Starch Diet......????

[PaleoPhil]

Regardless, tubers are a staple food among such HG peoples as the Hadza, even Eskimos have been eating them for thousands of years, and they have been part of the human diet for millions of years (long before even Wrangham's controversial estimated date for the advent of cooking), as with meats, fruits, etc. That doesn't guarantee that these foods are healthy, but it does mean that we can't assume that they are unhealthy and they do fit most definitions of "raw Paleo" (edible raw and commonly eaten during the Stone Age), though my own approach to diet is to do what works best for the individual. So if tubers don't work for you and you're not interested in possibly developing better toleration of them, or you just don't like them, then don't eat them. For myself, I certainly wouldn't eat the levels of starch and sugar on a regular basis that giant pandas or most vegetarians eat.

[goodsamaritan]

I'd like to chime in that a year or more ago I had raw starch cravings and I was looking for answers in this forum. 

[TylerDurden]

Of course we can assume that they are unhealthy. There are plenty of examples such as cyanide-heavy cassava which demonstrate that they are a very low-quality raw food and therefore unhealthy. Since  we aren't HGs and live in a time where other  foods are plentiful, there is no need to eat tubers at all. Plus since tubers like cassava need to be fermented and processed to a high degree before being eaten, they can hardly be considered rawpalaeo which emphasises a lack of processing wherever possible. The millions of years gambit re humans eating tubers for that long and supposedly therefore adapting   is, of course, utter nonsense in light of the fact that giant pandas haven't even  adapted to eating bamboo even after millions of years(that fact came from you, thanks!    ) .


In other words, by all means praise tubers as being a sort of unhealthy junk food for rawpalaeos(but still healthier than more processed , non-palaeo foods), but don't pretend that they are healthy foods.

[PaleoPhil]

Coincidentally, I recently started an experiment with raw-fermented and cooked-fermented potatoes, based largely on the instructions here: Fermented Potatoes: TheHealthyHomeEconomist After just 5 days I do find fermented potatoes to be more digestible than standard cooked potatoes, though one sampling is hardly a good test. Normally, cooked potatoes make my stomach feel bloated, heavy and uncomfortable. Not so with these, so far.

I'll report further in the future after I've tried more. If this works well, it will add further evidence that Wrangham has overestimated the importance and value of cooking and failed to take into account fermentation and other more natural forms of improving the digestability of foods.

Of course we can assume that they are unhealthy.

Ah, there's the usual exaggeration. You're knowledgeable enough to know that assumptions are unscientific, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's conscious exaggeration for emphasis.

What happened to your love of scientific consensus? The consensus is that humans are well adapted to eating starchy foods like roots and tubers. That doesn't guarantee it's correct, but that's usually reason enough for you to attack anyone who dares to question the existing consensus.

Plus since tubers like cassava need to be fermented and processed to a high degree before being eaten, ...

Not the case with all tubers, though it is with most sold in American supermarkets (but not with the yacon and jicama available in supermarkets that were previously pointed out).

It occurred to me some time ago to try fermented potatoes after I discovered that I handled fermented raw honey far better than unfermented and read about Eskimo potatoes and the millions of years of tuber consumption among humans and other primates, and how traditional African peoples bury tubers to ferment them.

they can hardly be considered rawpalaeo

Stone Agers and pre-human primates could hardly have eaten raw tubers if they weren't "raw Paleo."

... giant pandas haven't even  adapted to eating bamboo even after millions of years(that fact came from you, thanks!    ) .

You're welcome, but you left out the "fully" bit. Giant pandas haven't "fully adapted" to eating bamboo. They have adapted some, which I explained in the past, but which you've conveniently overlooked here. I think you were right that omnivore is a more apt designation for humans than facultative carnivore, and roots and tubers are the key foods that swayed me to your view on this.

In other words, by all means praise tubers as being a sort of unhealthy junk food for rawpalaeos

More assuming.

(but still healthier than more processed , non-palaeo foods), but don't pretend that they are healthy foods.

I didn't claim they were. I only pointed out that there are raw Paleo tubers and that they are a staple food among some HG peoples, and such. You've merely made yet another assumption. Please recall what happens when you ass-u-me. I'm merely questioning the assumption that all tubers "are unhealthy" for all. You're well-known use of straw-man tactics are not persuasive. Nonetheless, I do appreciate your providing me with a devil's advocate sounding board to test out my speculations. I am open to all reasonable possibilities.

[TylerDurden]

More passive-aggressive nonsense from you as usual:-


1) The scientific evidence shows, however, that tubers like cassava are very low quality nutrient-foods which need lots of processing/fermenting to make them barely edible by humanity. Point disproven!

