My last name came from Scotland. I’m not sure how the McEwens ended up in the United States. The last in the line I can trace is to an overcrowded Philadelphia tenement. They seem to have been very poor. There are rumors of a murder, a flight to South America, and then somehow they ended up in Arkansas.

Much further back, the MacEwans were a Scottish clan that held a fair bit of land by Loch Fyne, a place I have often dreamed of going. In the 1400s they were broken up, seemingly due to the chieftain's financial incompetence, and became the vassals of other clans like the Maclachlans.

When I was a child I liked the idea of my Scottish heritage being defined by deep blue Highland lochs bordered by pines. And swords, and kilts. At the time it was more attractive to me that my more immediate heritage. The reality was probably that my ancestors of that clan were probably poor tenant farmers. And the kilt wasn’t even invented when they lived in Scotland.

But I’ve often thought of the clan crest, a cut oak stump bearing shoots of new growth with the motto “reviresco”- we grow again, underneath.

Two years ago an overzealous logger on our land cut down the big oak tree in the front of the farmhouse. My father was pretty angry about it and stubbornly left the stump there, as if to refuse to let the tree go. I reminded him of the crest. When the spring came the stump sent out shoots with green leaves, as I knew it would.

In forestry school in Uppsala we had a couple of acres of willow coppicing forest, a practice I had not been familiar with before. Coppicing is the very ancient practice of cutting down a tree without killing it in order to utilize the re-growth. They told us that Sweden was the only place in the world that was using willow coppicing to fuel a biomass power plant. The coppice forests were rather beautiful too, whirring with the buzzing of both honey and wild bees.

Coppicing has experienced a renaissance in the United States on small farms, where it can be used as a method of producing firewood or material for crafts like baskets.

Oak can be coppiced in long rotations. So we’ll leave the stump there to give it a chance to grow again.

American Chestnuts were once an important presence on the landscape here. Their starchy nuts were an important source of food for many humans and animals. I once heard them called “tree potatoes.” When I was a girl I was often fascinated by the “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” of The Christmas Song.

I had never had one. Because of chestnut blight, which was introduced into the United States in the late 1800s from imported Asian chestnut trees, which are immune to the blight. The blight spread quickly, killing over three billion trees.

The American Chestnut should be extinct, but it lives on an an eternal coppice-like state, sending out hopeful shoots that grow and then die again and again in a world that no longer welcomes them. Unless you can get some of the last stock, from nurseries in Oregon and Washington, and plant them far away from these undead remnants. Then they might live, but the odds are against you.

The only hope is for them are scientists, who are have used the genetic material to create resistant varieties. America might yet be covered with chestnuts again. I have wanted to plant some resistant varieties on the farm, but the nursery I want to buy from always sells out so quickly, sure signs that people are replanting.

I tasted my first chestnut while browsing a Christmas market in the Czech Republic, where they sold bags of roasted chestnuts. They were hearty and slightly sweet, not quite the rich fatty nut I imagined in my childhood dreams. These days you can find chestnuts at the local farmer’s market. I think the flour is among my favorite alternative flours, especially for pancakes. It is silky and has maple notes. But it is expensive, which is amusing since in the past, like lobster and oysters, chestnuts were considered an undesirable peasant food.

I was disappointed in not getting the chestnuts this year, but I ordered a random variety of trees from Oikos and the DNR. I’ve been reading Common Sense Forestry by Hans Morsbach, which notes that he like us was a resident of Chicago who had land in Wisconsin. He also owned some restaurants, so I thought it would be interesting to get in contact with him. 

Turns out I can’t. Because he died a few years ago. Knowing that imbues the book with a certain sort of melancholy I don’t often experience when reading books on growing things. He talks about how much of what he does he may never see come to maturation. And I know he never will see it.

That’s what’s really incredible. And I honestly can’t see why everybody who isn’t a child, everybody who’s theoretically old enough to have understood what death means, doesn’t spend all his time thinking about it. It’s a pretty arresting thought, not being anything, not being anywhere, and yet the world still being here. Simply having everything stopping for ever, not just for millions of years. And getting to the point where that’s all there is in front of you. I can imagine anyone finding themselves thoroughly wrapped up in that prospect, especially since it’s where we’re going to get to sooner or later, and perhaps sooner.-The Green Man by Kingsley Amis

If the trees I’ve planted could think, they would see me as I see the wood fly that lives for only a few days.

