http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...urns-ate-greens-knew-use-plants-medicine.html
Not just meat then, some starchy foods too.
Not just meat then, some starchy foods too.
Neanderthal diet
- Thread starter rik_uk3
- Start date
Theres a real growing movement advocating the paleo (Paleolithic) diet
Some studies have thrown up some very interesting results.
Have a dig about here for more info:
http://robbwolf.com/
Some studies have thrown up some very interesting results.
Have a dig about here for more info:
http://robbwolf.com/
I've looked at the paleo diet, stuck to unbiased sources where possible and its not for me. Unless there are medical/religious reasons I can't see the point in cutting out chunks of food from a diet. Bit of what you fancy does you good IMHO.
That phrase -- "cutting out" -- assumes that the current diet is "normal" ... which it is not. It's a highly artificial construct, which could not have existed even 30 years ago, let alone before the advent of agriculture. IOW, not for almost all of the past 2.5 million years of our existence.
Anyone who knows even schoolboy-level evolutionary biology realises that we are shaped by our environmental conditions, and you can't eat a particular type of diet for hundreds of millions of years without being adjusted to it.
The real question is whether our species can continue to add a higher and higher percentage of foods that we're really not "designed" for to the human diet without virtually killing ourselves off. And I mean that literally.
The current diet has brought about a worldwide epidemic of obesity and diabetes. There are obese five-year olds with plaqued arteries in the States, and there are now children being born already insulin-resistant, owing to the mothers' diets. And obesity and diabetes are only a part of it. Auto-immune diseases are the number three killer in industrialised countries. Anthropologists and medical-missionaries, like Schweitzer, reported not seeing a single case of cancer among primitive peoples eating their traditional diets. It began to appear as they became westernised. There is a whole cluster of these diseases that were long known by anthropologists as "the diseases of civilisation".
The current diet benefits almost no-one except the supermarkets and the argicultural interests that lie behind the absurd dietary recommendations of the United States Department of Agriculture -- which seem to be taken as a worldwide standard by the ignorant despite the fact that leading scientists have said that they "ignore the science" and "fly in the face of the evidence":
http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/PIIS0899900710002893/fulltext
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I'm going to say that I generally agree with the above, except for the bit about being adjusted to a diet for hundreds of millions of years.
Very few species, or even families of species, have existed for hundreds of millions of years, and we aren't one of them. Hominids have a history of approximately 1 million years, give or take. Admittedly, that's a long time, but even so.
This topic also has the potential to become rapidly inflammatory, as people have strong opinions about diet amd it quickly gets political, and I'd rather not read another argument thread.
On the original post, I'm not especially surprised, except by what science is now capable of learning from fossils. Good post Rik.
xylaria
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
There seems to be a confusion between the paleo diet and the diet our ancestors ate. un processed seeds, the freshest fruit and veg and lean wild meat is a very healthy diet, and is pretty much with regional variations what our species has spent most of it history eating. A fad diet that produces ketosis isnt natural or normal.
Dubbing something "fad" isn't an argument. It's a snide piece of evidence-free propagandising.
And, no, our ancestors probably ate few seeds. furthermore, they could have only eaten fruit when it was in season, which was only for a few weeks of the year. They didn't have supermarkets that flew food in from around the globe. Neither did they have highly-bred, high-sugar fruits, such as we have now, except perhaps for a few individuals in the tropics. Have you ever actually tried a sloe or a crab-apple?
As for their eating "lean" meat, that's a laugh a minute. There is any amount of ethnographic and archaeological material that shows that they went for the largest, oldest -- and therefore fattest -- beasts in a herd, and were selective about which cuts they ate, preferring to take the fattiest portions.
There's hardly a sentence in that post which is not inaccurate and ill-informed.
As for Neanderthals, while they obviously did make use of some wild grass seeds, at any rate when those were in the particular environment the particular individuals lived in -- and when there was nothing better immediately available -- they were not living on huge quantities of modern hybrid 42-chromosome wheat, which wasn't even around just decades ago:
http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/02/it-aint-rhight/
http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2011/07/herbicide-resistant-wheat/
Stable-istope analysis of their bone collagen shows them to have been "top predators":
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articles/PMC16602/
Furthermore
They didn't get those injuries from picking a few seeds.
http://www.archaeology.org/online/reviews/neandercode/
It amazes me how people can make dogmatic and counter-factual statements and don;t think it necessary to cite a single, reputable, scientific source for anything they say.
-As I remember our species (homo sapiens) evolved in the tropics (tropical Africa was the last theory I recall) so what do you mean, "except for a few in the tropics?"
-As for Neandethals, what does their diet have to do with ours anyway? They were a separate species that we replaced; partly because of their inability to adapt.
Everyone knows neanderthals ate dinosaurs*
*citation: 2Million Years BC - and it didn't do Rachel any harm.
Chill out folks!
*citation: 2Million Years BC - and it didn't do Rachel any harm.
Chill out folks!
personally i think its all codswallop maybe the bodies they have studied died of diabetes. Maybe that amazing diet actually poisoned them its all a bit hit a miss imo, the plain facts are simple the brain has moved on alot since then and its a very hungry organ the only way we could fuel it is high sugar foods which we developed and intelligence has boomed alongside these developments. I believe we are evolving quicker now than we ever have its just the brain thats going the most and the gut is just catching up. Obesity is down to a way of life, we produce food that packs a punch if you dont burn it off it will turn to fat simples and the brain is very addicted to this type of food...yes try any diet you like but most people know what foods disagree with them listen to your body and youll be alright we simply couldnt sustain the amount of people on this planet if we all turn back to the way it was
i dont get on well with lactose i know this and mostly keep away from it and technology has most of my angles covered....
i dont get on well with lactose i know this and mostly keep away from it and technology has most of my angles covered....
this is my advice to you Chillout before you have a stroke and cut back on the red meats
Maybe for all we know Homo Sapiens, became sapiens because they ate the last Neanderthals
Most of the documentaries I've seen do in fact lean toward the belief that encounters between the two species weren't entirely peaceful. Though I don't recall any (as yet) ever suggesting consumption. LOL
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I've never seen anything refuting man is a tropical animal. Is fruit only in season a few weeks a year in the tropics? (Genuine question. I can only guess it is in season all year round).
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