On Sat, 29 Dec 2001 06:54:29 -0500 Amadeus Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
writes:

> You have "The raw and the stolen" don't you?
> Fire would be a prerequisite for increasing the meat intake.

No, I haven't read it.  But you're still coming at this as if "meat"
intake was something that had to be increased.  First of all, it didn't
have to be "meat" in the sense of great hunks ripped from the carcasses
of big game.  As I've said before, it could be anything (and everything)
from invertebrates, to insects, to fish, eggs, the whole range of animals
from very small to very large, including birds, reptiles, amphibians,
mammals, marsupials, monotremes... (you get the idea  :-).  Fire would in
no way be required to "increase" meat intake.  "Meat" (all kinds of
animal food) was and is plainly available at all times, and in any
environment where man could survive.  The same cannot be said for plant
foods, whether plainly "paleo," questionable (some tubers, legumes,
etc...), or clearly not (grains).


> I see than (here on the list) many do very well on Ray's style
-snip-
> The success I would attribute to
> 1. avoidance of allergens and
> 2. switch to lower glycemic foods (particularly without isolated
> sugars)
>
> Some 15% of all people have allergy against wheat, another 15%
> against milk. I predict that a similar alargen and sugar avoiding diet
would
> have similar success.

Well, here we agree, but I think there's still more to it.  Your
prediction happens to work out, since that "similar" diet exists, and is
followed my many people (including myself).  It's the low or reduced
carbohydrate diet, which goes from the "whole grain" glycemic index plans
(like Sugarbusters), to the more straightforward very low carb plans like
Atkins and Protein Power.

As you say, if the offending foods are allergens, lowcarb eliminates or
reduces most of them as well as paleo (and just for clarity, I'm using it
to mean Neanderthin style).  A glaring exception is that most of these
plans specifically allow many soy products, but it seems clear that there
are fewer allergic to soy than to wheat and milk (personally, for paleo
reasons, and other bits of information I've gathered, I try to avoid it
when possible). Of course that raises a question as to WHY they are
allergens.  Maybe because they weren't introduced into the diet of those
populations until the relatively recent evolutionary past?

Also, as I understand it, the whole glycemic index idea is a bit
questionable.  There are several similar indices, all showing somewhat
different characteristics for the same foods.  While some people seem to
benefit from plans using the principle, I can't help but wonder if it's
more from the reduction of highly processed carbs, and inclusion of
things at least closer to paleo.

> Africa is loaded with dangerous predators.
> Without fire, without arrows, without knifes, without spearheads,
> only with wooden spears and stones... would you feel happy and safe
> in the savannah - when the sabbertooth tiger is hungry?
> I do see fire as a major protection tool.

Yet they (WE) DID survive,  even as far more primitive creatures.  You
seem to dislike the idea that humans and pre-humans are among the most
clever and capable, hunters on the planet. Frankly, by the time they
started using sticks and stones as weapons, I think it would be fair to
add "dangerous" to the list, even as compared with a sabertooth tiger...
No, of course *I* would not be comfortable in the situation you propose,
but a group of hominids native to that situation would have had the
intelligence and experience to survive those conditions.  There simply is
NO question about that... they were there, the dangerous animals were
there, and they/we survived and prospered.

However, for all their intelligence and capabilities, how do you think
one of THEM would feel is dropped into the middle if New York City at
rush hour?  Surely not "happy and safe..."

> Of course smaller prey was hunted or collected.
> Even chimps fish termites and enjoy. Was it a need?

It was, beyond ANY doubt, food.  Food is a need.  The disagreement
between you and Ray is about foods that arguably could be considered NOT
to be food until fire, more advanced tools, and agriculture made them
edible. If those arguable items were actually not "available" then (as
I've said) ALL other foods, including termites, would have been
exploited.


> Availability is what exactely my focus is on.
> 1 ha (5 or so acres) in the open woodland, environment of homo
> erectus, bear 40 tons of USOs (tubers...), roughly half of them
> edible raw. Furthermore many of the processible even without
> fire, like Australian aboriginals do with their favourite tuber "prey".
> These items are available year round - no shortages no bad luck.