But they don’t think of this. And while trees sometimes take me into melancholy thoughts of mortality, to try to put yourself in the place of the woodland plant is to imagine that which cannot as Wendell Berry says “tax their lives with forethought of grief.”

But it is only for the moment that one can escape there. Even the “peace of wild things” is a “memento mori.” The gaps in our vitality the forest claim. A horticulturalist relative of mine told me he was clearing away the orchard to prepare for this. Past the orchard gate at that same orchard once I remembered peering into the dark forest. The hinges on the gate was twisted, closed by little vines like those oak or chestnut shoots, testing the world outside, seeing if it had been made ready.

Once a friend told me I had trouble sleeping. I told him how I get to sleep when it comes slowly to me. I go in my mind to past dreams, some of them now old enough that perhaps they are worlds of their own. One of the most vivid is a place of murky waters and thick forest. The trees are very old and imposing, holding many strange creatures and towns. It is my grandmother’s Southern Louisiana swamps, the Chattahoochee in Georgia, the dirty miasma of the Skokie canal, the rushlands that were once great Viking rivers in Ultuna. It is all theses places I have known in once, and perhaps places I haven’t. At some point, moving so much, without a home, this became the place I was from.

The call came in the morning, it was some cows we couldn’t keep in our fields, that another farmer had taken to his own farm. They had escaped. We drove northwest there, a shudder crippled my heart. It was as if this were the place in my dreams. The karst topography, holes on the surface of the Earth filled with waters of mystery. There was a heavy fog that morning. The cow had broken her leg in a hole, bellowing sadly stuck in the swamp. There wasn’t much else to do besides get a gun. There wasn’t much blood or commotion. We pulled her out of the swamp into the grass. She looked as if she was sleeping. Her large belly still sighed. It would have been filled with a calf soon, if misfortune hadn’t followed her into the deep green land. Instead the microbes that helped her thrive in life had turned against her flesh for one last meal.

We found a cow skull once; we thought it was
From one of the asses in the Bible, for the sun
Shone into the holes through which it had seen
Earth as an endless belt carrying gravel, had heard
Its truculence cursed, had learned how human sweat
Stinks, and had brayed-shone into the holes
With solemn and majestic light, as if some
Skull somewhere could be Baalbek or the Parthenon.- Galway Kinnell's  Freedom, New Hampshire

We cut her open. The butcher handed me her liver, it was heavy and dripped with blood on my boots. I also took her sweet breads, they were large and succulent. They always are the best in a young cow. An unfortunate delicacy.

Like hunters we left the gut pile there by the swamp. An offering to some whose home we had disturbed. This land never belonged to any person, it never could belong. It has too close of a relationship with ancient disorder. That’s why it took our cow before we could. You don’t always get to prepare your orchards for when that day comes. I was reminded of this when my grandmother said she’d brought her son’s ashes back to Louisiana. I felt sorry I had been so far away for so long.

Later at home I was tired, but I had to process all the organs, cut away the sinews and freeze what I couldn’t eat soon. I didn’t want to waste anything, and besides it is one of those rare activities where I can be satisfied with work, where the time of work passes quickly in the mundane work of hands.

I cooked the liver and sweetbreads on a hot cast iron with a little salt. They were the best I’d ever had. The sweetbreads popped like popcorn, salty and fatty. I hesitate to give cooking advice for these things. I don’t recommend recreating that day.

That night I dreamt I gave stillbirth to a young lamb and laid him in the grass. I believe it was the lamb from Magnu’s Nilsson’s Faviken book and this artist's depiction of a small microcosm of life growing out of a death. Nilsson has said “ Meat is the remains of what was a living individual that we selfishly raised and killed with the sole purpose of feeding ourselves.”

I felt a million living tendrils

rooting through the thing I was,

as if I’d turned to earth before my death

or in my death could somehow feel.- Christian Wiiman

We always kept our distance from this particular herd of cows. They don’t have names. They have sharp horns. She died much like a wild deer I had seen while hiking once, its skeletal form bent against its tree where its foot was still tangled. Except maybe we are a little less cruel than nature and she didn’t die slowly, stuck in a hole for a long time waiting for the wolves. A part of me welcomed this nourishment from a death that was not a choice.

