[ExI] The grain controversy (was Paleo/Primal health)

[lists1 at evil-genius.com]

On 11/16/10 6:54 PM, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 10:46 PM,<lists1 at evil-genius.com>  wrote:
>> >
>> >  Here's Dr. Cordain's response to the Mozambique data:
>> >  http://thepaleodiet.blogspot.com/2009/12/dr-cordain-comments-on-new-evidence-of.html
>> >
>> >  Summary: there is no evidence that the wild sorghum was processed with any
>> >  frequency -- nor, more importantly, that it had been processed in a way that
>> >  would actually give it usable nutritional value (i.e. soaked and cooked, of
>> >  which there is no evidence for the behavior or associated technology
>> >  (cooking vessels, baskets) for at least 75,000 more years).
> Nor is there any evidence to the contrary.

On the contrary: the absence of other markers of grain processing is 
clearly enumerated in the article.

"As opposed to the Ohalo II [Israel] data in which a large saddle stone 
was discovered with obvious repetitive grinding marks and embedded 
starch granules attributed to a variety of grains and seeds that were 
concurrently present with the artifact, the data from Ngalue is less 
convincing for the use of cereal grains as seasonal food.  No associated 
intact grass seeds have been discovered in the cave at Ngalue, nor were 
anvil stones with repetitive grinding marks found."

Then there is the lack of cooking vessels -- and throwing loose kernels 
of grain *in* a fire is not a usable technique for meaningful production 
of calories.  (Try it sometime.)  Note that the earliest current 
evidence of pottery is figurines dating from ~29 Kya in Europe, and the 
earliest pottery *vessel* dates to ~18 Kya in China.

So if you posit that grains were important to their diet, you also have 
to posit that pottery vessels were actually invented ~105 KYa in Africa 
-- but that they mysteriously left no evidence there, or anywhere else, 
for 87,000 years!

I find that theory extremely questionable.

>> >  Therefore, it was either being used to make glue -- or it was a temporary
>> >  response to starvation and didn't do them much good anyway.
> That's pure SWAG.

So is the theory that they were eaten regularly, as described above.

> I'd like to see the Mozambique find criticized by someone who doesn't
> have a stake in the "paleo diet" business.

I'd like to see it supported by someone who doesn't have a stake in 
their own non-paleo diet business.

(For the record, I am not selling any diet advice to anyone.  I'm not 
even a good paleo dieter.  I've moved that direction because the 
evidence suggested it, and I maintain it because my energy level, 
attitude, body composition, and state of health have improved as a result.)

>> >  As far as the Spartan Diet article, it strongly misrepresents both the
>> >  articles it quotes and the paleo diet. ?Let's go through the
>> >  misrepresentations:
>> >
>> >  1) As per the linked article, the 30 Kya year old European site has evidence
>> >  that "Palaeolithic Europeans ground down plant roots similar to potatoes..."
>> >  ?The fact that Palaeolithic people dug and ate some nonzero quantity of
>> >  *root starches*  is not under dispute: the assertion of paleo dieters is that
>> >  *grains*  (containing gluten/gliadin) are an agricultural invention.
> Granted. However, that's more evidence that paleo diets did include bulk carbs.

"Bulk" meaning < 1/3 of total dietary calories *even for modern-era 
hunter-gatherers*, as I've repeatedly pointed out.  This is well at odds 
with the government-recommended "food pyramid", which recommends over 
half of calories from carbohydrate.

Also, the more active one is, the more carbs one can safely consume for 
energy.  I don't think any of us maintain the physical activity level of 
a Pleistocene hunter-gatherer, meaning that 1/3 is most likely too high 
for a relatively sedentary modern.

The science backs this up: low-carb diets lose weight more quickly and 
have better compliance than low-fat diets.  (Note that Atkins is NOT paleo.)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17341711

>> >  Note that it takes a*lot*  of grain to feed a single person,
> So? It doesn't take a*lot*  of grain to be a regular part of the diet.

It takes a lot of grain to provide the food pyramid-recommended 50% of 
calories from carbs.

>> >  not to mention
>> >  the problem of storage for nomadic hunter-gatherers during the 11 months per
>> >  year that a grain 'crop' is not harvestable -- so arguing that wild grains
>> >  were the majority of anyone's diet previous to domestication is a stretch.
> I'm arguing that we just don't know how big a role grains played. Lack
> of evidence isn't evidence that didn't happen. And we now have
> evidence that it*did*  happen. So now the question is "how much"? I
> don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows. Lot's of people are willing
> to guess or assert one way or the other, but I'm not.

I find the combination of physical evidence (or lack thereof) and 
genetic evidence compelling.  Add to this some facts:

-Grains have little or no nutritive value without substantial 
processing, for which there is no evidence that the necessary tools 
(pottery) existed before ~18 KYa

-One can easily live without grains or legumes (entire cultures do, to 
this day).  One can even live entirely on meat and its associated fat -- 
but one cannot live on grains, or even grains and pulses combined

-Grains (and most legumes) contain anti-nutrients that impede the 
absorption of necessary minerals and inhibit biological functions (e.g. 
lectins, phytates, trypsin inhibitors, phytoestrogens)

-Grains are not tolerated by a significant fraction of the population 
(celiac/gluten intolerance), and are strongly implicated in health 
problems that affect many more (type 1 diabetes)


>> >  And it is silly to claim that meaningful grain storage could somehow occur
>> >  before a culture settled down into permanent villages.
> Really? It's silly to think someone could have stashed grain in a cave
> for a rainy day? When nearly every other food you eat is perishable,
> I'd think that storing grain would be pretty obvious and not terribly
> hard to arrange.

And how do you propose to make that cave impervious to rats, mice, 
insects, birds, pigs, and every other animal that would eat the stored 
grain?

Storing grain for a year is not a trivial problem.  The oldest granaries 
known date to 11 KYa in Jordan.  Furthermore, the oldest known granaries 
store the grain in...pottery vessels, which didn't exist until 18 KYa.

Agriculture isn't one single technology...it's an assemblage of 
technologies, each of which are necessary to a functioning agrarian system.