2) The very need to ferment in order to be properly digested  means that such foods are certainly NOT "rawpalaeo". Another point disproven.

3) Stone-agers and pre-humans clearly ate fermented tubers which were not rawpalaeo, so don't count. Yet another point disproven.

4)  Giant Pandas have only adapted in a very minor way to bamboo by producing some bamboo-digesting enzyme in particular. That does NOT explain however why pandas are in  a similiar situation to sloths wherein they digest bamboo for many hours whereas their guts are designed to be carnivorous.

5) You were yourself making an entirely false assumption that, if HGs were consuming tubers, that that meant that they were healthy foods. This Weston-Price-inspired idiocy, courtesy of the Noble Savage theory which you heartily espouse despite fake protestations, has long been proven false.

[PaleoPhil]

More passive-aggressive nonsense from you as usual:-

More ad-hominem nonsense from you, as usual, though it wouldn't be the same without it, I suppose. It's kind of like mom's apple pie or alumni homecoming week.

Point disproven!

LOL! Thanks for the humor. You wouldn't have to say that, of course, if it were actually true, and I suspect that you know that, deep down.

5) You were yourself making an entirely false assumption that, if HGs were consuming tubers, that that meant that they were healthy foods.

Please point to where I said that, because if I did, I wish to correct that error. Thanks.

This Weston-Price-inspired idiocy, courtesy of the Noble Savage theory which you heartily espouse despite fake protestations, has long been proven false.

Ha, ha! I can't believe you're still trying to push that canard. Surely you don't expect anyone to take it seriously? Why on earth would acknowledging the scientific evidence that humans and primates have been eating tubers for millions of years, and questioning the fanatical anti-starch dogma that all "starches" are evil, somehow mean that someone regarded all "savages" as inherent nobility?

What it all comes down to is that someone dared to question your assumptions and when that happens all this nonsense about "passive-aggressive"-this and "noble-savage"-that and old grudges against the WAPF (which I actually share to a certain extent, ironically) comes out because you can't provide good answers to the questions. What it really seems to translate to is "Someone didn't buy my dogma, boo-hoo!" Ah well, at least it's mildly entertaining for a while.

[TylerDurden]

Please point to where I said that, because if I did, I wish to correct that error. Thanks.

  Stop prevaricating. It was the millions of years remark as you well know!

Ha, ha! I can't believe you're still trying to push that canard. Surely you don't expect anyone to take it seriously? Why on earth would acknowledging the scientific evidence that humans and primates have been eating tubers for millions of years, and questioning the fanatical anti-starch dogma that all "starches" are evil, somehow mean that someone regarded all "savages" as inherent nobility?

You are as usual emulating the noble savage nonsense  by implying HGs as being supposedly representative of humanity re their tuber consumption.

Re rest of the guff:-  Nothing wrong with citing passive-aggressive behaviour on others' part. As for WP, I don't think it's healthy to emulate HGs in any way. We live in a time of plenty where tubers are not needed any more as starvation foods, so we should be eating higher quality foods than that.

[goodsamaritan]

Well Tyler,

I think my body needs a certain amount of tubers / raw starch from time to time.

I found Singkamas to have met my starch cravings on raw paleo diet.
It was curious that I did not like singkamas during my SAD diet days.
But on raw paleo diet, on year 3 I think... I was posting here looking for raw starch.

I found Singkamas:

Jícama

Pachyrhizus erosus, commonly known as Jícama, Mexican Yam, or Mexican Turnip, is the name of a native Mexican vine, although the name most commonly refers to the plant's edible tuberous root. Wikipedia
Scientific name: Pachyrhizus erosus
Rank: Species
Higher classification: Pachyrhizus

[PaleoPhil]

Thanks for sharing your positive experience with raw Paleo tubers, GS.

----

SUMMARY: What follows includes a boatload of evidence from my files that refutes Tyler's bogus claims (I doubt he'll be convinced by it, but that's his choice, and maybe someone else will find it interesting). For those who don't wish to read the whole thing, the gist is that starchy foods, including tubers, have been part of the human and pre-human diet for millions of years and the weight of the evidence and scientific consensus are that some starchy foods are not especially detrimental to most people's health in reasonable quantities and may even be beneficial for some in hormetic quantities, though I'm not making any health claims myself.

----

It was the millions of years remark as you well know!

