I found this article interesting in that most likely paleo man got a LOT
more vitamins and minerals than we get even when eating what we think is
strict paleo.
"She found, for instance, that the average 15-pound wild monkey takes in
600 milligrams per day of vitamin C, 10 times more than the 60-milligram
recommended daily allowance, or RDA, for humans who weigh on average 150
pounds."
"The monkey takes in 4,571 milligrams of calcium per day. The RDA for a
human who weighs 10 times more is 800 milligrams. Of potassium, the
monkey eats 6,419 milligrams; the human is expected to take in
1,600-2,000 milligrams. Of magnesium, the monkey eats 1,323 milligrams;
the human RDA is 350 milligrams."
"Milton also found that the wild fruits had higher levels of calcium,
potassium, iron and phosphorus - sometimes as much as a 10-fold
difference - compared to domesticated fruits."
For me this makes a case for ingesting supplements (vitamins, minerals,
etc) along with a paleo diet since it seems that it would be impossible
to get enough nutrition even buying just picked, locally, organic, and
with variety.
Steve
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/5-18-1999.html
NEWS RELEASE, 5/18/99
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Monkey diet is richer in vitamins and minerals than human diet, UC
Berkeley anthropologist discovers*
*By Patricia McBroom, Public Affairs
*
BERKELEY--The fruits and leaves that monkeys eat in the wild are loaded
with nutrients, giving these primates a diet far richer in many
essential vitamins and minerals than the diet recommended for daily
consumption by human beings.
This startling information has emerged from a study of monkey diets
carried out at the University of California, Berkeley, by physical
anthropologist Katharine Milton, an expert on primate diet.
She found, for instance, that the average 15-pound wild monkey takes in
600 milligrams per day of vitamin C, 10 times more than the 60-milligram
recommended daily allowance, or RDA, for humans who weigh on average 150
pounds.
Differences on that order also were found for intakes of other
micronutrients such as calcium, potassium and magnesium.
"The monkey diet is amazingly rich in nutrients," said Milton, a
professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management.
"I wouldn't have believed this before because I don't think of plants as
being very nutritious. But then I noticed how much vitamin C was
consumed by these monkeys," said Milton, who subsequently compared other
nutrients in the wild foods with human RDAs.
"This information suggests that, for their size, many wild primates
routinely ingest greater amounts of many minerals, vitamins, essential
fatty acids, dietary fiber and other important dietary constituents than
most modern human populations," Milton will report in the June issue of
the journal "Nutrition: The International Journal of Basic and Applied
Nutritional Sciences."
Milton's study took place on Barro Colorado Island, a six-square-mile
Panamanian nature preserve covered by a dense tropical forest, much of
which is old primary growth that has never been cut.
Four monkey species - howler, spider, cebus and tamarin - live on the
island where the Smithsonian Institution maintains a research station.
The animals eat wild foods believed to be characteristic of plants
across the tropical belt, said Milton. The foods include leaves of many
kinds and fruits such as figs, plums, berries, palmfruit and grapes.
Free-ranging primates in the tropical forests of Central and South
America, Africa and Asia have been observed eating foods from many of
the same plant families and even the same species as those on Barro
Colorado Island, she added.
The anthropologist followed the monkeys through the forest with plastic
bags, picking up the food they dropped or threw down from the trees.
"They would bite off the tips of leaves and throw the rest away," said
Milton, who analyzed the leaves by sections and found the tips to be
especially nutritious - a fact obviously known to the monkeys.
"Young leaves from tropical trees are far more nutritious than I
realized. In fact, the young tips have the same profile of essential
amino acids as meat, although in lower concentrations," said Milton. She
said that leaf protein is perfectly good and clearly satisfies all the
protein needs of the monkeys.
"I was very surprised," she said. "I always thought leafy material was
deficient in some amino acids, but it is not."
Another surprise came when Milton analyzed the wild Panamanian fruits
eaten by the monkeys and found them to be considerably more nutritious -
with more protein, more of certain essential micronutrients and a
different sugar content - than the cultivated varieties found in
American supermarkets.
The sugars in the pulp of wild fruits occurred mainly as glucose and
fructose (like honey), while the sugar in domesticated fruits is mainly
sucrose (like plain table sugar), she found.
"Sucrose tastes sweeter than glucose, giving our cultivated fruits
strong hedonistic appeal, but we have yet to find out whether there is a
physiological cost to this high sucrose content," she said.
Milton also found that the wild fruits had higher levels of calcium,
potassium, iron and phosphorus - sometimes as much as a 10-fold
difference - compared to domesticated fruits.
"I'm not criticizing our fruits," said Milton. "They are pretty good,
but we don't eat enough of them, and you have to remember that they have
been bred for sweetness and appearance."
The monkey diets also had a better balance of essential fatty acids than
do most American diets, which tend to be deficient in alpha linolenic
acid, or ALA, said Milton. Foods high in ALA include soy and canola oil,
uncooked cabbage, kale and Brussels sprouts.
Milton doesn't like to draw medical conclusions about humans from her
new findings on monkey diets, saying that, "We are not monkeys, and we
don't eat wild plants."
But she puzzles over the immense differences between the mineral intake,
for instance, of a Panamanian monkey and that recommended for an adult man.
The monkey takes in 4,571 milligrams of calcium per day. The RDA for a
human who weighs 10 times more is 800 milligrams. Of potassium, the
monkey eats 6,419 milligrams; the human is expected to take in
1,600-2,000 milligrams. Of magnesium, the monkey eats 1,323 milligrams;
the human RDA is 350 milligrams.
Unfortunately, many people don't even take in the mineral levels
recommended as optimum for health, said Milton.
"Throughout history, humans have suffered from all sorts of diet-related
diseases," said Milton. "If we paid more attention to what our wild,
primate relatives are eating today, perhaps we could learn new things
about our own dietary needs that would help reduce health problems
throughout the world."
Milton cautioned, however, that people should not rush into the forest
and begin eating leaves and wild fruit because human physiology -
particularly the gut - has changed through evolution.
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