On Sun, 10 Dec 2000, Ken Stuart wrote:

> Hello,
>
> It occurred to me that there is some question about whether Hunter-Gatherers (in
> Paleo times) ate lettuce, celery or other foods that we now call "salad" and
> "vegetables".
>
> Generally, it does not occur to us to even attempt to eat carpeting, sheet-rock,
> gravel or asphalt.   Similarly, I'm not sure it would even occur to H-Gs to even
> try to eat leaves or stems of plants - especially since the first such attempts
> would indicate that these did not sustain life.

I have wondered the same thing, but was surprised to see leaves
rather high on the list of paleo-foods in the Stahl article that
we were discussing recently.  The article is in my office, and I
am not, so I can't quote it right now, but she makes the point
that *young* leaves and shoots of certain place are a fair source
of quality protein, and are preferred by other primates as well.
The reason for stressing that the leaves and shoots are young is
that they then have a more favorable ration of utilizable
nutrition to cellulose.

More tomorrow, if I get a chance to key in some quotations from
the article.

Todd Moody
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