Accumulating scientific evidence does indeed suggest that tubers and other USOs and starchy foods have been part of the human and even pre-human diet for millions of years. I have been collecting evidence and now have quite a bit I can share (and there's more):

Here are some starchy foods and inulin-rich tubers that are edible raw without fermentation:
Bananas
Parsnips*
Salsify (Oyster plant)*
Wolf apple (Solanum lycocarpum): a starchy fruit that's a member of the same Solanaceae family as the potato; makes up to 50% of the maned wolf's diet, from which it gets its name, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maned_wolf, http://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=jp.2008.12.19&org=10)
Jicama: inulin-rich legume tuber of Central America
Yacon: flowering plant tuber of the Andes of Perú that contains inulin and oligofructos (member of the daisy family)
Jerusalem artichoke: inulin-rich tuber; a species of sunflower
Long Yam (Dioscorea transversa, aka parsnip yam): an Australian yam
Air Potato (Dioscorea bulbifera, aka "potato yam"): native to Africa and Asia; some varieties are edible raw per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable) and http://tiny.cc/t89pow
Chinese yam (Dioscorea batata; opposita; nagaimo; yamaimo; Mountain Yam): native to China
Eskimo potato (aka Indian potato; and there are other species of wild potatoes called Indian potato that are also edible raw) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_potato]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_potato
Rattan palm (the starchy young stem tips and palm hearts consumed in tropical Africa, Asia, the East Indies and Australia)

* "Parsnips (17.5% starch) and salsify (18%) are sometimes listed as mildly starchy or even nonstarchy vegetables, but since they contain as much starch as the potato (17.1%) they should properly be classified as starchy." (Source: Starchy vegetables, Food Classification Charts, http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/application-of-food-combining-principles/food-classification-charts.html)

Perry GH, Dominy NJ, Claw KG, Lee AS, Fiegler H, Redon R, Werner J, Villanea FA, Mountain JL, Misra R, Carter NP, Lee C, Stone AC (2007). Diet and the evolution of human amylase gene copy number variation. Nature Genetics 39: 1256-1260. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377015/

"John Novembre et. al. reported in the October 1, 2007 issue of Nature Genetics that human saliva has significantly more of the enzyme amylase compared to chimpanzees.  Amylase breaks down starches into glucose which can be readily used by the cells of the body.  With more amylase, humans get more useable calories from starchy vegetable foods such as tubers, corms, and bulbs.  The authors suggest that this would have been a distinct advantage for early humans because these foods are readily available.  They believe that natural selection favored additional copies of the gene responsible for amylase production (AMY1) in our early hominin ancestors but not in apes." (Analysis of Early Hominins, anthro.palomar.edu/hominid/australo_2.htm; original report at Adaptive drool in the gene pool, http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v39/n10/full/ng1007-1188.html)

Did a Starchy Diet Fuel Gene Copying in Early Humans?
11 Dec, 2007 10:45 am
http://scitizen.com/evolution/did-a-starchy-diet-fuel-gene-copying-in-early-humans-_a-27-1263.html

Extra gene copies were enough to make early humans' mouths water
September 09, 2007
By Tim Stephens, Staff Writer
http://news.ucsc.edu/2007/09/1553.html

Mechanical Properties of Plant Underground Storage Organs and Implications for Dietary Models of Early Hominins
Evol Biol, 16 April 2008
http://www.pmc.ucsc.edu/~jyeakel/Science_files/Dominy_2008%20Evol%20Biol.pdf

Early Humans Skipped Fruit, Went For Nuts [and roots, insects and meat][/b]
http://news.discovery.com/human/human-ancestor-diet-nuts.html
"Our human ancestors did not eat much fruit, but instead consumed a lot of root vegetables, nuts, insects and some meat, according to a new study." [The study: "Kimematic parameters inferred from enamel microstruture: new insights into the diet of Australopithecus anamensis" by Gabriele Macho and Daisuke Shimizu, Received 10 March 2009, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.07.004]

Daily Life
http://australopithecus.webs.com/dailylife.htm
"A. robustus was proven to eat more gritty and tough plants because their molars were more pitted and chipped. Studies of carbon isotope signatures of the robustus teeth show an overall reliance of C-3 based foods like tubers and rhizomes of ground plants, shrubs, and trees. The tubers were possibly sought out using sticks to break through the hard earth. Between 1.9 and 1.5 million years ago, the climate had become drier and their was less vegetation, during the shift to grassland away from the mixed habitat of A. africanus. The specialized skull and definition of A. robustus show it was suited to, the now more abundant, gritty foods like plant tubers of the grassland."

"Chimpanzees prefer to dig for tubers and roots even when aboveground snacks are plentiful. ... Anthropologists had thought the roots and tubers only served as fallback foods for chimps during the dry seasons when sustenance was scarce." (Did our ancestors prefer meat, or potatoes? Findings show that our relatives liked to dig up underground foods, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21775270/ns/technology_and_science-science).

