Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs • Hacker News Board

Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs

#21

Post by oifjsidjf » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

TomMasz wrote: post #12

They 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.

Assuming there are no high-fat seeds or nuts in large amount available then hunting has a extemely higher gain-to-expenditure energy ratio than gathering plants, especially if you hunt sheep or larger sized animals.

Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs

#22

Post by kcplate » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

dmarlow wrote: post #13

TomMasz wrote: post #12

They 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.

I think due to confirmation bias people seem to gravitate to the extremes—the mostly hunter vs mostly gatherer dietary arguments. People seem to miss that our bodies adapted to being able to basically use two forms of energy…glucose or fats and our bodies will try to adapt to run on whichever fuel is most abundant in our environment. It’s one of the reason why our species managed settle in and survive in both the arctic and the kalahari

Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs

#23

Post by hinkley » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #4

I 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…

> that if it was rich enough for agriculture, or good for pastoralism, those lifestyles would have won out.

Have you read Guns, Germs and Steel? Agriculture and Colonialism went together, club and hand, not fork and hand. Agriculture didn’t win so much as it conquered the world at spear point.

I’ve even read a few feminist things recently that tie sexism to agriculture, one even claims that the plow is the worst thing to happen to women. That gives a much darker sentiment to “beating swords into plowshares”.

Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs

#24

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

Our ancestors were also lucky to see the far side of 30, so I can perhaps be forgiven for not taking dietary tips from cave walls.

Or from the modern equivalent thereof.

Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs

#25

Post by greatpostman » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:33 PM UTC

The only reason carbs are so prevalent now is because they’re cheap. Grass fed meat is healthy, fat is healthy, sugar is bad, etc. don’t believe the research, spend a few weeks eating only quality meat and veggies, nuts, fatty foods. See how you feel

Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs

#26

Post by User23 » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:33 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #23

samatman wrote: post #4

I 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…

> that if it was rich enough for agriculture, or good for pastoralism, those lifestyles would have won out. Have you read Guns, Germs and Steel ? Agriculture and Colonialism went together, club and hand, not fork and hand. Agriculture didn’t win so much as it conquered the world at spear point. I’ve even read a few feminist things recently that tie sexism to agriculture, one even claims that the plow is the worst thi…

Guns, Germs, and Steel is thoroughly discredited pop science. And even then you’re misrepresenting its claims.

Look to David Reich and his students for actual evidence based science on human migrations.

And of course there are virtually no impartial contemporary works on the Age of Exploration, because the politics of our day require vilifying those civilizations.

The objective reality is that the colonial period was just one of many human migrations. It wasn’t the worst, it wasn’t the first, it’s not the last, and there will be more, including the largest mass migrations in human history occurring right now.

Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs

#27

Post by dividedbyzero » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:34 PM UTC

jiggywiggy wrote: post #18

samatman wrote: post #4

I 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 disease…

A large part from that is due to the abhorrent conditions that most meat is produced in and the fact that (IIRC) livestock amounts to 15 times the biomass of all wild mammals combined right now. If you tally up land used to feed livestock and all the other side effects of the meat industry, it doesn't look very sustainable to me. It's kinda hard to have almost 8 billion people live like hunter gatherers I guess.

Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs

#28

Post by chrisco255 » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:35 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #19

samatman wrote: post #4

I 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.

There is nothing low effort about grains. They don't simply grow abundantly in nature without other animals eating them. In addition, before manual cultivation, wild, non selectively bred grains were nothing like modern grains.

Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs

#29

Post by mementomorti » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #20

whiddershins wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about other stuff in honey, such as microbiome content?

Re: Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet and it had carbs

#30

Post by guerrilla » Sat, Oct 01, 2022, 3:42 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #4

I 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 harsh truth of human existence being that if it was rich enough for agriculture, or good for pastoralism, those lifestyles would have won out.

I don't buy this explanation at all. You could say the exact opposite: their land provides so well that they don't need to. I'm find with not knowing which, that's up to scientists who actually study that; not something that can be deduced a priori.