I still don't buy it, but this gets closer to a reasonable proposal.
However, you'd still have to come up with evidence that these plants were
actually present in the same environments, and at the same time.  And
even if you could do that, it would merely expand the amount of plant
food that they COULD have eaten.

It still comes down to the fact that you can't seriously propose anything
close to a nutritionally complete human diet composed of tubers, or ANY
combination of the plant foods available in the places humans are
believed to have primarily developed.  It's going to take much more than
this for you to make a case for a realistic early human diet, containing
all the necessary nutrients without a large proportion of animal foods.


> Round the year there are the fruit of bushes and trees.
> Every plant produces some seeds. In some season they are available.
> Sometimes fruit - where our more earlier anchestors lives from year
> round.
> In open woodlands more often nuts (tree seeds).
> Mongongo nuts like harvested by the koisan (african savanah) are
> available most of the year.

Most seeds, unless gathered in large quantities and processed (ground...
fairly advanced technology... maybe available before fire, but still
pretty advanced), would not have provided much nutrition.  Sure, they
might have been eaten, as many provide a pleasant flavor if even a few
are cracked open by the teeth, but most of them will pass through the
digestive system completely intact, and therefore having been of NO
nutritional value.

Fruits get a little closer, but they hardly constitute a sustaining diet.
 While you can use broad generalizations about how they would have been
available year round, you can hardly provide persuasive, solid evidence
of that.  I'll grant that we have less than complete knowledge about the
nature of the fruiting plants of that time, in terms of how they might
have tasted, and their nutritional value, but it still seems a pretty
tenuous proposal.  But as I have repeatedly pointed out, if it was an
environment where man could survive, there would be a plentiful supply of
various animal foods which would easily provide a nutritionally complete
(or at least adequate) human diet.


> >types of vegetation present, and then map what foods would be
available
> >THROUGHOUT THE YEAR.  Adding up the nutritional contents of your

> I think over supplying such a list.
> Actually most of the work has been done by Brand  Miller (et al)
> in "Aboriginal Plant Food Data".
>
> She predicts a larger aninal food intake of 65% as opposed to 20 or
> 10%.  But 80 or 90 or even 100% plants *would* be easily possible.

There could be a vast difference between
hominid/prehuman/protohuman/human paleo diet, and an "aboriginal" diet.
Just how is aboriginal used in this context?   Yet, even as you use this
as evidence, you admit that she predicts a 65% animal food intake (which
sounds pretty reasonable and realistic).  However, when you hit your last
statement, we get right back to the core of our argument.  A 100% plant
diet would NOT be possible (at least on a sustained basis) without plant
foods made edible ONLY through the use of high technology.



> >"possible upper limit" of animal food intake is virtually 100%.
>
> That's correct and has been actual history for some percents of
> humans in the late paleolithicum.
> It's limited by the availability of fat.

Many insects are high in fat...  Many fish are high in fat...  In colder
parts of the years, all animals would be higher in fat.  Eggs have fat...
 It would be relatively simple to put together a theoretical but
realistic diet based on all of these animal sources (no, not by me).

> Insects are no joke.
> I don't see a shortage of low volume animal supply.
> I also don't suppose a vegetarian diet to have occurred for large
> timeframes in the paleolithicum. It's my choice, but not for
> paleolithical considerations (more like you not eating insects).
> In many aspects I think it brings me closer to actual paleolithical
> diets as may other approaches.

Well, now we're getting even closer to agreement.  I can certainly see
short periods of vegetarian or near vegetarian diet, but only in times of
desperation.  It would not provide sufficient nutrition for long
survival, but it could certainly extend survival if nothing else was
available.

