[ExI] pale diet again: RE: It's not only the fittest who survive.

[Patrick McLaren]

On Apr 16 07:58 PM, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> - Gorham Cave in Gibraltar contained fossilized grains in the habitat
> and feces of Neanderthals from 40,000 years ago. 
> <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090202140046.htm>
> 
> - Shanidar Cave in Iraq and Spy Cave in Belgium contained Neanderthal
> fossils with tooth tartar containing plants, legumes, and grains.  They
> prove that the foods were cooked by Neanderthals.  And they chose
> multi-latitudinal sites to demonstrate the use of cooked grains as a
> wide-spread phenomenon. 

One problem I have when considering high-carb in context of the paleo diet is the ability to *satisfy* caloric requirements when eating unprocessed plants, legumes, and grains.

I'll take our modern day office-bound vegetable as an example. The "average adult diet" is 8700Kj, or ~2175 calories. If we say that around about 60% of total calories is considered "high-carb" then we're looking at ~1300 calories recieved from carbs. Personally, I find it hard to intake this amount of *plain* carbs. Note, I'm a bodybuilder, so when I say plain, I don't mean plain with a drizzle of syrup.

Now, paleo man trying to satisfy his guestimated intake ~1300 calories of carbs probably wouldn't consider pasta or jasmine white rice but let's just use these as an example because they are *highly* loaded with carbs, a best case scenario.

Noting the nutritional information from the pasta packet in my kitchen, you'll need 650g of uncooked pasta to get 1300 calories from carbs. That is, 650g of pasta = 325g of carbs = 1300 calories. Although 650g of pasta is actually greater than 1300 total calories. Eating 650g of carbs a day is hard work. You'll feel extremely bloated and definitely not in the mood to go hunting for the rest of your nutritional requirements. Looking away from pasta and rice, you'll be hard pressed to find a widely available sustainable high carb source that matches the earlier macronutrient ratio. Removing the macronutrient ratio restriction to consider other carb sources and the carb-weight ratio is only going to increase. Increasing food intake to account for lower available carbs and paleo man is now eating plants, legumes and grains in the *kilos*. 

At this point paleo man will be reaching for the prune juice. Eating such a significant amount of unhusked material and the digestive system will begging for a break.

Sure setting the requirement at 1300 calories might be a bit steep. Even at 40% of calories, he's still eating 435g of mini bowtie pasta. However, decrease calories from carbs again and soon we won't be even on a high-carb diet.

Although if he ate fruit, he'd probably get there quite easily... Hmm.