I am totally with you on that Iguana!
ehem - I don't fit that description and I love nuts and the plant sources of fat listed! ....
Hey! No fair!
You left out this part of my sentence: "and there is evidence that humans and pre-humans ate them going back millions of years." I eat them too, just not a lot because I don't digest them well (which is likely largely due to my suboptimal digestion rather than to a problem of the nuts themselves), haven't noticed any benefits from them and am not thrilled by their taste unless I add dried fruits, which I tend to eat too much of, resulting in negative effects for me. I don't extrapolate that into thinking that nuts are of no use or even unhealthy for most or everyone and I may add Brazil nuts to my shopping list for the extra selenium, especially if I try the Lugol's protocol.
Olives, avocadoes, almonds and many other so called "healthy fat" sources are nothing else than overbred neolithic products like durians etc. Wild almonds and avocadoes are inedible and toxic.
True, though they are stand-ins for the plant fat sources that our ancestors ate going back millions of years, as pointed out in the article above. I suspect that the original African ones would be healthier and the Neolithic versions might still be healthy, even if not as much.
Our ancestors in Europe may have eaten some walnuts and hazelnuts ONCE in a year in times of scarcity.
Grok wept. It seems like you're just making it up as you go along. At least this gives me a chance to show Dorothy that I'm not totally condemning nuts. While wild almonds were quite toxic in pre-Neolithic times, hazelnuts were not. Enormous middens of hazelnut shells have been found in Europe. Here is one example:
Archaeologists uncover 9,000-year-old hunter-gatherer house on Britain's Isle of Man
BY Alexandra Hazlett
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Updated Wednesday, August 12th 2009, 1:44 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2009/08/12/2009-08-12_archaeologists_uncover_9000yearold_huntergather_house_on_britains_isle_of_man.html
What was life like 4,000 years before Stonehenge was built? Archaeologists have just uncovered more clues.
The scientists uncovered the ruins of a 9,000 year-old-house on Great Britain's Isle of Man, according to Discovery News.
The house is more than 9,000 years old, and one of the oldest and best-preserved specimens in Britain, the report stated. Curiously, the remains were surrounded by buried mounds of burned hazelnut shells, leading the archaeologists to speculate that the nuts were a major part of the hunter-gatherer inhabitants' diet. ....
You're also failing to consider the possible beneficial hormetic effect of small amounts of toxins:
http://gettingstronger.org/hormesis/I agree that nut/fruit fats are probably not as optimal as animal fats, but you're painting an excessively negative picture that isn't supported by the evidence.
These nuts go rancid very quickly due to their high pufa content. Todays preserving technologies have not been available.
Yet primitive Africans process and eat mongongo nuts, bambara groundnuts (a legume that's related to the peanut, but is edible raw and unblanched, as is the S. American groundnut, aka "jungle peanut"
http://www.rawguru.com/store/raw-food/raw_wild_organic_jungle_peanuts.html) and palm oil using only simple tools--sometimes nothing more than a rock crack open nuts or fire to roast nuts to make them easier to open by hand.
Bambara Groundnut - FoodskeyThe !Kung San of Botswana
The !Kung diet is predominantly composed of plant foods.
By far the single largest source of calories is the mongongo nut and the fruit that surrounds it. The fruit is eaten raw or gently stewed in a metal pot (a relatively recent introduction). The nuts are roasted, shelled and eaten plain. During certain parts of the year, they eat almost nothing but mongongo nuts.
- Stephan Guyenet, PhD, http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/06/food-reward-dominant-factor-in-obesity.html
While the Bushmen likely ate less nuts in the past when meat was less scarce, they don't appear to be faring that badly on a nut-heavy diet, despite the
evil PUFAs. No one has yet bothered to offer an explanation or counter-evidence regarding that, despite all the heated rhetoric here and elsewhere. It seems like the focus is more on winning debates than understanding.
Heck, even chimps process and eat nuts...
Chimps cracking nuts with stone tools ...so the idea that past humans couldn't have without modern kitchen gadgets is ridiculous.
For my part, I can tell you that I know for sure that all commonly available plant fats with the exception of coconuts are not only completely unnecessary for my health but indeed harmful IF I use them as a substantial source of calories.
Are you suggesting that your experience is strong evidence for anyone else besides you?
We are definteley no apes or squirrels for whom nuts are good food.
We are primates, and primates have been eating nuts and other plant-fat sources for millions of years, as the evidence shows. Even you admit to eating coconuts.
And for hazelnuts you need ovens or warm dry air in heated homes to properly dry them. Otherwise they will be quickly full of aflatoxins which is a very potent carcinogen. That's the reason why raw nuts are not available in any foodstore.
Raw hazelnuts and other raw nuts and blanched (briefly boiled) peanuts are sold in my local healthfood stores. If ovens or heated homes are required, then please explain how nuts were a staple food for traditional Bushmen even before they had those technologies.
Iguana was talking about nut consumption in paleolithic times. Nontoxic almonds didn't exist in that era.
Iguana already pointed you to the article I cited about nuts (and other foods) that were consumed going back even before H. sapiens. If you don't address that, then you're effectively conceding the point to Iguana.
