I am sending you a packet after we  will have our seedy saturday in february
( local event for exchanging organic seeds)
I am a lot for seed exchange,  this  is vital if we want to save the
varieties that we once had  They are disapearing at an alarming rate .( 6000
kind of rice in India that are going to disappear soon in favor of hybrides
for ex.
here in our island we have 600 differentes kinds of apples pears and plums,
a
feast.).
We have in "North america a seed saver exchange" that functionne by getting
seeds for free (for the price of the stamp) and you have the responsibility
to save thoses seeds the next year to make them available to the members of
the group. that way the ball is rolling and lost vegetables get spread
around.
Do you have this in your country?


>But it is still a New World food as far as I know.
>In the book about anopsology by C G Burger that is
>available in the Internet, he uses sweet potato as an example of how
>the idea of cooking food once may have started long ago. But he
>does not realize that at that time the Atlantic was between Homo and
>sweet potato. In *my* view of how instinct might work, a raw sweet potato
>should be as forbidden as a cooked one. That is, either instinct works
>only on "known" food, or it works on *all* food, and so would reject
>unhealthy cooked and alien food. This is what I still not can understand.

1st:  i didn't  know that sweet potatoes were of american origine i thought
it was coming from asia ( are you sure?)
2nd :family of plants are often represented in differents continents by
differents species, so i will not be surprised that there is a close
relative of that plants in africa or australia that could have been consumed
3rd there is tons of plants here that come from Europe ( and recently) that
are  wild here and eaten by the wild life . And they seems to have adapted
to them without apparent ill effects and some of those plants are rather
appreciated  by the deer., racoons or birds .... If i was going to feed the
deer here with a
cooked native plant i can guarantee that they will get affected in their
health.
4 th is a point that i stress very often , instinct don't protect you
against cooked food it just don't have the ability to recognise the chaotic
organisation of a denatured food. Instinct don't limit itself to food that
have been known for generations, it is open to learn new information the
body metabolism will decide if the experience is favorable or not and will
transmit to the instinctive function if it is something worth it to be
reproduced or not.
I had intoduced so many food that i never encontered before ( even my
ancestors might had no chance to enconter a swimming scallop for example )
and i observed many time that there is a time of mutual recognition , at 1st
you can't even know if it is good or not , it tastes something that is
different, but after the 2nd or 3rd time the message delivered by the food
is clear ( the body has learned the smell taste and effect of the food), you
start to have an experience with it.
I think we are stuck in our understanding because we separate artificialy
innate and  learned. it is no so straight cut . Every instinct have a
learned part
in its expression. you  must know about the animals who learned to not be
afraid
of humans when in other condition they seem to have an instinctive response
of fear in front of humans.
By questionning the idea that humans can adapt easely to new plants or
animals you are contesting our african origine and  possibility to be
healthy after  big
migrations ( from Asia to americas)
I really think that this paleo idea of the inadaptation to  newly introduced
food is way too much overstated. ( think about the gorillas who found refuge
in the mountains where they found new plants they seems to be as healthy
than the plain ones ,compare with the gorillas in captivity fed not so
naturel foods they get very obese)
there is a clear difference.between the food that is "denatured" and the
food that is geographically displaced.
jean-claude