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Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

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Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#151

Post by unglaublich »

dv_dt wrote: post #138
fwlr wrote: post #96

I recall reading, a long time ago, of a person who was eating just meat and only meat for his diet. He was struggling for a while with it, until he intentionally allowed a small amount of meat to rot for a bit, consumed that, and from then on he did much better on that diet. The principle I believe was in play was that the rotting meat contained a lot of bacteria that was very good at breaking down that meat (it woul…

I consume microbiotically rotted grape juice and sometimes cheese.

And there's lovely Gorgonzola: double fermented mammal gland fluid. It's great.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#152

Post by mlyle »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #56
mrguyorama wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean many modern people also live with constant gastrointestinal problems, and I'm not talking about teens eating taco bell and mountain dew every day and wondering why they have bathroom troubles, I'm talking about average people eating a varied and healthy diet with IBS.

You're not wrong and that's an excellent example. I'm questioning the idea that somehow people were able to consume this food impact-free. I struggle with the common narrative that somehow people were healthier and better in some dark forgotten past and we should return to those times for our own well being. There often seems to be promises that conditions like IBS would stop existing if we did that. But maybe ancien…

> I struggle with the common narrative that somehow people were healthier and better in some dark forgotten past and we should return to those times for our own well being

I think there's a bit of a slightly saner way to put this viewpoint-- that:

- Humans evolved in a very different environment from which we live now

- Our degree of genetic adaptation to modern living is relatively small, because there's been a blink of an eye for it to happen in

- Even if something newer has a sane rationale for it being "healthier" or "better" despite us not having genetically adapted to it, it may not be so: most of our handwaving rationale about complex systems ends up being wrong after careful trials and measurement, and the rest we may be missing a lot of second-order and third-order effects.

Not that I'm advocating for eating rotten meat. I'm just saying that the system is complicated and has a bunch of set-points learned from very different conditions.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#153

Post by throwaway290 »

kybernetyk wrote: post #88
ravenstine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why subscribe to the endurance running hypothesis, though? There are no contemporary examples of humans hunting that way, and hominids were already making tools by the time they had developed to subsist on meat. The endurance/persistence hypothesis doesn't even make sense without tools like spears, knives, or arrows, because humans don't kill their prey by biting into them. If they had access to primitive weaponry, w…

>If they had access to primitive weaponry, why would they waste energy running when they could instead ambush? This is the main point why I don't believe in the endurance running hypothesis. Humans are lazy. Why would they opt to run for days over just waiting at the local watering hole for prey?

Short-lived strategy. Animals are not stupid and learn to go to a different watering hole super fast.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#154

Post by mklepaczewski »

exclusiv wrote: post #133
bernawil wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my point is, can a human reasonably stay within viewing distance from a dog that is running away from him? the dog can just run at top speed, gain some distance, take a little rest and maintain that distance at a comfortable pace. I used to believe in the endurance hunting thing until I realized playing with my dog it didn't make sense. They DO get tired, but they take a 1 minute break and it's like they are back squ…

Pretty sure this guy can catch your dog even if your dog was on cocaine, remained focus, and had someone feeding it water periodically: [1] https://www.irunfar.com/aleksandr-sorokin-smashes-24-hour-wo...

It's only fair to compare exceptional individual to an exceptional breed. According to Google Husky can run 240km in a day. Exceptional Husky might do much better. Average Husky will easily outrun most human runners.

Still, this is an exception to the rule - overall humans outperform almost all animals when it comes to endurance running.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#155

Post by koliber »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #91
koliber wrote: post #80

Fish sauce, dry aged steaks, and bellota ham come to mind. All delicious, and while I’m not sure if you’d call them putrefied meat, it’s not that far off.

Jamón is about as far away from "putrefied" as you can get; it's cured in salt for weeks and then hung to dry for months or years.

There is bacterial action at work to give it that delicious flavor. I don't know where the line is between bacterial breakdown of meat tissue in jamón and putrification. I wanted to highlight that bacterially altered meat is a delicacy today. Maybe people back then people were also looking for umami?

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#156

Post by rajnathani »

hvis wrote: post #118
mzimbres wrote: post #73

So why rotten meat smells terrible and a steak delicious? Why would we evolve that perception of something that nutritious and which could prevent me from starving. Why my nose keeps telling me to keep away from rotten meant?

IIUC, the digestive system (and the gut bacteria in it) provide feedback to your taste buds over time. If the appropriate "paleo diet" bacteria settled in (e.g. using the gradual method to build tolerance), your nose would probably change its mind soon enough. Not a biologist, just a layman here.

> IIUC, the digestive system (and the gut bacteria in it) provide feedback to your taste buds over time.

+1. Given the recent research on the gut-brain axis, I too believe that this mechanism is the case.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#158

Post by rajnathani »

Amazing article.

This is a pretty interesting point about a carbohydrate source via animals:

> Western explorers noted that the Inuit also ate chyme, the stomach contents of reindeer and other plant-eating animals. Chyme provided at least a side course of plant carbohydrates.

I recently turned vegetarian, and I feel that (controversial opinion coming ahead) a vegetarian (lacto-ovo that is) diet is the closest thing to a Paleo diet we have today. The reason is that milk fats and egg yolk fat provide the most realistic balance of protein+fats that our ancestors previously exclusively got from eating animals whole where not just the flesh was eaten but also the organs (just as the article above confirms). Also that the composition of milk and egg yolk fats is important here as they're similar in fat composition to animals derived fats (eg: saturated fat, a favorable omega 3 to omega 6 ratio, presence of fat-soluble vitamins like Vitamin A, etc.). Extra: With both eggs and milk, it is easy to play with the protein-fat ratio by altering the whole egg to egg whites ratio and magnitude of skimming of milk respectively.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#159

Post by animal531 »

tracker1 wrote: post #112
fwlr wrote: post #96

I recall reading, a long time ago, of a person who was eating just meat and only meat for his diet. He was struggling for a while with it, until he intentionally allowed a small amount of meat to rot for a bit, consumed that, and from then on he did much better on that diet. The principle I believe was in play was that the rotting meat contained a lot of bacteria that was very good at breaking down that meat (it woul…

Kind of curious how much this may correlate to the fact that we don't dry age meat nearly as much as in times past.

Here in South Africa we have a thing called biltong which is basically thick slabs of meat that are cured and marinaded for 24 hours or so, then it's hung up to dry for about a week, depending on the size/dryness that you want.

Overall it's a huge industry.

Re: Rotten meat may have been a staple of Stone Age diets

#160

Post by djitz »

kybernetyk wrote: post #88
ravenstine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why subscribe to the endurance running hypothesis, though? There are no contemporary examples of humans hunting that way, and hominids were already making tools by the time they had developed to subsist on meat. The endurance/persistence hypothesis doesn't even make sense without tools like spears, knives, or arrows, because humans don't kill their prey by biting into them. If they had access to primitive weaponry, w…

>If they had access to primitive weaponry, why would they waste energy running when they could instead ambush? This is the main point why I don't believe in the endurance running hypothesis. Humans are lazy. Why would they opt to run for days over just waiting at the local watering hole for prey?

It’s not easy to stalk animals built to spot predators — especially in the terrain where I’ve seen modern persistence hunters.

Many watering hole types of animals also don’t just fall right over after being struck, particularly with a “rudimentary” weapon. Even if you get a decent shot off, you will still most likely be chasing it for quite a while. Not to mention the dangers of what’s hanging around, looking to take what you (hopefully) managed to score.

The odds were not in our favor!

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