While I don't share your aversion to eating animals, I can certainly
respect it, and even understand it (to a point).  My problem with your
usual presentation is that it tends NOT to come from the point of view
stated immediately above, but from a position of trying to debunk the
whole idea of a true paleo diet being composed only of foods that are
unquestionably edible in their raw, natural state.  No grinding, no
cooking, no nothing...  pick it up, kill it (or kill it first with your
rock or sharp stick, THEN pick it up), and eat it.  You divert all
objections with more arguments about the date of controlled use of fire,
or about the big, bad, scary predators, or about how unappealing insects
seem.

As we discussed above, this eliminates many foods which are known to be
troublesome to significant portions of the population, whereas your diet
allows them.  Granted that not all of these foods are a problem for all
people.  I assume without your saying so, that YOU are experiencing good
health on this diet, and others could too.  However, you are in a
position where MANY people on this list have told you in very great
detail, how those non-paleo foods cause them to suffer many and varied
health problems, which disappear when they stay paleo.

It would certainly be fair to propose alternate explanations as to why
this might be true, but it seems to me that that gets far deeper into
immunology and biochemistry than you'd expect to find on a "paleo-food"
list.

> I happen to prefer a "other approach in the spirit of the hunter
> and gatherer" as Neanderthin. The ladder specializes on late
> paleolithicum.  I prefer savannah food considerations.

>> I do suggest that you'd fit in here better if you stopped the
>> constant debate, and just joined in as someone who wants
>> to follow vegetarian diet as close to "paleo" as possible.
>
> Actually that's my intention.  The debate I find valuable.
> *Not* for debunking the other approaches.
> I find them obviously valuable. But for achieving a better
> understanding.

Well, I've gotta tell you that it sure SEEMS like your recurring theme IS
to debunk the basis of Neanderthin paleo.  You keep getting back to the
argument about a tuber diet, or about fire being used farther and farther
back in time, and about how early man couldn't possibly have hunted big
game, or protected himself from big predators, or making jokes about
eating insects.

I honestly believe that you're serious in your beliefs, and paleo or not,
I believe that your kind of diet CAN be healthy for a portion of the
population.  I also believe that as you follow it, it's close enough to
the spirit of paleo to be discussed in this sort of forum.  I just can't
understand why, year after year, you keep going around on the same areas
of DISagreement, when there are plenty of areas of agreement, or at least
areas where there is truly room to debate (for example, I question the
total prohibition on legumes, when it seems that many legume "sprouts,"
and maybe even immature seeds are quite tasty and edible raw).

Actually, I think you could be an extremely valuable resource for many
vegetarians who are NOT experiencing good health, and could benefit from
a lowcarb diet (close to paleo or even not so close), but have relatively
few sources of information about how to construct a diet without all the
refined sugars and starches (many of them practically live on pastas...
bleeech...), that also provides adequate proteins, and fats.  The other
common complaint from these people is that the variety of foods left for
their choices would make a deadly dull diet, and I suspect you could
provide help in that area too.  While such a diet probably would still
add up to having more carbohydrate than a really LC plan would allow, it
would still be a large step in the right direction.

In my FAQ, I provide a few small tips, and offer a couple of sources of
information for such people, but it's really an area which needs more
support.  It's not that *I* think it's a good idea, but it's what many
people want to do, and they deserve to have the best possible guidance.
Frankly, I haven't run across anyone else with both the personal
interest, and the detailed technical information to provide this kind of
support.

I'm not at all suggesting that you leave this forum (but I do hope you'll
reconsider the range of your debates), but I do suggest that you could
perform a great service if you could create some kind of resource for
these people in addition to your activities here.

Take a look at my Lowcarb FAQ, and the small information about
vegetarians.  If you can provide any other existing lowcarb oriented
vegetarian sites or books, I'd be pleased to add at least some of them (I
try to limit the FAQ to the most generally useful sites on any topic).
If you want to set up something of your own, you might read some of the
lowcarb books (IMO, "Protein Power" would be a good place to start).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Lowcarb FAQ!  http://home.talkcity.com/TechnologyWay/wallyb
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