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| From http://thepaleodiet.com/dr-loren-cordain/ |
"In summary, recent comprehensive analyses (1-3) of δ13C values in the enamel of African hominins from 4.1 to 1.5 MYA support the conclusion that plants of C4 origin were ultimately responsible for this isotopic signature. Nevertheless, when the isotopic data is triangulated from archaeological, physiological and nutrition evidence, it is apparent that the C4 signature in ancestral African hominin enamel almost certainly is resultant from increased consumption of animals that consumed C4 plants."
EDIT: Hat-tip to Robb Wolf.
33 comments:
BTW (to all),
What does this have to do with Paleo anyway? It concerns Australopithecus, a non-human ancestor of humans (some of them, anyway), pre-Paleolithic era. They lived 400K years before habilis, and whateverthehell they ate isn't relevant at all to what modern humans thrive on. I also think the argument as to whether they ate the sedges or the animals that ate the sedges is academic piffle. They were dumb little critturs that ate whatever. They ate both.
It's a rebuttal to (a) criticism(s) of the Paleo Diet.
Does this mean that the criticism(s) is/aren't relevant, or what?
Cordain's rebuttal (which is excellent, IMO) is to the bad science journalism that distorted these three studies.
Just pointing out that the original three studies don't have anything to do with the Paleolithic era per se, nor do they concern Paleolithic human beings, who lived 400K AFTER the Australopithecines went extinct. I think it goes to the essence of the Paleo debate, which claims that a 10K gap isn't enough time to adapt fully.
I do not think this is a nitpick. But as we say on the 'net: YMMV.
Thanks!
You are quite welcome!
So, how do you think the three studies in question affect the Paleo discussion?
I haven't read them. I believe that we don't need to go back to Stone Age times to eliminate "bad" foods. A mere 150 years ago, there was no junk (unless you consider yeast-risen bread to be junk. Sourdough bread went out of fashion about 400 years ago). Bread wasn't a staple food back then.
That's a good argument Nigel. It's what I term the "traditionalist" ancestral diet as opposed to paleo. You don't need to go back to prehistoric times, just to your last healthy ancestor. The Meat Fix is one book that does this and places such thoughts in a Paleo-low carb context.
I think traditionalism is an easier sell than paleo, and an appropriate message for low-income, general public audiences.
Of course even in medieval times the poor suffered from too much reliance on "cereal" (boiled grains and legumes) calories, and the rich from too much reliance on animal protein calories. Fruits and green veges weren't trusted that much.
My ancestors lived on vodka and cigarettes.
I don't know where you got that about "sourdough" going out of fashion 400 years ago.
According to my information, yeast leavened bread only was made possible after the industrialisation of brewing, which allowed brewers to skim the yeast off the wort and sell it to bakers. This happened in the 19th century and especially once theories of microbiology became accepted following work by Louis Pasteur and others.
Before then all leavened bread was naturally fermented.
I didn't read the sources, as there just aren't enough hours in the day to do the brazillion different things that I'm trying to do (my guitar practice has suffered and I haven't developed any calluses!).
I was thinking of the Mid-Victorian era (which I blogged about), rather than the Dark Ages.
People who have damaged their guts with gluten & pufas galore need to heal them, so gluten & pufas need to be minimised until the damage has been repaired (if it can be).
Paleo vodka & cigarettes, obviously! ;-)
I'll tell ya. The lady at the grain-grinding windmill in the Weald & Down Museum (you'll have to Google it yourself, as I'm far too busy).
I looked into her big, brown eyes and believed every word she told me (I may have made some of that up).
Cute. But I think I'll stick to my previous information.
Can you give a link to "my (previous) information"?
For all I know, it could have been a lady with big, blue eyes! ;-)
Well, it's on Wikipedia, else on paper, and I can't give you a link to that.
400 years ago they hadn't isolated yeast so they didn't know it existed. The famous German Reinheitsgebot doesn't mention it - so all those Bavarian brewers adding yeast are breaking the law.
It was only once yeast was isolated that it could be used in baking and they good forego one of the natural leaven methods.
I found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourdough#History_of_sourdough
Wikipedia > The woman in the Weald & Down museum.
So the Mid-Victorians were eating stone-ground whole-wheat sourdough. Yay!
It's extremely difficult to make white flour without mechanized steel mills, so almost everyone use to eat whole grain bread. It also takes a long time to leaven dough naturally, perhaps up to three days.
White flour yeast leavened bread is a very recent introduction to the food chain. The production method is very different from the traditional one; I have trouble thinking of it as the same product as the traditional naturally fermented whole grain breads that my ancestors ate for thousands of years.
