>Recently someone stated that modern hunter/gatherers obtain 50% of their
>food from animal sources. I assume that means 50% of their caloric intake.
Yup.
> If so, I guess nearly 50%, or maybe (I'm just guessing) 40%of the rest of
>the diet comes from carbohydrate, since, except in times of year when nuts
>are abundant, most plant food calories come from carbohydrates.
Not too far off.
The most widely accepted figures for mean average intake of macronutrients
by modern hunter/gatherers (who may or may not be entirely representative
of our paleolithic past but who are almost certainly close) puts it at
about 33% protein, 46% carbohydrate, and 21% fat, with most of the fat
being saturated. Cholesterol intake is much higher than most contemporary
Americans eat, too. Sodium intake is generally lower, however.
Hunter/gatherers average 100-150 grams of fibre per day (5-8 times as much
as most Americans), only about 700 mg of sodium (3-10 times less than most
Americans), 1,500 - 2,000 mg of calcium (2-3 times as much as most
Americans eat), and about 440 grams of vitamin C (7-8 times as much as the
current US RDA.
There is some reason to question the importance of these figures. Most
modern hunter/gatherers are living in fairly remote and uninviting
wildernesses--civilization hasn't reached most of them because no one wants
to go there. Historical accounts of american native Indians, for example,
seems to make it clear that they were living in much more hospitable
circumstances. It's pretty clear that they tended to go after the fatty
organs of large animals like buffalo and elk and to consider the leanest
cuts most undesirable; they would have been able to selectively eat more
fat than would be possible for most modern hunter/gatherers. It also seems
possible that before the extinction of the mammoth and other megafauna,
humans may have been eating more fat than most modern hunter/gatherers can
manage. Eating large amounts of fat may be harder for most modern
hunter/gatherers than would have been true for most historic
hunter/gatherers.
Of couse the averages presented here are also problematic in that they
represent the mean of a very widely divergent set of people. Some get most
of their calories from carbohydrate. Some may eat meat only a couple of
times a week and get no more than a fifth or so of their calories from it.
Others eat it constantly as their primary food source. Some eat nuts as
their main source of food. Some fish, some have never touched fish. Some
have ready access to lots of fruit, others see fruit only occasionally.
Some get 70% of their calories from fat. And so on and so forth.
Although most do seem to eat significantly more protein than is now
considered "healthy," the differences are very wide indeed.
The three things that can be indisputably said to apply across the board to
all primitive diets, however, is a clear lack of high amounts of
high-bioavailable carbohydrate (sugary and starchy foods without much
fibre), a lack of cereal grains, and a lack of dairy products.
> ...But it seems
>that Hunter/gatherers would not be in ketosis, generally, since half of
>their diet comes from plant sources. So, aren't the Adkins diet and the
>hunter/gatherer diet really worlds apart?
Some hunter/gatherer peoples are undoubtedly in ketosis part of the time
because they go through periods when nothing is available to them to eat
besides meat. This will happen in extreme climates and also possibly in
times of drought or famine when there simply isn't much of any plant food
to eat. Ketosis very much appears to be a secondary energy system for
humans to use when they can't get enough carbohydrate to keep using glucose
as the primary fuel source. Ketosis appears to simply be a way of
circulating fat as ketone bodies for fuel to lower the need for glucose to
feed cells. Most hunter/gatherers would not spend the majority of their
lives in ketosis, but some would, and others would probably go through it
occasionally due to various circumstances.
Atkins' diet would most certainly -not- describe the diet eaten by most
hunter/gatherers, but it's surprisingly close to the diet of -some- of
them. Not only because some hunter/gatherers go through periods of
carbohydrate starvation, but also because the Atkins diet again lacks those
cereal grains that many of us believe are problematic. Of course it allows
other things like soybean powders and cheeses and such that probably
wouldn't have been in any paleolithic diet, but there is still a
recognizable kinship. Atkins' belief is that refined carbohydrate is the
primary source of disease in the West; his weight-loss diet is about severe
carbohydrate restriction, but if you aren't trying to lose weight or fix
other medical problems his primary advice for good health is simply to
avoid sugars or much in the way of starches but to otherwise not worry
about it. (Many people wrongly think Atkins wants -everybody- to swear off
-all- carbohydrates -forever-, and that's really not what he's about at
all.)
There is also a good deal of evidence suggesting that diabetes and obesity
and heart disease are frequently caused by hyperinsulinism, and that people
who suffer from these conditions have inhereted a genetic intolerance for
the high carbohydrate, low-protein diets. These "thrifty genotype" people
may be the parts of our population whose genetic inheritance still most
closely matches pre-agricultural peoples--i.e. they're living cavemen who
haven't adapted as well as their brethren to the modern diet.
So there is definitely a link there, although there are also many obvious
strong differences in the diet. Still, it makes Atkids tend to be highly
interested in this subject. The list owner, Grant, is basically an Atkins
dieter, although along paleolithic diet precepts he tries to avoid
overindulging too much in dairy or eating a lot of soy products and etc.
We've got other people here who get most of their calories from fruits and
veggies and nuts and probably get lots and lots of carbs, though. It's a
diverse bunch.
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