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On Saturday, Jan 22, 2005, at 06:00 Asia/Tokyo, Automatic digest
processor wrote:

>  Logic tells me obviously that humans aren't meant to eat grasses, but
> the particular ones are so packed with nutrition, it is hard to deny
> them nonetheless.  Some proponents of them just refer to them as
> another land vegetable.  Any opinions, especially hard evidence of our
> ingestion (or lack thereof) of these foods in human history would be
> expecially appreciated.  There are also green foods such as spirulina
> and kelp, which have a long history of consumption by humans,  and I
> find these to be acceptable for the paleo type diet.  Would you agree?

A controversial question in the paleo fold. Some examinations have been
made of pre-agriculture feces and skeletons. They show lots of meat and
few veggies. Meat would have been available year round, though, and
grass seeds just for a few late summer and fall months, so the chance
of grass remains showing up is much smaller. Also, the best preserved
remains are from the colder climates, so not much is known of diets in
tropical and sub tropical areas in comparison.

The tools for processing grains, mortars, sickles, pots and such, are
also recent developments, the last 10,000 years or so. Grains could
have been simply toasted on hot stones easily enough though, so that
isn't really indicative. Examinations of fire pits don't show grain or
legumes until recent times, 10,000 years.

My own personal guess is that people ate whatever was in season and not
too much trouble to collect, including some grains in season. We are
not well adapted to digesting grains without a lot of processing, so
they could not have been very prominent parts of the diet before
technology caught up. I don't eat much grain, especially wheat, but do
on occasion. Too much gives me headaches and makes my hay fever act up,
so it is easy for me to remember to avoid them!

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