Loss of fat mass and lean mass

[2trapper]

Dear fellows,
I've a question for you. Some days ago we are just chatting about diets and alimentary regimens and one of us highlights the chance that hunters in the past are the ones with the best diet, much more than primitive farmers. the facts beyond this theory are the better fitness due to the hunt and the consumption of meat rather than cereals.

It is quite srange to me since the fact that all the predators spend a lot of energy during the hunt and without any return if they fail. Most of all, if thei fail and fail again, the chance to have success gets low because a lot of energy is wasted in the process. So, are there any data about the loss of fat mass and lean mass during a time in the outdoor (for example in survival situation, without food at the end and in need to gather it)?

Thanks a lot

 

[Toddy]

No they're not.

The farmers end up with both meat and reliable calories to store. Then they brought in dairy too. The early pastoralists changed enough so that they managed to digest milk long past the age of weaning.
It's an incredibly healthy diet, and their longevity, and the huge population growth post the advent of farming proves it.

As for the muscle mass/lean mass, sorry I don't have a clue. I'm an archaeologist not a dietitian.

M

 

[Hibrion]

I'm not a dietitian or an archaeologist, but I was an ancient historian. When you look back at early farmers, those doing the actual labour (subsistence farmers and labourers on larger farms) are doing a hell of a lot of physical work so it is unlikely they will have excessive amounts of fat. Remembrer, mechanisation in farming only came in very recently.

Also, you simply cannot survive on hunting alone. Pre-agricultural societies or 'hunter-gatherers' still did a lot of gathering. Even today hunter-gatherer societies staple tends to be some starch based food. Hunters fail, but the gatherers will keep them going until the next hunt.
Then you also need to consider what type of hunting they are doing - are they stalking, driving game as a group, trapping? Each will have different levels of intesity and different rewards.

I think to say a hunter would be healthier is just making things far too simplistic.

 

[Robson Valley]

The energy yield from fats in the diet is extraordinary. The numbers look erroneous.

There are no starvation records. However, the Inuit of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in Canada
were not driven to extinction by a lack of botanical crops. Much the same must apply to the Sami.

 

[Toddy]

I think Hibrion's right about it being too simplistic, but, the earliest farmers had the choice lands. They used loess soils, that's the open fine silt soils of the river innundations.
Those soils are incredibly easy to work and those very soils are where we find the first evidences of farming, not just in the Fertile Crescent, but right across Europe too. It takes very little effort indeed to use those lands. A stick will turn them open easily to sow seed, and they are constantly fertile because the river brings down fresh silt every year.
By the time that the population starts to 'explode' those best lands are already in use, so then people start moving outwards from those river and lake side areas. Transhumance becomes part of their agricultural economy, whereby both the arable and the pastoral become important elements in their 'domestic economy'.

The biggest thing in all of this, in the human diet, is that we cook, and by doing so we can make otherwise inedible stuff into good digestible food. Whether that's the bones and sinews of animals or the dried hard seeds of grains and legumes, it means that humans don't need either the teeth of the carnivore or the huge grinding ones of the herbivores, or the gut that goes with either of those.

Omniverous wins

Robson Valley's comment is true enough, but their population was comparatively limited on their diet, and without the fallback of stored farming produce, lean times were often deadly.

M

 

[Robson Valley]

Subtracting agricultural productivity, the designs of human teeth have labelled us as omnivores for millions of years.
Phytoliths in mill stones give us a pretty good look at the most essential of gathering and processing crops.
I've just begun to read Michale Pollan's work: "Cooked", about this very process.

 

[Hibrion]

I agree with you, Toddy. But it is worth noting that early hunters had 'virgin' land to hunt in a similar way that early farmers had excellent land to farm. There was more abundant wildlife and it was easier to hunt than anything today.

 

[Toddy]

Very good, and if you can get hold of it,
Catching Fire How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham Basic Books, New York, 2009. 315 pp. $26.95, C$33.95. ISBN 9780465013623.

(Sorry, cut and pasted that link, but it gives the title, author, publication date and the isbn code)

there's another one about fire sparking humanity's development,
Fire The Spark That Ignited Human Evolution by Frances D. Burton University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2009. 245 pp. $34.95. ISBN 9780826346469.

Really interesting reads, both of them.
M

 

[Toddy]

I agree with you, Toddy. But it is worth noting that early hunters had 'virgin' land to hunt in a similar way that early farmers had excellent land to farm. There was more abundant wildlife and it was easier to hunt than anything today.

True, very true, but the best of the hunting lands, well, perhaps I should say the easiest of the hunting lands, were the waterways too.
So folks had fish, fowl and farming, all on their doorstep, and since most animals need to drink, they were perfectly sited for hunting game too.
Farming gives an edge though that hunting and gathering don't, especially in the long cold dark, and very short days, of Winter.

M

 

[Janne]

xxxxxxxxxxx.

 

[Janne]

xxxxx xxxxx.

 

[Janne]

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

 

[Robson Valley]

What were the crops harvested by the Sami? Dietary diversity is mirrored by our teeth. We don't have carnassials.

Step 1: running around, eating the nuts and berries in season. Probably drying baskets of items.
Step 2: dig up the best of the valuable plants to transplant to near your home cave. Energetically effective.
Step 3: plant propagation (and don't wait for cereal crop agriculture to find evidence of this.)
There's just been a beautiful reworking of the DNA in apples as cultivation spread both east and west along the Silk Road.

Open fire smoking and drying were the meat preservation techniques used all over the world. Cooking/re-heating comes later.
If you have read Pollan's "Cooked," don't spoil the ending for me.

Oolican grease (or oolichan oil) and salmon eggs were highly prized fatty items in the PacNW diet.
Mariculture of clams, oysters and mussels is still practiced today.
Shuck the shellfish, string them on long cords and smoke/dry them for maybe months of storage.
They actually taste pretty good, just pulled off the cords.

 

[Janne]

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

[Janne]

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

[Robson Valley]

Very similar to the earliest hunter-gathering activities all over the Americas. Different resources but the same techniques.
Summer camps and winter camps. Our First Nations here in BC have already begun spearing the early salmon runs.
The food fishery was never supposed to be a commercial venture. When I was a kid, they were called "Fraser River Chickens."

 

[Janne]

xxxxxxxxxxx.

 

[Robson Valley]

No need in that day and time to domesticate bison. "Buffalo Jumps" are all over the country.
They are a violently unpredictable hebivore with the same social disposition as an African Cape Buffalo.
Don't test them. Estimated in the 10's of millions before 1700. A 2 yr old weighs about a ton (2,000 lbs)
and unlike a white-faced range maggot, can cruise at 50 kph all day long. Remarkable critters.

In Canada, we have 2 subspecies(?): woodland and plains. Side by side, they look quite different.
Populations of both are thriving in Elk Island National Park.
Honestly, I can't remember which one I eat. After a side per year for 15+ years, you'd think I could remember.

 

[Janne]

xxxxxxxx. Xxxxxx

 

[santaman2000]

As my dad told me: The most precious part of the animal was the fat. Second most precious - liver, kidneys and heart. Then muscle. Then the other entrails.

Actually, the heart IS a muscle.