Dear Everyone,

Loren asked me to confirm Crane's statement that 'honey was the very basis of
their diet' (Ache or Guayaki Indians of Eastern Paraguay).  Eva Crane is
arguably the world's expert on all aspects of honey.  I don't have her 1975 book
on hand to check her sources right now but I'll try to do this shortly. I don't
think she intended to mean that all they ate was honey but perhaps it made up a
significant fraction of their daily energy intake.  In the past meat was often
eaten with honey for flavour and even preserved in it.

My hypothesis is that carbohydrate was in short supply during glacial periods
and that humans adapted to the the scarcity by becoming insulin resistant.
Insulin resistance spares glucose for the brain and foetus which use glucose
exclusively as a source of fuel.  Genetically determined insulin resistance was
therefore a selective advantage.  In this way, populations with a high
prevalence of insulin resistance emerged.  Today this characteristic is no
longer an advantage and is, in fact, a disadvantage because it is increases
one's risk of developing non-insulin-dependent diabetes. This hypothesis was
published in Diabetologia 1994;37:1280-86.


I think honey and all things sweet would have been highly sought after for this
reason.  What do you think?

Best wishes  Jennie

    PS  In passing, Eva Crane is Elsie Widdowson's sister.  McCance and
Widdowson's The Composition of Foods is the author of one of the best
compilations on the composition of foods.

Best wishes  Jennie



Assoc. Professor Jennie Brand Miller
Human Nutrition Unit, Dept. of Biochemistry G08
University of Sydney, 2006, Australia
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FAX: 61.2.9351.6022
Ph: 61.2.9351.3759