How far back in time to when the 'average' diet was healthy?

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Groundless

Well the isotopic evidence indicates we ate the same as wolves and other carnivores from archeological digs. Your arguments are weak.

Your conclusions from that study have been rebutted elsewhere in this forum by other forummers.

Top level by means of tools is still likely.

Good, there is some progress.

At least you now abandon the theory that our fingers, like an eagle's or a leopard's claws, are adapted to seize prey.

[votoshka]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

No. I am saying that prehistoric man was not a "top level carnivore".

A top-level carnivore is a carnivore at the top of a food chain:

(a) it eats other animals;
(b) it is generally not eaten by any other animals.

Examples of top-level carnivores:

eagles; lions; great white sharks; tigers; leopards.

Example of man getting eaten

Remains of Sailor Judson Newton Found in Shark Off 'Jaws Beach'

I'm fairly sure Andrew's response was a rhetorical question Neither of us were saying primitive man didn't eat meat, but we were both saying that humans are NOT top level carnivores.

[Andrew Gubb]

Originally Posted by votoshka

I'm fairly sure Andrew's response was a rhetorical question Neither of us were saying primitive man didn't eat meat, but we were both saying that humans are NOT top level carnivores.

Yeah

In the last conference I gave on raw foods, I pointed out that the human hands are perfectly adapted to picking FRUIT.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Andrew Gubb

Yeah

In the last conference I gave on raw foods, I pointed out that the human hands are perfectly adapted to picking FRUIT.

If you google for information on man's closest cousins (gorillas and chimpanzees), you can get some idea of what man's "natural" diet might be supposed to be.

Gorillas are herbivorous, eating a wide variety of plants. They also eat some ants, snails and grubs.

Chimpanzees eat plants (and more fruit than gorillas). They also hunt for meat, and are known to eat insects, small monkeys and pigs. However, meat forms only about 5% of their diet.

This kinda suggests that man is supposed to eat mostly plants, with a little meat.

The thought of eating insects would be disgusting in Western culture, yet is not unknown in other cultures. I've eaten deep-fried locusts before - very tasty. They are available in Thailand.

Deep-fried locust, anyone? Insects may be the answer to our looming food crisis | Gaia Vince | Environment | guardian.co.uk

[Andrew Gubb]

Gorillas eat more vegetables, while other primates which are close to humans eat more fruit. The diet in general seems to be fruit, vegetables, and some bugs, with meat being a ritual thing in chimp society (chimps kill and eat other chimps as a display of dominance).

All raw, naturally.

[liamona]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

One thing I see mentioned here a lot is that the 'modern' diet is unhealthy due to processed foods. I've seen remarks here and elsewhere about considering what Grandma or Great-Grandma would recognize as food. My grandparents were born around the turn of the last century, and they thought Kraft mac & cheese and white bread were pretty cool. Some people advocate no animal products as the healthiest diet, but through all recorded history, people ate animal products. Some advocate no wheat, or no wheat and other grains, yet through all recorded history, people ate grains.

You may want to read nutrition researcher Weston Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. He did a few things that no one else has done:

1) Searched for the healthiest people isolated from civilization around the world 2) Analyzed the actual food they were eating to see what nutrients they contained and 3) Found out what their foods had in common, nutrient-wise.

He found that they all ate some animal foods; the healthiest groups ate at least two categories of animal foods (i.e., fish and insects).

Their diets were composed of between 30 and 80% fat.

Some of them did eat grains. However, the grains were soaked in an acidic medium and fermented for a LONG time, unlike how grains are processed today.

Our supermarket breads have very little in common with the rye bread that the isolated Swiss villagers Price studied ate.

The healthy Swiss children had less than 1% tooth decay and were so hardy that they would run barefoot in frigid streams during the winter while Price and his wife, who were from Ohio, were bundled in heavy jackets and clothes.

[liamona]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

If we were top level carnivores, we would have teeth like wolves:

All humans need is a rock or a club in order to smash an animal's skull or bones.

The organs are the most nutrient-dense part of animals, and also are pretty soft in case you didn't notice. And you don't need any teeth at all to suck the marrow out of bones.