matt stone of 180degreehealth had someone named jenny (i think) do her piece on taking her car to the various food guru (as mechanics) for repair. quite funny.
this discussion reminded.

You know what I like to consider sometimes when looking at plant foods is:
How much fruits and vegetables could I eat, right now, within a 50 mile radius of home? In a foraging economy, not horti/agriculture.

Not much at all. Pecans grow around here, and I could forage for those. Cilantro grows wild, as do some herbs and weeds. That's about it. OTOH, we have wild turkey, boar, deer, ducks and all sorts of ruminants (most domestic though).

So when I consider a Paleo diet, these are and were some of the realities of it, afaiac. Summer brings peaches, plums, apricots, asparagus (all planted by someone else on my land). They last one month total. That's about it but some other seasonal greens and cactus.

But this doesn’t apply to tropical areas, where pineapple, mango, coconut, bananas, avocado etc etc are plentiful, in the Meds you get figs, cactus fruit, pomegranate, olives and almonds available in the wilderness. In the deserts you'd find dates.

That is true <sigh>. In fact, aren't some of the tropical plants almost year-round producers?

no. mangoes and avocado's bloom once a year.
not sure about citrus.
strawberries are once a year.
key limes are year round.
but root vegetables are year round..
tomatoes are cool weather and die in hot weather.
melons are once a year.

i was thinking of this..
coconuts are year round.
bananas are year round.

doesn't central CA, san joquin valley and salinas valley grow vegetables year round?
it gets too hot here for the vegetables.

Yes but the ancient civilisations found various ways in which to preserve the fruit out of season – e.g. dried pineapples/mango - so that they can still have them out of season, not sure about palm trees, I think the fruit is ripe once a year too, but ripe dates have a very long life, I hear many Nomads lived exclusively on milk, dates and meats.

i think hearts of palm is yr round. that would be really nutritious, but still a tropical plant.

Lynne, what do you mean heart of palms? Is it dates, yes dates nutritional information is amazing, unfortunately it comes along with a hefty dose of sugar.

hearts of palm


When harvesting the cultivated young palm, the tree is cut down and the bark is removed leaving layers of white fibers around the center core. During processing the fibers are removed leaving the center core or heart of palm. The center core is attached to a slightly more fibrous cylindrical base with a larger diameter. The entire cylindrical center core and the attached base are edible. The center core is considered more of a delicacy because of its lower fiber content.

Just a thought about bananas being year round -- They aren't self-sustaining. They have no sex organs and cannot reproduce without human interference (at least the bananas that we immediately think about when we hear bananas. I don't know about the smaller wild bananas though)

i think plants are paleo. if i was a paleolithic human in an ice-age climate, i would probably move to a part of the world where i could find veggies. they are mad delish.

Well, the climate was always cooler in the Paleo than now. We evolved from those humans who survived in this colder environment. As a matter of fact, cold climates are a selective pressure for bigger brains. That is why the Inuit are known to have a larger cranial capacity than most other populations even today.

Many new plant species arose from the warm climate that ushered in the Neolithic. What we see now in the tropics is not what was available less than 10kya. So we cannot even begin to talk about what plants we ate in our general evolutionary history as a species (which is about 200,000 years). Any talk along these lines is highly speculative as plant foods do not stay in the fossil record.

Moving to the tropics when your people are in Sweden is a nice pipe dream. Yet, we all are the product of our genetic heritage. If you are a very light skinned Swede, you will burn badly in the tropics. Plus, are you planning to hitch hike on a reindeer down south? Are you not adapted to a highly carnivorous diet?

My point is: we do have evolutionary variation that may impact our optimal dietary choices. However, none of us is prepared at all to handle the onslaught of Neolithic and subsequently industrial foodstuff which now bombard us from every angle.

And as Benny pointed out, some plant foods are so domesticated as to be rendered sterile without human intervention. Wheat, as I understand, is unable to be hulled without mechanical intervention.

Satya, but most of the great ancient civilisations evolved around the equator... where it is warm, and food is plentiful, the cold icy countries stayed in the dark ages until relatively recent times.

If Inuits had larger brains then all they used it for is to ensure they had enough daily food and how to keep warm! Its exhausting to think of this every day, so in the tropics having food available to them all the time, and not having to worry about how to keep warm allowed them the luxury of sitting and pondering about life, philosophy etc etc

eh. i don't think it makes sense to develop rigid ideas based on hand-wavy evolutionary theories. we may or may not have evolved eating meat, exclusively, but it's tough to know whether what we ate while evolving had any direct bearing on our optimal diet, whatever that is. the evidence leaves a lot to the imagination.

Yes, TL. Civilization was a mixed bag for humanity. Archaeologists categorize fossils from the Neolithic and Paleolithic based on the reduced stature, cranial capacity and dental caries that came with the Neolithic Revolution. That's probably why so many of us are interested in a Paleo diet, but not necessarily a forager lifestyle, lol. However, that my ancestors continued a foraging economy well beyond the tropics was not a bad thing for their health. The term Dark Ages usually has religious, social and political meaning, more than any health idea (except for the plague and such).

Cranial capacity increase and shape are adaptations to severe cold . In fact, it is recently speculated that this may have been part of the reason Homo erectus experienced such an increase of cranial capacity, as it coincides with ice age climate.

Certainly within the foraging (hunter-gatherer) societies, we can see a wide range of diets, depending on the region. Many studies have been conducted on such remaining peoples in modern times. Weston Price, Stefansson and others have found that these diets are healthy and produce physical robustness. Thus, there is a nice spectrum of choices that produce fine health. Individuals will vary in what diet might best suit them.

Jellysoda, I in no way meant to imply that a carnivorous diet is the optimal one for all people. Perhaps I should have been more clear about that. I am speaking about my own near Arctic ancestors in my example.

Also, as I said yesterday, even here in Texas at latitude 32 degrees N, I cannot forage much in the way of plant materials this time of year, or any, really. I live on the prairie where grasses grow - that is just the ecology of my present region. Ruminants eat these grasses, and I them. I cannot eat the grass directly. It's just something I thought we could do for fun. You know, look at your area and think about what foods you could live on. Oh well.