I've wondered about legumes too.  Here are two things I've thought
about in the past that have just come up...

On Apr 23, 2004, at 10:17 pm, Reese Coppage wrote:
> If our bodies can digest raw legumes, why aren't they part of a paleo
> diet,
> at least in moderation? Certainly early humans didn't steal their
> neighbors'
> plants <G>, but conceivably they came across them growing wild from
> time to
> time, no?

Does anyone know what part of the world legumes come from?  Did they
evolve somewhere in Africa- in which case humans would have evolved
along side them- or somewhere else?

On Apr 24, 2004, at 1:32 am, Tom Bridgeland wrote:
> Two reasons we don't eat much legume. One is most legumes are
> poisonous, even the ones we can eat contain poisons but at low doses.

I know that some legumes are extremely poisonous, but I don't see why
we wouldn't eat the ones that contain poisons too weak to affect us.
After all, without modern science you can't tell what contains poisons
unless it makes you ill.  Or maybe not eating legumes was paleo folk
knowledge that has been lost since?


And on a similar note, I read somewhere that cashew nuts are poisonous
unless they are heated first to make them safe to eat.  So is there any
reason to believe that cashew are safe to eat on a modern paleo diet?
I ate 100g of them today and yesterday so I hope they aren't doing me
in :-S

Ash