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

[Dave Sill]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:24 AM,  <lists1 at evil-genius.com> wrote:
> 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.

Which article is that?

> "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."

However, from http://www.physorg.com/news180282295.html :

"This broadens the timeline for the use of grass seeds by our species,
and is proof of an expanded and sophisticated diet much earlier than
we believed," Mercader said. "This happened during the Middle Stone
Age, a time when the collecting of wild grains has conventionally been
perceived as an irrelevant activity and not as important as that of
roots, fruits and nuts."
In 2007, Mercader and colleagues from Mozambique's University of
Eduardo Mondlane excavated a limestone cave near Lake Niassa that was
used intermittently by ancient foragers over the course of more than
60,000 years. Deep in this cave, they uncovered dozens of stone tools,
animal bones and plant remains indicative of prehistoric dietary
practices. The discovery of several thousand starch grains on the
excavated plant grinders and scrapers showed that wild sorghum was
being brought to the cave and processed systematically.

> 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.

This is just silly. Do you really believe that pottery is necessary in
order to enable eating grain? I think it's highly likely that they
could have soaked whole grains in water, wrapped them in leaves and
cooked them in a fire. And since the Mozambique find was ground grain,
it's also likely they made a dough that could have been cooked on a
rock or wrapped on a stick and cooked over a fire. Or there's the
notion that some grain-eating animal's carcass was tossed in a fire
and someone "discovered" haggis when they ate the stomach and its
contents.

> So if you posit that grains were important to their diet, you also have to
> posit that pottery vessels...

Nope.

>>> >  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.

Like I've been saying: we just don't know.

>> 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.

What is Julio Mercader's "non paleo-diet business"?

>>> >  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.

First, we don't know what percentage of calories came from carbs. We
don't know if it was more than 1/3 or less than 1/3. Second, WTF does
the FDA food pyramid have to do with this? I'm perfectly willing to
agree that the pyramid is bullshit.

> 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.

Well, we don't really know how many calories the average caveman
burned in a day, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually pretty
low. Food often wasn't abundant and little could be stored. Hunting
couldn't be too much of an exertion because then a failed hunt would
leave one potentially too weak to hunt again. I think it was generally
a low-energy lifestyle.

> 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

I don't dispute that.

>>> >  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.

Again, WTF does that have to do with the actual paleo diet (not the
modern attempted recreation)?

> -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

Bullshit. Pottery isn't necessary and the processing isn't substantial.

> -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

Irrelevant and wrong. Irrelevant because the ability to live without
grain doesn't imply that doing so is necessary or even desirable.
Wrong because there are lots of people who live without eating meat or
animal fat.

> -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)

So eat more minerals to compensate or gen-eng the anti-nutrients out
of the grains. Fact: many people who eat grains live over 100 years,
so they can't be *that* bad.

> -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)

Such people should restrict their grain consumption.

>>> >  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?

Do really have a hard time figuring that out? How about wrapping it
tightly in a hide or leaves, burying it, and covering it with rocks?

> Storing grain for a year is not a trivial problem.

Yes it is.

> 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.

What about the oldest unknown granaries? Or the possibly numerous
smaller personal stashes? We, obviously, don't know.

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

WTF does agriculture have to do with this? We're talking about *wild*
grain consumption.

-Dave