic food, probably other uses  
known to wise paleoman.

William