Jim Swayze wrote:

>I've argued here before that mere availability and ability to consume without immediate negative consequences isn't enough to ensure that a particular food item is good for us.  The most obvious example from this week is the discovery that at least some of us were eating wheat and barley long before agriculture.  IMHO, you've got to look at the quality of the food item itself rather than rely upon theoretical considerations about whether we may or may not have eaten a particular food.
>

This is probably a good idea, but it is definitely a step away from the
paleodiet principle, according to which the foods that we ate before
agriculture *are* good for us *because* we are "adapted" to them.  To
"look at the quality of the food item itself" is a very different
principle, and it presupposes that we know enough to make the right
quality judgements.  I'm not arguing that this is a wrong approach, by
the way.

>  And, aside from the bad stuff in the skin and particularly the eyes of the potato, we know that the human body isn't meant to handle the highly concentrated carbohydrates in a cooked potato.
>
If we say, then, that a potato is a low-quality food item mainly because
it is a highly concentrated carbohydrate (but no more highly
concentrated than a banana), then indeed we should welcome a lower-carb
potato.

Starches, such as found in tubers, are concentrated sources of energy,
and it is obvious that hunter-gatherers would attempt to find and make
use of them whenever possible.  The reason why cooking increases the
available carb content of these foods is that the heating causes the
cellulose chambers in which the starch is stored to burst.  Since we
don't digest cellulose very well, this helps us to get the starch out.
However, something similar can be accomplished without heat, by pounding
with rocks (a powerful form of pre-chewing).  Here's an experiment: get
a raw sweet potato or yam and try to eat it.  You can do it but it's
pretty chewy and tiresome and doesn't taste very good.  Now take another
one and smack the hell out of it with a tenderizing mallet (or, if you
like authenticity, use a rock, with the yam pressed between leaves to
keep pieces from flying all over).  Smash it to a soft pulp; it doesn't
take long.  Then taste the pulp and see if you don't notice the
increased sweetness.  This is stone age food processing technology.

Todd Moody
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