But an incarnation is in particular flesh
And the dust that is swirled into a shape
And crumbles and is swirled again had but one shape
That was this man. When he is dead the grass
Heals what he suffered, but he remains dead,
And the few who loved him know this until they die.- Galway Kinnell Freedom, New Hampshire

When I was about thirteen or fourteen and first had regular access to the internet, looking back into the past of my name, in boredom. I came across a women who shared it, Gwendolyn MacEwen, a poet and writer. She had died a year after I was born from the alcoholic malady I sometimes feel is a particularly Celtic curse. In pictures she has the most haunting eyes, eyes that seemed far older than her face.

There is one poem of her that I have been remembering since. It is Dark Pines Under Water:

This land like a mirror turns you inward
And you become a forest in a furtive lake;
The dark pines of your mind reach downward,
You dream in the green of your time,
Your memory is a row of sinking pines.

Explorer, you tell yourself this is not what you came for
Although it is good here, and green;
You had meant to move with a kind of largeness,
You had planned a heavy grace, an anguished dream.

But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper
And you are sinking, sinking, sleeper
In an elementary world;
There is something down there and you want it told.
 

I think of it often. I think it must be stored in the deepest part of my brain, where it has gathered a hold of the way words are in my thoughts, like a strange prayer that emerges in the woods and at night. Before her I didn’t really write, but it has been like an infection since.

I was never the sort that anyone could call private. But there is so much that just must be left unsaid for now at least, people whose shadows I trace with my words, deftly avoiding showing their faces.

One way I do that is to write of the past. Of things that no longer live in consciousness on this world. But even then people always seem to have a stake in things.

Instead I try to write of things that seem a bit more mundane. Like trees.

I knew it - you would have too, if you'd been there; it was a figure I’d glimpsed in a car park as a child; an expression crossing the face of a stranger late one night at Waterloo Station as I hurried for a train with my parents; a carving in the portico of a mediaeval church. In some nightmarish way it was particular, and it was also infinite. It was itself, it was the wood, it was the last roses in the garden, and yet it was also a wider sentience, perhaps best described as the feeling that the trees and fields we look at have always secretly been looking back into us.- Alasdair MacLean of The Clientele

Every two years or so I notice a cyclical trend in the online “paleo” community. It’s the resurgence of dogmatic carnivory. It has two main themes: plants are “poisons” that cause most of our health problems and humans “evolved to be” very low carb. Always an undercurrent with some very zealous devotees (“The Bear” of Grateful Dead fame was probably one of its most prominent popularizers), it suddenly finds popularity among normally more moderate people, picking up some non-paleo low-carb followers in the process. Then it goes away again, hilariously with some of its top cheerleaders renouncing it in the process (like Danny Roddy).

It’s been back again lately. A few readers have written me about Anna who writes the blog Life Extension*. She is a graduate student in archaeology and social anthropology. Anna’s most popular post so far is “Debunking and Deconstructing Some ‘Myths of Paleo’. Part One: Tubers.” Sadly, an opportunity for greater communication to the public from a much-maligned discipline becomes a manifesto for low-carb diets. The tagline is “Glucose restriction represents not only the most crucial component of ancestral diets but is by far the easiest element to emulate.” I think we’ve heard this one before, but this time it is in language that is more authoritative than usual. This is the kind of writing I would have liked Paleofantasy to take on.

Unfortunately she doesn’t refer to sources directly in her text, so I’ve done my best to figure out which sources she is referring to.

Most archaeologists don’t go around promoting diets, because they recognize the limitations of their field. There is so much that is unknown and unknowable. It’s pretty easy for nearly anyone to pigeonhole what we do have to fit their own narratives.

The reduction in size and robusticity of the human skeleton is a clear temporal trend of newly agricultural communities. Diachronic skeletal comparisons reveal large-scale, significant reductions in growth rates.

Yes,  of some newly agricultural communities, and that doesn't mean it stayed this way. I’ve written about it more than I would have liked. I just wrote about it in my last post about Paleofantasy (which cites this review).

