More proof that alcohol is palaeo

[TylerDurden]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2981162/He-s-nuts-Hilarious-video-shows-tipsy-squirrel-struggling-snow-eating-fermented-crabapples.html

[goodsamaritan]

Yes alcohol may be paleo, but it isn't good for you.
I did my red wine experiments, came to the conclusion it is not good for me.

[JeuneKoq]

GS, things that aren't or don't feel good to you, aren't necessarily bad for us. Be it fungi, or alcohol.

Researchers have actually found that people who consume alcohol in moderation live longer than people who drink excessively... and people who don't drink at all! In a raw paleo referential, this comes down to eating mature fruits, which already have some alcohol content.

[JeuneKoq]

Great video TD 

The drunk squirrel looks like it would make an easy prey though. Maybe Paleo man invented the first coq au vin, just by capturing a drunk cock! 

[Iguana]

Yes alcohol may be paleo, but it isn't good for you.
I did my red wine experiments, came to the conclusion it is not good for me.

A bit of ethanol diluted in overripe fruits has nothing to do with wine — and even less so with distilled booze, which contains some highly toxic methanol in addition to a lot of concentrated ethanol.

Wine is not a natural product (it's not paleo): oenology includes several processes and needs equipments, at least a winepress and a container! Nowadays, pumps, filters, refined sugar, sulfurous acid and other additives are used. 
 

[eveheart]

There's a huge difference between finding incidents of an event and finding evidence of its regularity. Drunken elephants and squirrels and deer can occur without leading to a conclusion that alcohol consumption was common and beneficial. Pigeons electrocute themselves on city electrical high-wires, too... so what? You know that alcohol as a beverage for humans did not originate in the paleolithic era.

Hey, you can find racially-segregated US communities, but that does not prove that the US is a racially-segregated country. Got that?

[Iguana]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1219_051219_drunk_elephant.html
How Much to Get an Elephant Drunk?

This raises another question: Even if, under very peculiar circumstances, an elephant were exposed to alcohol, how much would it take to get it drunk?

Through calculations of body weight, elephant digestion rates, and other factors, the study authors conclude that it would take about a half gallon (1.9 liters) of ethanol to make an elephant tipsy.

Assuming that fermenting marula fruit would have an alcohol content of 7 percent, it would require 7.1 gallons (27 liters) of marula juice to come up with that half-gallon of alcohol, the scientists say.

Producing a liter of marula wine requires 200 fruits. So an elephant would have to ingest more than 1,400 well-fermented fruits to start to get drunk.

Even then the elephant would have to ingest the alcohol all at once, the authors note. Otherwise its effects would wear off as quickly as the alcohol was metabolized.

Robert Dudley, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved in the study, believes the authors have put to rest the lore of elephants getting drunk from marula fruit.

The study, he said, "establishes that elephants are unlikely to be inebriated but also that chronic low-level consumption [of alcohol] without overt behavioral effects is likely."

It may make for a good story and a durable myth, but the science suggests you're not likely to see a drunken elephant sitting under a marula tree.