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
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