Then a funny thing happened on the way from the preagricultural Mediterranean to the giant farms of today: people, at least some of them, got healthier, presumably as we adapted to the new way of life and food became more evenly distributed. The collection of skeletons from Egypt also shows that by 4,000 years ago, height had returned to its preagricultural levels, and only 20 percent of the population had telltale signs of poor nutrition in their teeth. Those trying to make the point that agriculture is bad for our bodies generally use skeletal material from immediately after the shift to farming as evidence, but a more long-term view is starting to tell a different story. - Marlena Zuk

It also brings up how questionably height is used in these narratives. The few hunter-gatherers that exist today are very very short (mostly due to genetics). The rest of the world has grown taller and taller. Staffan Lindeberg in his magnum opus suggests we are too tall from overnutrition. Other markers that extremists attempt to use to show that agricultural humans show a downward trend in terms of health suffer from similar limitations.

Instances of porotic hyperostosis brought on by iron deficiency anaemia increased dramatically in agricultural settings.

A perfect example of why archaeology is not the best approach for deciding what is good to eat, as this particular marker has become controversial and has been re-evaluated.

There is a new appreciation of the adaptability and flexibility of iron metabolism; as a result it has become apparent that diet plays a very minor role in the development of iron deficiency anemia. It is now understood that, rather than being detrimental, hypoferremia (deficiency of iron in the blood) is actually an adaptation to disease and microorganism invasion.”- Porotic hyperostosis: A new perspective

Either way, I’m not sure what the transition these communities in upheaval experienced has to do with whether or not tubers or any carbohydrates are bad for you. It wasn’t just the food that changed for these people, it was their entire way of life, and it was a transition that changed their biology. And while there are trends, there is no linear health decline. There is a more systematic database of human remains and health markers that is in the process of being created right now that should be a great resource in the future. At this point a lot of papers claiming a decline are using inappropriate sample sizes and statistical methods.

Far too little evolutionary time has passed for us to be successfully acclimated to the novel conditions of agricultural life.

Another common thread that is begging the question. How long is long enough? How many adaptations are enough?

Speaking of evolutionary time:

Spending most of our human history in glacial conditions, our physiology has consequently been modelled by the climatologic record, with only brief, temperate periods of reprieve that could conceivably allow any significant amount of edible plant life to have grown.

Like Nora Gedgauda's paleo book Primal Body, Primal Mind, which she cites for unknown reasons, this sentences implies to her lay readers than glacial conditions = something out of the movie Ice Age. Which is just not true. A glacial maximum left some people in the cold, but Africa was still quite warm, and if we are talking about evolutionary time, that’s where we spent most of it. Outside Africa, most humans seem to have clustered in fairly temperate refugia such as Southern Iberia during the last ice age.

Many think of the late Pleistocene as the “Ice Age”, a time when continental glaciers coveredmuch of the earth and where the land not under ice was inhabited by giant cold-adapted animals—wooly mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, and cave bears—pursued by hardy humanhunters. While this image may be somewhat accurate for part of the world, most of the earthremained unglaciated throughout the Pleistocene.” -In Glacial Environments Beyond Glacial Terrains: Human Eco-Dynamics in LatePleistocene Mediterranean Iberia

Of course “significant amount” is also going to be a point of contention. Only in the very coldest tip of the arctic do levels of plants in human diet fall to close to zero. Beyond that, many people might not be aware of levels of starch and sugar available in the environment because traditions surrounding them have died out. I have written quite a bit about Northern sources of carbohydrates- “Siberian potatoes” and Alaskan native plant foods.

Further information on the evolution of our diet can be garnered from the genetic data of present populations, which demonstrates the historically-late biological adaptation to less than minimal quantities of starch and to only few and specific starch compounds.

I assume this refers to amylyse (AMY1) copy number, the function and history of which is not quite clear, much like lactase persistence. For example, I do not possess lactase persistence, even though my ancestors probably raised livestock for dairy, they were diversified pastoralists, so it’s likely there was not enough selective pressure for them to develop this trait. They consumed dairy, but the majority of their diet was not dairy.

It is unlikely the ancestral human diet was as high in starch as some horticulturalist tropical diets are now, where the majority of calories come from starch. But in the end, the differences in AMY1 copy number between humans are small compared to our differences with other primates, indicating that perhaps this was selected for in our own evolution. And in the original paper it is kind of mind-boggling they use the Mbuti as a “low-starch” population given their high starch consumption.

The Mbuti are particularly interesting because they are hunter-gatherers, but trade their surplus meat for starch and have done this for quite some time (when this isn't available there are forest tubers utilized as fall-backs). The only time they don’t trade is when honey is in abundance.

