On Mon, 11 Dec 2000 16:39:08 -0800, Wally Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>> 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'm not sure what the last part of your statement
>means. Do you mean that they would have been poisoned
>by eating the wrong leaves/stems, or that they would
>not have been able to eat a large enough quantity of
>leaves/stems to sustain life?
>
>I think they started eating leaves/stems because they
>liked them (as in tastes good). Human beings are
>naturally curious, and I'm sure they tasted just about
>anything they could get their hands on.

I'm not sure I would agree that they taste good.

If just go out in a rural/wilderness area and start tasting arbitrary leaves and
stems, it will take me a long time to find something that tastes good.

If I start tasting fruits, most of them will taste good.

If I start tasting rocks, I will never find any that taste good. :-)

The reason I mention the last one, is that it is unlikely that - after the first
few rocks - anyone would continue tasting them, if there were some strawberries
in the area.    Similarly, I contend that they would not keep trying leaves and
stems, if there were strawberries in the area.

Hence, my feeling that hunter-gatherers never ate a lot of the "leaf" and "stem"
vegetables, such as lettuce and celery.    This indicates to me that such
vegetables were "discovered" only later during the neolithic agricultural era.

This indicates to me that there are several different issues to the idea of
paleodiet.   There are those things that "could" have been eaten in the Paleo
era, and then there are those things that "were" eaten in the Paleo era.   (The
third issue revolves around an additional filter of what is healthy to eat,
based on principles other than those two, such as what creates the optimal
hormonal system function - which seems to produce a similar diet as the other
two principles, but not exactly the same.)


--
Cheers,

Ken
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