Chimps Dig Tubers, Tool Study Finds, Anne Minard for National Geographic News, November 13, 2007, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/071113-chimps-tools.html

Flexible feeding on cultivated underground storage organs by rainforest-dwelling chimpanzees at Bossou, West Africa.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20080283

Perry GH et al. Diet and the evolution of human amylase gene copy number variation. Nature Genetics 2007 Oct;39(10):1256–60, http://pmid.us/17828263.

Hardy BL, Moncel MH. Neanderthal use of fish, mammals, birds, starchy plants and wood 125–250,000 years ago. PLoS One 2011, http://pmid.us/21887315.

A Palaeolithic diet improves glucose tolerance more than a Mediterranean-like diet in individuals with ischaemic heart disease
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h7628r66r0552222
"a Palaeolithic diet (n=14) based on lean meat, fish, fruits, leafy and cruciferous vegetables, root vegetables (including restricted amounts of potatoes), eggs and nuts."

Dobrowolski P et al. Potato fiber protects the small intestinal wall against the toxic influence of acrylamide. Nutrition 2012 Apr;28(4):428–35, http://pmid.us/22414587.

Physical, chemical and technological characteristics of Solanum lycocarpum A. St. - HILL (Solanaceae) fruit flour and starch, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0963996911000834

There is evidence that at least some non-human primates exhibit starch taste preference and "may have specialized taste receptors for starch" (Laska M, Kohlmann S, Scheuber H-P, Hernandez Salazar LT, Rodriguez Luna E (2001) Gustatory responsiveness to polycose in four species of nonhuman primates. J Chem Ecol 27:1997–2011. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11710607).

Yams were one of the earliest domesticated foods and are a staple food around the world: "Although it is uncertain from which country yams originated, yams are one of the oldest food plants known. They have been cultivated since 50,000 BC in Africa and Asia. In addition to these continents, yams also currently grow in the tropical and subtropical regions of North and South America.  Yams are one of the most popular and widely consumed foods in the world. They play a staple role in the diets of many different countries, notably those in South America, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and the West Indies." (Yams, http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=113)

Usain Bolt and other world-class Jamaican sprinters eat lots of yams, especially a "yellow" variety of African yam that grows abundantly in Trelawny, Jamaica (Trelawny Yam Festival, Jamaica's Original Food Festival, http://web.archive.org/web/20090417003242/http://www.stea.net/tyfaboutyam.html, originally at http://www.stea.net/tyfaboutyam.html)

Yellow Yam - Worth its weight in gold, August 25, 2008, http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080825/lead/lead3.html

Steroid content may partly explain the apparent benefits of some yams on athletic performance: "Although diosgenin is not identical to human steroids in its raw state, this natural plant steroid is made up of molecules containing the four carbon rings that are contained in all steroids, including cortisone, the sexual hormones testosterone and progesterone, and cholesterol." (Yams, indigenous American, Date: precontact, From: Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations. http://www.fofweb.com/History/MainPrintPage.asp?iPin=EIC443&DataType=Indian&WinType=Free)

"Based upon studies of present day hunter-gatherers, our ancestors almost certainly ate the tubers (storage roots) of many plants. These roots include raw, edible rhizomes, corms etc of a wide variety of plants." - Loren Cordain, PhD, 1997 at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A2=ind9704&L=paleodiet&D=0&P=8976:

"Plant storage organs like potatoes and sweet potatoes are nutrient laden and well tolerated by most people. Bananas and plantains are convenient starchy fruits. The soluble fiber in all these starchy foods is very likely beneficial, unlike the insoluble fiber in bran." - Kurt Harris, MD, http://www.archevore.com/get-started

"While there were in pre-white times many Eskimos who used no vegetables, there were some, especially in Labrador and Alaska, who got as many calories from vegetables as the Holiday Diet (aka the Dupont diet, aka the Dupont-Holiday diet, developed by Dr. Alfred W. Pennington) does; so, even with a few things like lettuce and POTATO, we may well name this regimen for the Eskimos. The same diet is described in my 1921 book Friendly Arctic, as used and enjoyed by whites who, like the Eskimos, found it nonfattening, and thus a good reducing menu." - Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Fat of the Land, 1960, p. xxvi

"If you know what to look for, there are all sorts of berries and plants you can eat with your fish [in Alaska]. This is eskimo potato, this plant, here. I pull this up and get to the root of it. This is all edible [displaying the root]. At this time of year it's all a bit stringy, and the best way really is to roast this on a fire, but you can eat this ... raw. It's a bit muddy (laugh), but a really, really good food source, and many people say it's the most valuable food source in all of Alaska. These roots are full of starch and carbohydrate. It's hardly a gourmet meal, but it will keep me moving a little longer." --Bear Grylls, Man vs. Wild, Season 1, Episode 3, "Alaskan Mountain Range"