Anna’s assertion that starch is comparatively “inefficient” compared to meat using optimal foraging models doesn’t mean that humans would have chosen to eat only or mostly meat. That data includes game from South American environments, which is unusually fatty in comparison to African game. Even in South America, such game is not available in unlimited amounts in the first place, which is why even hunter-gatherer cultures that have access to it like the Ache also extensively gather and process starch and gather honey.

The consequences of limited availability and time investment of edible Palaeolithic plant foods has been analysed by Stiner, who compared food class returns amongst contemporary hunter-gatherer groups. Stiner found the net energy yield of roots and tubers to range from 1,882 kj/hour to 6,120 kj/hour (not to mention the additional time needed to dedicate to preparation) compared to 63,398 kj/hour for large game.

Anna’s assertions stand in stark contrast to the paper she seems to cite:

Staple plant resources present an extreme contrast to large game animals with respect to prevailing economic currencies (Table 11.1). Large animals generally yield high returns per unit foraging time (kJ per hour) but are unpredictable  resources. Seeds and nuts give much lower net yields per increment time (kJ per kilogram acquired), but they have potentially high yields with respect to the volume obtained and the area of land utilized.

Surveys of hunter-gatherers show overwhelmingly that preferred foods are fatty game and honey, highly caloric (and delicious), yet these are not the majority of the diet because they are not available in high predictable amounts, like the modern equivalents are.

As Kim Hill, who studies the Ache says “High-ranked items may be so rarely encounteredthat they represent only a very small proportion of the diet; low-ranked items in the optimalset may be encountered with sufficient frequency to contribute the bulk. It is interesting to note that on several occasions, reports of nearby palm fruit (ranked 12) were ignored, something that did not happen with oranges. On several other occasions people discussed the relative merits of hunting monkeys (ranked 11). reaching consensus that monkeys should not be pursued “because they are not fat.”  

Anthropologists have theorized on the importance of having carbohydrate fallback foods in the event that high-fat game is not available, either because of seasonality or over-hunting. In these cases, “rabbit starvation” from excess protein is a real danger. Surviving off of game is a real challenge, which probably accounts for the fact that many humans have any exploited seemingly tedious to gather plant resources in nearly every environment. 

Some of Anna’s arguments indicate that she has decided on some issues that are actually very controversial in anthropology and archaeology, such as the date of regular fire use (Anna asserts it was much later than many think) and that “However, plants have been preserved in the Lower Palaeolithic, and they are used primarily for functional and material – rather than nutritional – purposes.”

She does admit that “I will concede however that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” but then goes on to list some sites that show possible non-food-related plant use that aren’t even associated with Homo sapiens, many are hominid offshoots that are unlikely to have contributed to our line (except for some of us who have a possible small amount of neanderthal ancestry). Other sites she mentions aren’t dated to the lower Paleolithic anyway.

Later sites such as Kebara she also dismisses, implying that legumes would have been used as fire starters rather than food. But admits that hominids would have supplemented their diet with “low glycemic” foods when meat was scarce.

Firstly, Neanderthals were highly carnivorous and physiologically inept at digesting plant foods. This can be measured using the megadontia quotient of Neanderthal postcanine tooth area in relation to body mass, which reveals that H. neanderthalensis must have consumed a greater than 80% animal diet. Nonetheless, the evidence of phytoliths and grains from Neanderthal skeletons at Shanidar Cave may reveal the rare consumption of starches in this singular context, but not the deleterious costs to the health of those that ate them.

The megadontia quotient, which is controversial in the first place, is not meant to be used in this way. Neither is the also mentioned expensive tissue hypothesis. They are meant to analyze use of uncooked fibrous plant foods and is not particularly enlightening in the case of large-brained hominids with cultural adaptations to food such as cooking. Some of the most recent research that reappraises the carnivorous theory of neanderthals is covered in this recent talk by neanderthal experts Dr. Margaret J. Schoeninger and Dr. Alison S. Brooks.

Humans show up as carnivores, even when they are known corn-eating agriuculturalists, like these people. But what happens when you plot other plants?

Now the data makes more sense (remember this data is showing where protein in the diet came from, it doesn't tell us how much protein was eaten). 