BTW, I avoid the term 'sourdough'. The naturally fermented bread I eat often isn't very sour and is often quite sweet tasting. Sourdough is OK when talking about San Francisco-style breads where particular micro-organisms, really do give it a very sour taste.
Nowadays, most bread is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process
I eat only Burgen Soya & Linseed bread. I have 2 slices a day, every now and then. I don't know what process is used in its manufacture.
Paleoanthropologists aren't that stupid, are they? Oh, wait...
Australopithecines weren't human. And I don't believe that Paleolithic humans ate what they wanted to eat. I think that Paleolithic humans lived near a water source, killed the animals who came near the water source, or scavenged their corpses, and ate all the ugly shit that grows up around the water source. I just googled 'is algae edible'? Turns out it is. They ate all the slimy creepy crawly gooey things in and around water sources. Sounds pretty revolting to me, but I firmly support the Paleo discordance theory.
My ancestors were Neolithic.
But seriously folks, although I happen to really like the moniker Paleo Diet, I guess it is easily made fun of. OK.
I was an early adherent to Paleo when the first Eaton, Shostak, Konner book came out. Moved away, recently returned to my roots. Why? Because I think their version of the discordance theory is right, and that the debunkings and rebuttals are ALL cheap shots aimed at low-hanging fruit and the pop version of the diet.
Nige - I don't think Europeans150 years ago were that healthy, so I don't think returning to their diet is optimal, although it sure would be an improvement on SAD/SED.
The early Paleo theorists didn't say that Paleo was an all-purpose cure for everything, or even that Paleo people were healthier - they just said that divergence from the Paleo diet explains metabolic disorders ('diseases of civilization'). We're a lot better off now, for the most part. But it seems we've succeeded in keeping people alive only to manage chronic disease.
I can't be arsed right now to find the Frassetto, Lindeberg and other studies that compare Paleo-ish to Mediterranean, but they exist, and guess what Paleo-ish beats Mediterranean all the time. So why not go straight to the optimal?
George,
Despite my skepticism this intrigues me. Did the Neandertal genes in Eurasians pop up after this bottleneck or before?
Sub-Saharan Africans' genome shows presence of other archaic humans, about 5%.
I've been buying loads of pigs' kidneys, as they've been drastically reduced in price due to lack of demand. You should see the looks of disgust I get from checkout and other people. I've eaten tripe, melts, hearts, livers, bladders, necks & feet (from boiling hens). Om, nom, nom!
I haven't tried Witchity grubs, fried locusts, 100 day old eggs, Natto & algae (I might eat them), or eyeballs & Balut eggs (I wouldn't eat them unless my life depended on it).
The Mid-Victorian Brits lived about as long as Brits today, if they survived birth & early childhood, without the benefit of antibiotics & modern surgical techniques. See http://nigeepoo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/how-mid-victorians-worked-ate-and-died.html
Diana, this might help supply those comparisons. I like the way Bill thinks here:
http://caloriesproper.com/?p=2941
I once lived around a lot of Mexican immigrants who subsisted on "tripa." (tripe) A lot of Neolithic diets are very Paleo.
He deals with macronutrient ratios. The Frassetto and Lindeberg studies compare Paleo(ish) with "heart healthy" Mediterranean and the former win hands-down. Sorry, no URLs.
If they survived birth & early childhood....big if
Exactly! Without modern medicine, an excessively-large percentage of babies (and their mothers) died at birth & early childhood. This lowered average lifespan figures considerably, so people scoff at populations who lived before the invention of modern medicine with "they only lived to 50" or whatever.
Pre-steel milling, flour was not wholegrain in our modern sense, they would still try to get rid of the bran and germ. White bread was at a premium in the late middle ages, the alchemists theorised about the effect of eating such "pure" foods, so it was possible to make bread that looked significantly lighter than common bread, it just took more time and cost more.
Well paleolithic includes the people who hunted mammoths and slaughtered other large mammals, including predators. It means people with stone tools, and once that includes atlatls we're in business. Sure they ate algae, but so people today, it's called spirulina, kelp, and so on.
These foods may have been eaten as medicines or supplements, they weren't rich in calories.
They didn't eat what they wanted to all the time, but they KNEW what they wanted to eat and at some stage became able to identify more efficient ways of finding calories than their original instinctive ones.
They started to think about food and apply their imaginations to getting fed; cave paintings are a sign of this, of course, so is fire, and hunting technology.
Whenever this way of thinking began, I would say is the moment we began to be human.
Disqus ate my reply twice. 3rd time lucky.
Mid-Victorian Brits had an unfair "advantage" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws
Well, now you mention it, there is an Egyptian frieze that shows the making of white flour. It was very time consuming and very labour intensive, so it would only have been for the poshest people and even then they probably didn't eat very much.
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