The Potato Diet, Stephan Guyenet, PhD, December 19, 2012, http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-potato-diet.html

Tubers and other starchy foods have been growing in popularity among those who favor Paleo, Primal, traditional and whole-food diets:

Mark Sisson - http://www.marksdailyapple.com/paleo-potatoes/
Paul Jaminet - http://www.foodrenegade.com/for-the-love-of-tubers/
Rob Wolff - http://robbwolf.com/2008/01/15/sweet-potato-apple-compote-with-pork-loin/
Stephan Guyenet - http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/09/potatoes-and-human-health-part-i.html
Caveman Forum - http://cavemanforum.com/diet-and-nutrition/starchy-tubers-paleo-after-all-4553
Loren Cordain's team -
> "We do not restrict dried fruit (raisins, dates, etc), potatoes, and encourage consumption of bananas, yams and sweet potatoes." http://www.thepaleodiet.com/faqs/.
> "Yes, sweet potatoes are allowed, specially in the post-workout period if you are an athlete. Sweet potatoes are different from potatoes in that they do not contain several harmful substances such as saponins and lectins, which may increase your intestinal permeability (if consumed regularly) and rev-up your immune system. But on the other hand, sweet potatoes are high glycemic index foods and should be restricted if you are struggling with overweight, at least until your body weight normalizes." - Maelán Fontes
Richard Nikoley - http://freetheanimal.com/2012/11/the-potato-diet-hack-observations.html
Don Matesz - http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2009/08/primal-potatoes-part-1.html

---

So the scientific evidence is strong that tubers and other USOs and starchy foods have been part of the human diet going back millions of years, as I said, and there is also plenty of evidence that they are not especially harmful. As I also said, this is no guarantee that tubers or other USOs are healthy, but it would seem to suggest that they are worth testing, and in this vein of scientific curiosity and further potential health improvement I recently started testing tubers again, this time fermented. My guess is that fermented tubers won't prove beneficial enough to add to my diet, but I'm open to the possibility.

One of the things I question about the current tuber craze in Paleo diet circles is the seeming underlying hypothesis that today's unfermented cooked potatoes and sweet potatoes can be assumed to be essentially as healthy as the raw wild USOs that humans and pre-human primates consumed for millions of years were. I don't make that assumption myself.

One of the possible mechanisms for health benefits from consumption of tubers or other carby foods is hormesis. If hormesis is the main mechanism, than the usual j- and u- shaped curves associated with hormesis would suggest that consumption of carby foods like tubers should be relatively low, but not zero, to optimize health. Perhaps somewhere around Paul Jaminet's suggestion of roughly 25% of caloric intake (with possibly a wide range of reasonably healthy intakes both above and below the hypothesized roughly optimal figure). It is of course a speculative hypothesis at this point, but it is interesting that many Paleo dieters have reported health improvements by adding some starchy foods to their diets. Anecdotal evidence is not proof of anything, but it can be a clue about what hypotheses are worth testing.

I'm open minded to the possibility that the reason that some people like you and me don't currently fare very well on tubers or certain other carby foods may have more to do with malfunctions in our own bodies, such as gut dysbiosis, rather than just assume that these foods are poison for all. Paul Jaminet and others have made some interesting comments on this possibility:

"The cravings and acne lesions when eating starch mean you have gut dysbiosis.
Sometimes this can have simple cures. I just got an email from someone who fixed theirs simply by taking salt and betaine hydrochloride. They had a chloride deficiency / lack of stomach acid and fixing that fixed the dysbiosis.
Acne lesions may be due to circulating gut toxins or due to a small intestinal dysbiosis or oral dysbiosis. Try good oral hygiene, the salt therapy, probiotics and fermented vegetables and yogurt, and detox aids like bentonite clay, charcoal, and chlorella.

There are other things to do, like micronutrients, especially collagen support. But this can get you started.
I would eat just enough starch to test how you’re doing and be able to tell whether you’re improving or getting worse." - Paul Jaminet October 27, 2011 at 9:26 pm,
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2011/10/how-to-minimize-hyperglycemic-toxicity/comment-page-1/#comments

That could also help explain your self-reported worsening intolerance, including even vomiting, to cooked meats.

Do you have any evidence of any time in all of human history when humans haven't been eating multiple species of underground storage organs (USOs)--tubers, roots, bulbs, corms and rhizomes--somewhere on the earth or of serious harm to populations from consuming a nutritious diet that includes/included USOs? If you have any actual evidence, then share it, instead of wasting everyone's time with your usual rants. Put up or shut up.