As you can see, initial isotopic studies (which can only show where the protein came from, not the amount of protein in the diet) that showed neantherthals as top carnivores came into question when farming populations were showing similar values. They realized that they needed to consider analyzing plants based on their most nutritious fractions, since when was the last time anyone sane ate something like a whole stalk of corn, husk and all? Another great paper by John D. Speth also summarizes some of the recent research on neanderthal diets and debunks hypercarnivory. 

humans were no longer able to transmute fibre into fat – as other primates can (consequently, they eat a high-fat diet) – through fermentation in the large intestine.

This, as anthropologist Dr. Richard Wrangham has pointed out, could also be an adaptation to cooking. And we didn’t lose this ability, it is just reduced, though no biologist would argue it the SCFA produced in the colon, which can provide calories and also modulate inflammation, are unimportant. SCFA metabolism is not comparable to longer chain fatty acid metabolism, so it’s not really appropriate to call these diets “high fat.” Furthermore, there are other primates with similar guts to ours like capuchins, who most certainly do not eat a carnivorous diet– they eat sugary fruit. But it’s very hard to compare our guts to the guts of other animals since cultural traits like cooking are so important for our food consumption.

I think it’s a bit amusing to read these posts alongside those of PaleoVeganology, written by a graduate student in paleontology who criticizes many popular paleo narratives. However much I disagree with him on the issue of modern diet choices, I commend him for not using his expertise to promote his chosen diet- he is explicit that his dietary choices are built on modern ethics and not the murky past.

The skeletons at Shanidar are certainly the first of many analyses of starches on teeth, which rules out theories like that plants were only used as decorations or fire starters. Since that first paper was published, others using the same method have followed and more will. But there is no way to use such data to speculate on how often or how much of these foods were consumed.

The coprolite “paper” that Nora Gedgaudas frequently cites also comes up, which I’ve addressed here.

Another common thread in carnivore narratives is that plants were used “only” as medicinals. I would not consider this as insignificant in any way– in most cultures, the line between food and medicine is a thin one. Many foods we enjoy as foods these days have medicinal roots.

Anna rightly criticizes the use of non-hunter-gatherers as hunter-gatherer proxies in writings about the so-called paleo diet and then cites a study that does the exact same thing-

In an attempt to reconstruct the diet of ice age hominids, a recent study analysed the macronutrient dietary composition of existing hunter-gatherer groups within latitude intervals from 41° to greater than 60°.

But where did this data come from? Anthropologist Katherine Milton responded quite well to this paper by Cordain:

The hunter-gatherer data used by Cordain et al (4) came from the Ethnographic Atlas (5), a cross-cultural index compiled largely from 20th century sources and written by ethnographers or others with disparate backgrounds, rarely interested in diet per se or trained in dietary collection techniques. By the 20th century, most hunter-gatherers had vanished; many of those who remained had been displaced to marginal environments. Some societies coded as hunter-gatherers in the Atlas probably were not exclusively hunter-gatherers or were displaced agricultural peoples. Because most of the ethnographers were male, they often did not associate with women, who typically collect and process plant resources.- Katherine Milton

The Ethnographic Atlas used in the “study” is available online and quite clearly does not contain 229 pure hunter-gatherer cultures. The 229 Cordain uses includes people who trade for or cultivate foods.

There is no evidence that mostly carnivorous groups of humans have particularly high longevity and in fact mummies, whatever their limits, have shown people eating these diets were not in fantastic condition, which of course like the bad condition of some early agriculturalists cannot be blamed on their diet.

It is awfully convenient to build a narrative to convince people to eat a limited diet based on the murky unknowns of the far past and near-mythical groups of supposedly extremely healthy carnivorous hominids. The carnivore-ape hypothesis is about as credible as the aquatic ape one.

One of the problems with human evolution, as opposed to, say, rocket science, is that everybody feels that their opinion has value irrespective of their prior knowledge (the outraged academic in the encounter above was a scientist, but not a biologist, still less an evolutionary biologist). The reason is obvious – we are all human beings, so we think we know all about it, intuitively. What we think about human evolution "stands to reason". Hardly a month goes by without my receiving, at my desk at Nature, an exegesis on the reasons how or why human beings evolved to be this way or that. They are always nonsense, and for the same reason. They find some quirk of anatomy, extrapolate that into a grand scheme, and then cherry-pick attributes that seem to fit that scheme, ignoring any contrary evidence. Adherence to such schemes become matters of belief, not evidence. That's not science – that's creationism.

