Not an issue of paleo or not-paleo

I had a great time at Jackson Lander's deer hunting workshop, but I will write a post on it later since I'm still...ruminating...haha! But John Durant already beat me to it and has some great picture, so you should check them out.

I've been getting some questions about the paleo foods section...actually a lot of questions. I created that section with the idea of showing my own diet and showing the costs and benefits of each food.

But it's really not as simple as non-paleo and paleo. Really, most foods aren't "paleolithic." If a museum curator put a domestic chicken in the prehistoric human diorama in the Museum of Natural History they would be fired. But paleolithic eating isn't about reenactment, it's about emulating the nutritional intake of our ancestors- no African baboon meat required.

That's why I include butter/ghee in my diet. Paleolithic hunters ate the brain, which is very rich in fat. I don't eat that because it's hard to buy and when hunting there are concerns about prion diseases (which I think are largely exaggerated and I plan to do some of Fergus Henderson's brain recipes whenever I finally get ahold of brain). But hunter-gatherer cultures like the Hazda seem to love the brain.

Onwas then reaches into the fire and pulls out the skull. He hacks it open, like a coconut, exposing the brains, which have been boiling for a good hour inside the skull. They look like ramen noodles, yellowish white, lightly steaming. He holds the skull out, and the men, including myself, surge forward and stick our fingers inside the skull and scoop up a handful of brains and slurp them down. With this, the night, at last, comes to an end.

But why are sesame seeds not-paleo on my list and cumin is? Well, it's actually not as simple as that. As an astute reader pointed out, there is evidence that prehistoric hominids ate small amounts of seeds, grains, and even legumes. Note the small amounts- it's pretty hard to gather enough wild grains to make a rice pilaf or tahini. Personally I DO eat sesame seeds. They are a tasty garnish on raw tuna sashimi. I put maybe 10 on. In small quantities they are like cumin, which is also a flavoring/garnish. Both of these used as garnish are tasty, but probably inconsequential either way for someone with a healthy digestive system.

Contrast that with hummus, which contains large amounts of chickpeas and ground sesame seeds in the form of tahini. It's used as a food, but as a food it provides inappropriate nutrition, particularly in the form of excess omega-6 fatty acids. Something people don't think about is that seeds and grains used as foods displace better foods. If I eat a cup of white rice at a Korean place I'm not going to get sick, but it's going to fill me up and I'll eat less blood stew or squid, which are much more nutritious.

When I'm at a nice restaurant sometimes pork will come with a teeny tiny side of beans. I'll eat those. Since my digestive flora has been rebalanced by eating paleo, they honestly don't bother me and beans cooked in pork fat are mighty tasty. I'm ultimately a foodie and taste means a lot to me.

I stick with my guns that your staples should be grass fed meat from ruminants, fish, coconut, and other sources of saturated fat. Go ahead, season with cumin or sesame seeds, but if you eat them by the bag-full, it's just not evolutionarily appropriate.

Sticking with my guns

What about taste? Is our sense of taste a useless piece of baggage that leads us to fruit rollup and fried chicken perdition? No way! Our tastebuds are shaped by evolution to help us survive. It's our environment that messes them up and allows them to be used for choosing crap instead of choosing tasty nutritious fat. Do them a favor and strip your eating environment of junk. The best use for them in a paleo diet is that they tell you when to eat more fat, which particularly if you are doing a meat-only fast, is very very useful.

One thing optimal foraging theory misses out on is that humans have a sense of taste that often trumps "efficiency," which is why you will find cultures all over the world going after things like berries and nuts that provide little in the way of calories but much in the way of flavor. Perhaps they provide something else? Honestly, cutting nuts out of my diet has been easy because I no longer crave them. Perhaps there is something in my offal, seafood, and fat-rich paleo diet that I wasn't getting when I was a nut-crazed (hehe) faileo.

As an aside, I'm more likely to respond to your comments nicely if you use the contact form rather than posting comments unrelated to the post you are commenting on.