[goodsamaritan]

Here's a health researcher / author who said our ancestors ate starch.

Did Our Ancestors Eat Starch?

That's a clip only.

The full interview is at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/undergroundwellness/2012/12/06/the-perfect-health-diet-with-paul-jaminet

Go to 17 min 30 sec for the starch section.  He said more starch than fruit.

His website is http://perfecthealthdiet.com/

"Even in northern Europe, Stone Age hunter-gatherers liked carbs: “The starch sources that the archaeologists have so far found include acorns and sea beet, the latter of which is the ancestor of both the beetroot and the sugar beet.” And their dogs liked carbs too.

But Paleolithic diets were lower carb than the Neolithic: Not only the onset of cavities with the Neolithic, but the evolution of cavity-causing oral bacteria, tell us that starch eating greatly increased with the invention of agriculture."

[TylerDurden]

I had forgotten to answer PP's riposte a while back.

OK, a few points of my own:-

1) It is true that some of our earlier hominids went in for eating tubers but it is also the case that, after a certain point in hominid evolution, successive hominid species  progressively increased their meat-intake far more as a portion of their diet and reduced their starchy-food-intake accordingly.

Hmm, in line with what we know about "apemen" DNA being part of modern homo sapiens, perhaps citing them as different "species" is a bad idea.

2) It is also a fact that  average human brain-size has decreased by 8% in the last 10,000 years. This coincides with a significant increase in the proportion of starchy foods in the human diet. So, starchy foods cannot be said to be healthy as a mainstay of the diet, only as desperate fallback foods for the starving.

Thanks for the attempt, though. It made me check beyondveg.com and that website has now altered its writing to counter  in very dodgy ways several of the points I made in an essay attacking BYV's anti-raw points. I'm going to have to rewrite my former essay to debunk the rubbish he's written.

[PaleoPhil]

Thanks for the vid, GS. Paul Jaminet actually undersold starches by not noting that some Eskimos also traditionally ate some starchy foods, including multiple species of wild "Eskimo potatoes," not just animal starch. On the other hand, he may have oversold today's tubers by claiming that the underground storage organs our ancestors of millions of years ago ate were "starchy tubers ... similar to our modern potatoes, yams...." In my own inquiry into the wild USOs consumed in ancient Africa, Eurasia and even the Americas, and the methods used to process them, there are some interesting differences vs. modern tubers sold in supermarkets and how they are processed today, though there are certainly strong similarities between some of them. One difference is that it seems that legume tubers that are edible raw (presumably similar to today's jicama legume tuber that GS pointed out) were more commonly consumed in the ancient past, and even among African HGs today, than in the average modern Western diet. Yet I haven't seen very many "cooked Paleos" praising jicama.

1) It is true that some of our earlier hominids went in for eating tubers but it is also the case that, after a certain point in hominid evolution, successive hominid species  progressively increased their meat-intake far more as a portion of their diet and reduced their starchy-food-intake accordingly.

I agree. It's also the case that humans again increased their intake of starchy foods after the megafauna dramatically decreased in numbers and further increased starchy food intake with agriculture. It is interesting, though, that the reported peak of human size, strength, bone density and brain size was (with some oversimplification) in Neanderthals, "Cro Magnons" and the first-contact traditional Inuits and Siberians (and their ancestors) whose diets are believed to have emphasized animal foods. Even some safe starch promoters, like Paul J., follow relatively LC diets (around 25% of calories, in his case).

Hmm, in line with what we know about "apemen" DNA being part of modern homo sapiens, perhaps citing them as different "species" is a bad idea.

I'm not sure what this is in reference to, and what do you mean by "apemen," specifically? H. erectus?

2) It is also a fact that  average human brain-size has decreased by 8% in the last 10,000 years. This coincides with a significant increase in the proportion of starchy foods in the human diet. So, starchy foods cannot be said to be healthy as a mainstay of the diet, only as desperate fallback foods for the starving.

It's possible that starchy foods contributed to the brain and body size declines, but cooking and increasing emphasis on the types of starchy foods that require cooking, increase in grain and overall plant food intake, and other things are also possible factors, especially given that raw starch intake goes back millions of years before cooking.

You've confused fallback foods with starvation foods again. As I pointed out before, in scientific terms, fallback foods can be staple or significant foods consumed through much of the year, even when there's no starvation and despite not being top preferred foods, as with the Hadza and chimp consumption of underground storage organs, previously cited.

There's even recent evidence suggesting that Premodern Polynesian sailors may have gone to the bother of transporting sweet potatoes thousands of miles from South America to their homes: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/01/clues-to-prehistoric-human-explo.html

Thanks for the attempt, though. It made me check beyondveg.com and that website has now altered its writing to counter  in very dodgy ways several of the points I made in an essay attacking BYV's anti-raw points. I'm going to have to rewrite my former essay to debunk the rubbish he's written.