I saw the same story building among vegans, who often craft similar narratives around our lineage's long plant-eating past. It speaks for a deep desire for people to justify their own choices. What all these dietary narratives have in common is that they confirm a particular limited diet is our “natural” diet and one that is best for humans, animals, and the environment. It’s not possible for them all to be right, and that’s because none of them are.

Ancient humans ate a large variety of foods, which is why we are adapted to so many. Human variation is high though, since our lineage has become so populous and geographically wide-ranging. There are many reasons for a modern human to adopt a low-carbohydrate or limited carbohydrate diet either temporarily or permanently. None of those have to do with this being the optimal diet for all humans or with a mostly-carnivorous ancestry.  

My friends and I got a mention in the Chicago Reader's Food Edition for our themed dinner club that we call The Sup Club. It's been a fun year of cooking with them. We've cooked foods inspired by all kinds of places and times. I've marinated goat legs in beet juice, learned to cook sardines, eaten awesome "egg baos", and had more fun than I can possibly recount here.

We also rustled up a little Wordpress site with some of our favorite photos and stuff. People have asked me how they can get one of these started. And honestly I don't know how. It was pretty much always something I wanted to do, but it was hard to find like-minded people. I guess going to a lot of good food events is a way- it's how I met most of these people. But this is something that probably couldn't have happened in NYC. in NYC who except the super rich have big enough dining rooms to host 15 people? 

To clarify though, I don't think 1950s food is "bad" per-se, but researching it I was surprised how monotonous, bland, and full of industrially processed ingredients it could be. Of course not all of it is that way. I have some good 50s cookbooks. But some I just keep to laugh at. 

I liked the Viking food, minus the stockfish smashing in my living room.

Also I'm on the BoingBoing Gweek podcast this week. I'm always a little terrified to listen to these things, so I hope it's good!

 Since I get regular emails on this subject, I thought I might as well create a whole post on restaurants (and a smattering of bars) in Chicago that I think are worth recommending.

The first of these is Elizabeth Restaurant ($$$), run by my friend Iliana Regan and her excellent staff. I chanced on an extra seat back when she was doing dinners at her apartment and ever since I’ve been a fan. I love her intricate approach to showing off what the woods and fields of the region have to offer. She has three menus, the ones that are probably the most interest to a visitor are the Owl, which is focused on Midwestern agriculture, and the Deer, which is focused on foraging and hunting. I’ve had bear, venison, raccoon, wild mushrooms, and other unique local woodland products here, all presented beautifully in multi-course formal tasting menus. You have to pre-buy tickets to this restaurant to secure your seats.

Salmon wrapped in turnip at Elizabeth

People who have serious food allergies who read this blog will be delighted to learn of the existence of Senza ($$$ previous post), a fantastic restaurant staffed by many veterans of Chicago’s most respected fine dining institutions that happens to be very strictly gluten-free, which is a boon for anyone with celiac disease. Unlike other gluten-free restaurants, the cuisine is more focused on meat, fish, fruits and vegetables than gluten-free bread and pasta that dominates the less accomplished restaurants of this genre. Tasting menu only, but it’s a perfect way to experience the talents of the kitchen.

Two less formal restaurants I frequent are Vera ($$) and La Sirena Clandestina ($$) in the West Loop, which is really the hub of the food scene here. Vera is a seasonally-focused Spanish-inspired wine bar. Sit at the Otro bar and enjoy delectable deviled eggs topped with creamy uni, the famous jamon iberico, the most perfectly cooked crispy brussel sprouts with anchovy dressing, and a glass from their very long list of sherries. Menu items change often as the seasons change, so I can’t recommend any one thing, but be sure not to miss ordering something each from the meat, the seafood, and the vegetable sections of the menu.

Bacon wrapped dates in blue cheese fondue and kale salad at Vera

La Sirena Clandestina is a romantic little South American-ish spot. I think some of my readers will enjoy it because the chef uses cassava flour for things like pao de quijo, which are cheese puffs (also found in Lakeview at Cassava, a gluten-free cafe), and fried smelt, which are little fish served with an aioli-like made with Brazillian malagueta peppers. I personally have an addiction to the empanadas, which are always filled with something new and interesting like spicy duck chorizo. Seafood dishes are a highlight here and there are lots of little appetizers that are surprising hits like the cilantro coconut risotto. Don’t miss the excellent cocktail program. I think the pisco sour is one of my favorite drinks in the city.

