Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

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I read somewhere and would love to give credit, but I'm not sure where I read it. The tropical is personal addition however. I won't recreate this theory as eloquently but the general premise is:

in the spring/summer meat was plentiful, we hunted and ate meat, to stay fit enough and athleticly light enough to hunt effectively, we burned the fat as fuel to have the energy to keep hunting and because we had more calories available soon, fat caveman doesn't hunt well

late summer/fall fruit bloomed we ate it and stored it as fat(as we know fructose does)and that gave us both warmth and fuel to survive the winters animals were scarce but coupled with scrounged veggies, fermented whatever, stored meat etc we made it thru winter. As spring hit we were lean from burning the weight over the winter and ready to hunt once more

the more tropical climates were winter was less a concern have fatty fruits like coconut and avacado..?? Coincidence or were they our way of staying trim year round with energetic sat. Fats?

Opinions? (please note original source of this theory if you can)

edited Oct 1 2010 at 0:43

_e_
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asked May 21 2010 at 23:37

Stephen-Aegis
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newsletter.vitalchoice.com/… – TWS May 22 2010 at 3:54

Never seen that link before, apparently it's a wide theory – Stephen-Aegis May 22 2010 at 4:58

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Try becoming a fruitarian for a few weeks and see if you lose or gain weight en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism – Matt May 22 2010 at 9:40

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I think fruits evolved to hijack sweet sensors of specific animals and abuse its addictive property for its own benefit - reproduction. – majkinetor Oct 18 2011 at 16:11

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"That said NAFLD is often caused by excessive fruit consumption" based on what??? – cliff Oct 18 2011 at 16:32

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pfw · Answer 1 · 2010-05-22 00:40:38Z UTC

This "theory" is idle evolutionary speculation that everyone falls prey to at some point or another. It fails to hold up to scrutiny, but is intuitively satisfying if you don't really think about it.

Basic questions:

1) What is "winter" in east Africa like?

2) What was the seasonality of fruits in the rift valley?

3) Do existing HG tribes "fatten up" for the winter? (recall that a core founding observation for paleo is a lack of fatness in HG tribes)

4) How much fruit do you think we ate during Ice Ages?

5) When was the last time you hibernated?

Point 5 is more snark than genuine point, but it's worth remembering that most animals which fatten up at a certain time do so in preparation for a months long fast. Humans are active year round, have access to animals year round, and hunt year round. We don't follow the pattern.

All that said, it's possible that the presumed fat-storage enhancing effect of high blood sugar is an adaptation to a rare food like fruit - better to store and save it then burn it off - but then again maybe it's just a last ditched effort of your metabolism to prevent glycation damage. Speculation breeds speculation!

I haven't seen any real evidence that humans evolved to fatten on specific foods because of their rarity. It strikes me as implausible given that HGs tend to do well all over the planet, from places with zero fruit to places with abundant plant food sources. If we actually were adapted to fruit rather than just being generalists, I think it would play a much more important role in our health than being so obviously optional.

score 1 · Answer 2 · 2011-10-18 17:07:43Z UTC

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The anthropological definition of hunter-gatherer precludes storing food.

Why does it preclude storing food ?

edited Oct 18 2011 at 17:07

answered Oct 18 2011 at 16:16

majkinetor

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The anthropological definition for hunter-gatherer = people who gathered and hunted food and ate it immediately. Once people were storing food, they may still have been foragers, but not true hunter-gatherers. There is no evidence that paleolithic people stored food until the upper paleolithic, when populations were moving towards agriculture and cultivating things like rice. This intermediate stage is known as "sedentism." Most people in this stage were quite a bit less healthy than the true HGs because they were relying on less nutritious foods like sago starch. – Bread-Eating Beelzebub Oct 18 2011 at 16:24

Sedentism also coincided with more disease (because people lived in larger and more concentrated societies). – Bread-Eating Beelzebub Oct 18 2011 at 16:25

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Interesting about sedentism. Thanks woman. – majkinetor Oct 18 2011 at 17:09

Okay, I buy what you're saying in general but I still think HGs could move into an area and take several days to hunt and cook/dry some meat rather than having to kill every day. – Nance Oct 18 2011 at 17:27

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Thanks woman. . – Kamal♦ Oct 18 2011 at 17:52

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Travis Culp · Answer 3 · 2011-10-18 18:16:13Z UTC

This is the best argument that I've sen on the subject: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917125/

...but I still disagree with it completely. The loss of ascorbic acid synthesis occurred while we were still frugivorous apes living in tropical climates. No seasonal fattening would have occurred, nor would it have been particularly useful.

Marcus · Answer 4 · 2010-10-02 18:08:29Z UTC

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Fruits and vegetables in paleo times would only have been used at medicine cause they were all bitter, except maybe wild berrys which were probably the sweeter varietys. Fruits now adays are hybridized to taste sweeter, thus being sugar bombs we need pesticides to keep insects away. Have you ever eating a wild banana? Try it.. And wild apples? Well they tasted more like crab apples if you ever tried one...

answered Oct 2 2010 at 18:08

Marcus
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	Take your favorite apple. Plant 12 of it's seeds and wait 5 years for apples. Now sample an apple from each tree. They will all be different. Do the same with a wild apple and the result will be the same. People/companies grow entire orchards hoping for that one rare tasty apple so that they can sell cuttings. – mth Oct 18 2011 at 19:09
	en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_tree_propagation – mth Oct 18 2011 at 19:12

The Loon · Answer 5 · 2011-10-18 16:03:07Z UTC

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It is a myth started by some temperate-climate thinker who has obviously never hunted, gathered, stored, or grown his/her own food. Many fruits and vegetables keep well on their own, or are easily fermented or dried. Most hunters know it is better in the winter. Most farmers know that fruits and vegetables ripen at many times of the year, not just the fall. It is more likely that people survived the winter eating fatty meats killed throughout the fall. Fat cavemen could have sat around even more making nets and small traps, and catch all the fish and small game they could use.

answered Oct 18 2011 at 16:03

The Loon
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	The anthropological definition of hunter-gatherer precludes storing food. As for temperate climates, there is enough evidence that humans who are descendants of ice age HGs in Europe are genetically distinct, that the temperate-climate thinking is quite valid. – Bread-Eating Beelzebub Oct 18 2011 at 16:06
	Sorry, Melissa, I admire you greatly overall but I think HG folks definitely salted and dried meat and fat--I'm thinking sun-dried jerky and pemmican. In temperate climes, they probably moved around less in winter using deer yards, etc., as food banks. – Nance Oct 18 2011 at 17:25
	Well, let's all defer to the arm-chair hunter-gatherer experts, then. – The Loon Oct 18 2011 at 22:45

Fruit was used in evolution to fatten us up for winter?

5 Answers