They also had a median life expectancy of about 35 years, so I really struggle with the "paleo" concept for macronutrients.
Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs
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Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs
#12They over-stress the hunter and under-stress the gatherer. Yes, meat is calorie-dense and without preservation doesn't last long, likely leading to gorging when it was available. But hunting takes energy and isn't always successful. Depending on meat as a sole (or dominant) food source wasn't a winning strategy. People had to eat fruit and vegetables when available or we wouldn't be here.
Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs
#13They over-stress the hunter and under-stress the gatherer. Yes, meat is calorie-dense and without preservation doesn't last long, likely leading to gorging when it was available. But hunting takes energy and isn't always successful. Depending on meat as a sole (or dominant) food source wasn't a winning strategy. People had to eat fruit and vegetables when available or we wouldn't be here.
Some meat is also not very rich in fat, which is extremely important. A diet won't survive long on rabbits alone, for example.
Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs
#14I've read similar missives like this before, and I've always felt that they are at least somewhat of a strawman. The primary feature I always have associated with paleo is no processed carbs. That is, no flour or sugar. But certainly things like fruit and root vegetables are always fine, and encouraged. Yes, some paleo adherents make it very meat heavy, and others combine paleo with low carb generally. But when I see…
Honey throws a huge wrench in the paleo argument: it's essentially a 100% processed/refined sugar of which the Hadza in particular consume huge amounts with no ill effect. Matter of fact seems to be that if you can use the calories, there is nothing wrong with getting them separate from nutrients. A highly active person might need twice as many calories as his sedentary twin but only 20-30% more nutrients to sustain…
Honey and table sugar are not the same. In honey the fructose and glucose are side by side but not chemically joined (monosaccharides) in sucrose they are joined together (disaccharide) these require different gut bacteria to break down and can plausibly have different biological effects when consumed.
Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honey throws a huge wrench in the paleo argument: it's essentially a 100% processed/refined sugar of which the Hadza in particular consume huge amounts with no ill effect. Matter of fact seems to be that if you can use the calories, there is nothing wrong with getting them separate from nutrients. A highly active person might need twice as many calories as his sedentary twin but only 20-30% more nutrients to sustain…
Honey and table sugar are not the same. In honey the fructose and glucose are side by side but not chemically joined (monosaccharides) in sucrose they are joined together (disaccharide) these require different gut bacteria to break down and can plausibly have different biological effects when consumed.
I take it that having the fructose and glucose side by side is OK, but with sucrose being joined together that's bad?
Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs
#16I agree with the headline (and so would the "Paleo diet" people, in quotes because that's marketing, not a historical claim), but the Hadza aren't my ancestors, or particularly closely related to them. That's true of non sub-Saharan people generally. More importantly, no contemporary hunter-gatherers are a good model for pre-agricultural people (to call them hunter-gatherers at that time is to imply there were other…
> The remaining people practicing such a folkway live on marginal land, the harsh truth of human existence being that if it was rich enough for agriculture, or good for pastoralism, those lifestyles would have won out.
That's a bit too harsh, and I spent a couple weeks living with the Hadza at one point. Even went honey-gathering with them up into a Baobab tree, although I was too scared to stick my hand in. They live in the African savannah, which is where humankind first evolved. Olduvai Gorge, where some of the oldest hominid fossils have been found, is basically next door to the Hadza. So while yes, Intuits are adapted to "extreme" conditions, the Hadza are living in the most "native human" conditions possible. It is anything but marginal, as there has been no evidence or history of famine ever in the Hadza people.
It is true that the area is ill-suited for agriculture, which is why the Hadza have remained, but agriculture is a very recent invention in evolutionary terms. That doesn't make the savannah "marginal". Also, the idea that you're not particularly closely related to the Hadza is obviously false, since we all share an ancestry with the original sub-Saharan hominids. If you're of European descent, for example, you share more with the Hadza than you do with those of East Asian descent -- as they also share more with the Hadza than they would with you.
You're correct in that this might not have much applicability to a modern diet, but it is valuable in puncturing myths such as the idea that "paleo" people never ate anything high in sugar. I do personally wonder if things like honey were common worldwide, though, whether it's berries or saps or syrups or similar.
Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs
#17The "starch heavy tubers" didn't exist in ancient times, they were mostly high fiber low starch-like food, totaly different than modern tubers like a potato.
Also: using carbon/nitrogen dating to detect what we ate goes back max 100k years, so we don't know what we ate before that based on the bones.
Honey was pretty much the only ancient high-carb food.
All modern high-starchy plants (rice, potatoes,...) are a modern "invention".
Ancient fruit also had hardly any sugar and other than berries it didn't exist in any remotely similar form that we know today.
Also using just one group that exists today (Hadza) is ridicoulous to generalize this to 100k+ years ago.
These people usually say "see, we eat high carb because of dental residue from starches" but they forget that those starches at that time were extremely low carb.
Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs
#18I agree with the headline (and so would the "Paleo diet" people, in quotes because that's marketing, not a historical claim), but the Hadza aren't my ancestors, or particularly closely related to them. That's true of non sub-Saharan people generally. More importantly, no contemporary hunter-gatherers are a good model for pre-agricultural people (to call them hunter-gatherers at that time is to imply there were other…
One thing it teaches us is that meat & animal products, especially fat, has been a central part of the diet for most of our ancestral tribal cultures.
Since dairy, meat and animal fats are being vilified at the moment by the modern nutritional zeitgeist. It might be worth being skeptical of such a strong rejection of these food categories.
Especially since we can't figure out the root causes of certain modern diseases as autoimmune, extreme rise in cancers, neurological and heart disease.
Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs
#19I agree with the headline (and so would the "Paleo diet" people, in quotes because that's marketing, not a historical claim), but the Hadza aren't my ancestors, or particularly closely related to them. That's true of non sub-Saharan people generally. More importantly, no contemporary hunter-gatherers are a good model for pre-agricultural people (to call them hunter-gatherers at that time is to imply there were other…
Ware patterns are a very long term effect. Hunter gathering was a seasonal diet so they would have eaten more grains in some periods and less in others.
In areas with abundant natural grains it’s likely their diets did consist primarily of grains for some portion of the year. From a survival standpoint low effort and especially low risk calories are really hard to ignore.
Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honey throws a huge wrench in the paleo argument: it's essentially a 100% processed/refined sugar of which the Hadza in particular consume huge amounts with no ill effect. Matter of fact seems to be that if you can use the calories, there is nothing wrong with getting them separate from nutrients. A highly active person might need twice as many calories as his sedentary twin but only 20-30% more nutrients to sustain…
Honey and table sugar are not the same. In honey the fructose and glucose are side by side but not chemically joined (monosaccharides) in sucrose they are joined together (disaccharide) these require different gut bacteria to break down and can plausibly have different biological effects when consumed.
But honey and HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup) ARE the same, for all practical purposes nutritionally. Honey is basically concentrated Coca-Cola.
And HFCS is popularly demonized even more than sugar is... so I'm not sure what your point is.