Cassava battered smelt at La Sirena

Another good option in the West Loop closer to the city core in Embeya ($$$), which has a nice selection of Southeast Asian dishes like this sausage stuffed squid and excellent drinks. If you are wheat-avoidant there is hardly any on the menu.

For Lunch, Blackbird ($$$ except for lunch special) is a great place to get a tasting menu that’s not very expensive. $22 will get you an excellent three-course menu that varies with the season. If you want something a little less formal, Publican Quality Meats ($) is a butcher shop that has a variety of really great options, like the butcher’s meal, which lately is Cocido, a Spanish blood sauage, cumin, and chickpea stew. I also go to Au Cheval sometimes for their chopped liver, which is so far my favorite liver in the city.

In my own neighborhood, which is above the West Loop and is usually called West Town, I am a huge fan of Ruxbin ($$), which is just really wonderfully cooked comfort foods with unique, often Asian-influenced, touches. One of the best dishes I had here was a perfectly cooked steak with miso-butter rice “tots” and the best crispy savory broccolini I’ve ever had. The catch is that it’s impossible to get into on Sunday, which is reservations only, and the rest of the days there are no reservations, so sometimes the wait can be long and unpredictable. I suggest putting your name down and heading to Noble Rot or Lush where you can get great beer or wine to bring back when your table is reading since Ruxbin is BYOB. I need to try more of the Mexican options in Chicago, but I typically go to the dive called Taqueria Traspasada ($), which is on the corner and open late, for simple good tacos.

For lunch, the local butcher shop, The Butcher and the Larder, serves up delicious sandwiches and soups. Other neighborhood staples for me are The Green Grocer, a small grocery store which has an excellent selection of pretty much everything I like, and Nini’s, a little Cuban-Lebanese deli that has an assortment of homemade and high-quality goods.

In Wicker Park I like Carriage House ($$), which features low-country Southern Food, Violet Hour ($$) for cocktails (but on weekends there is often a very long line to get in), and Trencherman ($$) for brunch and cocktails.

Logan Square is another food-lover’s mecca. I really enjoy the cocktails at Billy Sunday($$) and the Japanese-influenced food at Yusho ($$), particularly the savory egg custard known as chawanmushi. Longman & Eagle has delicious tallow fries.

Up north in my old neighborhood of Lincoln park I recommend The Peasantry ($$), which is very rich and delicious dishes inspired by street food, and Rickshaw Republic ($$), which is oddly enough Indonesian street food. I guess it makes up for Chicago’s anemic food truck scene,a consequences of draconian regulations here. For drinks in that area I recommend Barrelhouse Flats for cocktails and Deliahs for beer.

If you are willing to go further north, there are very good Indian, Thai, and Korean restaurants. For Korean I usually go to Dancen ($), which is a Korean dive bar where you can get cod roe soup that is really made with cod sperm sacks. It’s better than it sounds, but if that’s not your style, the seafood pancake is also really really good. For Thai I love Andy’s Thai Kitchen ($) and Sticky Rice ($), which have many authentic dishes, one of my favorites being the fermented sausages.

Anderssonville is a northern neighborhood that also has a pretty good food scene including Southern food at Big Jones and craft beer at Hopleaf.

If you are willing to go way out of the way, Bridgeport is a fun artsy neighborhood further South that has Maria’s ($$), home to a truly impressive beer list and cocktail program, and Pleasant House ($), where they have managed to give British food a good name with their delicious flaky savory pies.

The more central areas of the city are not my preferred place to go, but if I have to be there, I will go to The Purple Pig ($$), a gastropub that is sometimes impossible to get into, Gyu Kaku ($), tasty Korean-Japanese barbeque with many offal options, Slurping Turtle, and Xoco ($), which has good hot chocolate and Mexican caldos (soups). For drinks I like Sable’s cocktails. I keep meaning to try Sumi Robata bar and will report back since that looks really awesome too.

That’s a lot of places, so if you want other recs for other neighborhoods or other types of cuisine, let me know in the comments. Also there are still places I need to try, so I will add more to this as I think of things or find new things.

Also don't forget to try the local Chicago-Swedish spirit, Malort, which I bet all of you will really really enjoy. It's a must!

If you want to know some underground dining options, you can email me privately.