Interesting, looking forward to your response.

I have no dog in the hunt, I just find the topic of interest and personal relevance and the evidence tilting more toward raw, and then cooked and raw, starchy foods being a significant part of the human diet for all of human history and beyond, as some info in your past posts hinted at:

probably b*ll*cks, but:-

"Adapting quickly: How early humans ate more like a cow than a Great Ape

A bahrelghazali survived in an environment more open than usual by changing its diet to include C4 plants - the exploitation of which is uncommon among today's great apes including chimpanzees.

Whether it relied on C4 grasses or sedges - or both - these resources are seldom consumed by most primates although savanna baboons are a notable exception as they spend significant amounts of time foraging for them.

Many grasses and sedges are high in fibre and complex starches and some of the tissues also offer nutrients.

... 'The results imply australopithecines (early humans or hominids) had become broad generalists foraging opportunistically for locally abundant resources that included significant quantities of savannah resources, unlike chimps.

'Alternatively, they might imply an emerging specialism on grasses and/or sedges. ...

http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/how-early-humans-ate-like-a-cow-than-like-an-ape/msg102110/#msg102110

(Note: I included your bollocks quip to show that I'm not trying to imply that this was your view.)

Even Neanderthals apparently partook of starchy plant foods:

She isn't the only one to mention evidence of plant-foods in the Neanderthal diet. There are others:-

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/human-origins/neanderthals-diets/index.html As the woman above mentions, the only reason why meat-consumption was focused on by scientists was that evidence of meat-consumption can be easily found by examining bones which easily fossilize. Plant-foods, on the other hand, do not survive at all well in the fossil record, so it's much more difficult to determine the amounts of plants eaten.

...(Neanderthals hadn't heard of concepts such as zero-carb at the time, after all).

As indicated more clearly by these sources:

"We found starch granules and carbohydrate markers in the samples, which indicate that these Neanderthals ate starchy foods like tubers, roots, nuts, cereals and grasses," explained Professor Copeland. (Neanderthals cooked veggies and used plants for medicine, 19 July 2012, http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=9650)

Piperno’s latest paper, out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The archaeobotanist and her colleagues have just identified the ancient starch grains and other microfossils trapped within hardened deposits on Neanderthal teeth, revealing that these Neanderthals (buried in caves in Iraq and Belgium) had a very broad plant diet. Indeed, they dined on several species of cooked starchy roots, tubers and wild grasses, and knocked back palm dates. http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2010/12/30/the-secrets-in-a-neanderthals-smile/

Granted the dental plaque on their teeth suggested that they weren't fully adapted to at least the cooked forms of starchy foods, but that doesn't mean that any amount or type of starchy foods is necessarily harmful.

I saw enough evidence on starchy foods from you and many others that I was persuaded that omnivore (I prefer adaptivore) is a more apt term for humans than facultative carnivore, after tilting toward the latter for a while. A good case can still be made for both terms, and the Giant Panda is a good caveat to keep in mind, as you pointed out. It at least suggests that it's possible to overdo it on a particular food after even millions of years of consumption of it. It seems like quite a few "Paleos" who want to eat lots of french fries or sweet potato pie prematurely jump to conclusions that their favorite foods "must be" safe or even optimal for the vast majority of "normal" people just because of so many thousands of years of Stone Age consumption of similar foods using different cooking/processing techniques. And who knows, maybe someone will find good new counterevidence against starchy foods. In the meantime, I'm not ruling out jicama, parsnips, bananas, Eskimo Potatoes or other starchy foods that are edible raw or fermented for consideration as reasonably "raw Paleo"/adapted-to foods (though I personally prefer to do without jicama ).

[TylerDurden]

I meant homo erectus, the neanderthals and all the rest of the apemen. I suspect that we modern humans all have some aspects of apeman  dna in us.

Very interesting claim of yours re humans increasing cooked starch-intake as soon as the megafauna died out. I would be grateful for any info you could provide me on that. It's common knowledge that human brain-size decreased by 3%, as of 35,000 years ago, which is roughly around the time when most of  the megafauna died out. So that decrease being explained by a moderate increase in intake of cooked starchy foods (with 8% decrease occurring during a massive increase in the Neolithic era) would suggest a greater harmful potential of cooked starches.

[goodsamaritan]

The brain size reduction thing was taken up in the Perfect Human Diet that the resource person says babies today and in the past are born with the same head size.  But it is the eventual development due to malnutrition with less meat and more grains that led to adults having smaller skulls... not just jaws.  So not enough room for the brain mass inside to grow.

