On Sat, 25 Jul 1998 06:08:55 -0700, Ray Audette <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Sorry, baboons are incapable of eating grains (although Jane Goodall's
>photographer did use cooked rice as a treat for his subjects when
>filming baboons). A well known article in Current Anthropology "Hominid
>Food Selection Before Fire" pointed out that no primate can digest raw
>grass seeds.  Any raw food person will tell you that even ground grain
>(far more nutritionally dense than wild grass seed) eaten raw contains at
>most 10-15% of the nutrients of the cooked version.
I don't have access to this article, so if the baboons like their rice cooked,
humans also like their meat cooked since this lowers the de
adly
threat of a parasite infection, especially from older and bigger animals.
Maybe we should then assume grain consumption only after invetion of a method
of cooking or roasting them?
Btw I myself used to eat oats raw and spelt soaked some hours for some
years as a breakfast and was feeling perfectly about it.
Scanning back in my book i read that australopithecus robustus and
ramapithecus are assumed to have eaten grains.
>You should reread the chapter "Man as Created by Nature" in the book
>where I list the unique physical charicteristics of a hominid and how
>these define man's enviromental niche.
I read you book and think of your description as a very
compact and comprehensive description- of one way of understanding
human developement.

Of course this topic is still discussed controversely in science.
As time bevor 2 million years is nutritional not questioned,
especially the period after entering th
e savanne is still unshure.
For example ...
If you think of an fruit-eating primate entering the savanne,
 the upright walk and higher viewpoint of the eyes is essentially
 important for detecting possible attacking wild animals.
 Then for reaching fruit from the ground on trees.

Same is for the developement of weapons (spears).
First goal is security, they were developed for defense.

Then the ability to have the hands free.
Ok then you can throw stones and sticks onto Gazelles.
But you can also use it to carry around the gathered roots, onions, and
other vegetables collected to bring home to the family.

Then the nutritional shift to denser food. It needn't be meat.
Equally much denser than leaves are all seeds (nuts f.e), and roots.
..and so on..

I know most of you think different, but i'd think of meat (of big animals)
only as a kind of emergency food for humans in unfriend
ly environments
or at most as a small extra.
After all it is ill-suited for human needs with it's 7-fold too much
of protein and lack of energy (even from the fatter animals).

So as I do agree with your nutrition list in your book,
I would rather set the meat at the last,
not the first point, set tubers and onions to the
first point (that's savanne food).
If i was naked with a stick i would take some nuts and fruits, dig a tuber
but not cut and eat a Gnu carcasse as long as possible.

And for grains-how anyone wants.
Who is not allergic deseased (as you reported from yourself)
can have some variety of it (rice, millet, spelt) as a perfect
nutrition source in terms of vitamin/protein/mineral
content and fibers.

>Ray Audette
>Author "NeanderThin:A Caveman's Guide to Nutrition"
>Now ranked #3262 on Amazon.com's bestseller list!!!!

Amadeu
s Schmidt
not yet an Author and congratulating Ray