Eva Hedin wrote:

>> Ready for another 'fine points' argument? I consider grains and seeds
>> paleo in small amounts, seasonally. Just depends on which seeds and how
>> often.
>
>
> What seed and grains and in what amounts? Is it a seed or two a day or
> is it
> a loaf of bread a week? How many nuts a day and what kind of nuts? I'd
> like
> some details here!

Imagine that you are walking around out there in paleo times.  It's
July, and the
grasses are heading up.  Not today's big fat wheat kernels, but rye
grass, wild oats or
some such.  How many grains would you have the patience to gather?
Would you
get a whole cupful?  If the grains are ripe, then you have to get the
awns off.
Toast by the fire.  Do you have 1/3 cupful left?  Nice, you can have
porridge
or eat the toasted grains as a snack, or throw into the stew being cooked
with hot rocks.  But it's a lot of work.  And it's seasonal.
Hard to store the grains for winter without modern containers, the mice
and bugs
will get them first..

Most seeds are even smaller.  Some you can thresh out like amaranth.
Again seasonal.
You can't count on storing them long without the little critters getting
them.

Nuts: need to wait for them to get ripe, then beat the squirrels, jays,
raccoons, wild pigs,
etc. etc. to them.  You can store them for a while.  It's really nice
for a month or two, if
nuts grow where you happen to live. Amer. Indians crushed nuts and put
them in meat broths for stew.

It's hard for us, with the Perpetual Summer Super Market ready at hand,
to realize just
how seasonal things were for paleo people in temperate or northern
climates. Even
in tropical climates, foods come in seasons.

So the answer is: how much would you have the patience to gather, a
grain at a time,
growing in natural quantities rather than 1000-acre monocultures, and
how much could you store?
Flour, as we have today, there was none.  So no loaves of bread.  No
nuts from spring to fall.
No grains from late fall to summer.  But  IMHO they certainly ate some
grains, seeds and nuts
 in season.  If there was a food resource available to them, they used it.

Make sense?

    Lynnet