[cherimoya_kid]

I had forgotten to answer PP's riposte a while back.



Thanks for the attempt, though. It made me check beyondveg.com and that website has now altered its writing to counter  in very dodgy ways several of the points I made in an essay attacking BYV's anti-raw points. I'm going to have to rewrite my former essay to debunk the rubbish he's written.

"Dodgy" is an understatement.  That website is only a step or two above Stephen Barrett in terms of intentional deception. Fortunately, almost nobody pays any attention to it.

[PaleoPhil]

I meant homo erectus, the neanderthals and all the rest of the apemen. I suspect that we modern humans all have some aspects of apeman  dna in us.

Very interesting claim of yours re humans increasing cooked starch-intake as soon as the megafauna died out.  I would be grateful for any info you could provide me on that. It's common knowledge that human brain-size decreased by 3%, as of 35,000 years ago, which is roughly around the time when most of  the megafauna died out. So that decrease being explained by a moderate increase in intake of cooked starchy foods (with 8% decrease occurring during a massive increase in the Neolithic era) would suggest a greater harmful potential of cooked starches.

It's a controversial view, but here is one of the supporting references:

Human hunting caused extinction of 'megafauna'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9162107/Human-hunting-caused-extinction-of-megafauna.html

Australian scientists have concluded that human hunting caused the extinction of the ancient giant animals – or megafauna - that roamed the continent and vanished about 40,000 years ago.

And Ray Audette claims that during the megafauna, it was easy for humans to get 60% of calories as fat, though that does still leave a window for up to around 30% of calories from carbs:

Subject: Re: Paleo vs. Neanderthin
From: Ray Audette
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 01:26:19 -0600

To interpret what humans ate during Paleolithic times it is necessary to
understand the Pleistocene:

As Loren Cordain has pointed out, the primary game species of the
Pleistocene contined much more fat than even those domestic animals who have
been bred to express their Pleistocene DNA origins and store extra fat.
That the majority of large Pleistocene animals [megafauna] are extinct ( 60% of all
large mammal and bird species) makes it difficult to imagine the fat
available to those who inhabited their range.

This huge grassland covered a much larger portion of the earth than do the
dry grasslands of today.  Studies of pollen sediments indicate that trees
and woody stemed vegetables were much rarer than they are today and grew
much slower due to the lower concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere
 according to glacier gas studies) .  Lush grasslands covered most of the
Earth now dominated by [forests].

Even in the dry grasslands of today the traditional people such as Plains
Indians, Tutsis and Mogols consume a diet that is far higher in fat than
even I consume.  In such places edible vegetables are rare and fruit trees
don't grow at all.  In such conditions one must consume at least 60% of
calories as fat to survive.  Stefansson also found these conditions in the
Arctic even though the Tundra is of too high a latitude to support abundant
grasses. ...  These lush grasslands would support far more high fat animals than
all the domestic animals that we produce today and we were evolved to
utalize this bounty.

Ray Audette
Author "NeanderThin"


Subject: Re: Vitamin Philosophy (Re: Vitamin B12 experiences
From: Ray Audette
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 11:37:35 -0500

...

During the last mini-iceage (100-1400 AD), vikings living on Iceland had no vegetable foods at all and were granted a dispensation from the Pope to use dried fish as communion host.  From their remains it has been determined that they were far healthier during this time than before or since.

My understanding is that the date for the advent of cooking hasn't been pinned down. If you find evidence of increased cooking ca 40k years ago, that would be suggestive.

Even with fire evidence, it's difficult to know how much cooking was going on and how much of the cooking was thorough. I suspect that during the early days of fire, most food was still being eaten raw or lightly/briefly cooked than Wrangham and cooked food fans would expect and I also suspect that cooking was done more to make processing and eating food quicker/easier than for increased calories and taste by early ancients, though that's just a guess based on some ancient evidence like this:

The sites reveal that Neanderthals didn’t always cook bones for their meat, which they often ate raw, but rather to make it easier to extract the marrow from them. They also cooked plants and nuts.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2008/september/neanderthal-diet-like-early-modern-humans21201.html

And there are reports that modern HGs only briefly cook nuts or tubers, when they cook them at all, to make it easier to get shells or skins off, rather than for taste.

[PaleoPhil]

Of course, as I pointed out before, even if you find evidence that cooking increased around 40k years ago, there would be confounding factors to consider, like changes in the foods eaten, due to the likelihood that more foods which require cooking would be eaten as cooking increased, as well as the decrease in meat consumption. The anti-raw-diet dude would have multiple possible factors to choose from in claiming that increased cooking was not the culprit.