Sweeteners (was Re: Guilt, satiety, calorie restrictio...

[Guest guest]

>

> That isn't quite accurate. Nomadic people (before they

> tamed horses and camels, anyway) were constrained

> by carrying babies. A baby takes about 3 years before it

> can run with an adult, and most women breast-fed

> for that period of time. So babies were at LEAST 3 years

> apart. And the lifespan was a lot shorter (injuries accounted

> for more deaths though). There seems to have been a LOT

> of homicide too, and infanticide.

>

> When people became " domestic " they also started using

> cow milk to help raise infants, and the homicide rate went

> way down (laws were passed). Women started using cradles

> instead of carrying the baby all the time. People started depending

> on crops ... and the crops would fail ... and THEN starvation

> became a big deal. Folks who followed huge herds of bison

> didn't have that problem.

All of this reduces one side of the equation, but doesn't

tell us anything about the other side, the amount of food

available. Human beings would have to be very different

from all other types of successful animals if the size of

their population didn't come close to total exploitation

of all the available resources. A pleasant life can be

enjoyed by any group that can keep their numbers much lower

than that, a good lesson for all of us today too, but as a

rule in the past such groups were overwhelmed and had their

territories and resources taken over by other groups with

higher birth rates.

> Calories were probably not the constraining factor, esp.

> not on Paleo times where there were huge herds of animals.

> The Indians thought you had to be insane to starve if you

> lived near the coast, where sea life was plentiful.

Yes, but these foods in your example here are all flesh

foods, not carbohydrates unless you're including seaweed.

So it tends to add to my argument, at least to my argument

that carbohydrate consumption was lower. Also note that

these same " Indians " had their territory and resources

taken from them by other groups with higher-birth rates

whose technology allowed them to extract more calories

than the aboriginals could from the same amount of land.

> That may have been true in some places, but there

> are plenty of counterexamples. The Hawaiian islands

> come to mind. Plenty of food year round. The population

> stays pretty stable, possibly because a lot of those island

> cultures also practice " war as entertainment " and dangerous

> sports like surfboarding?

Of course if effective population control is present the

equation changes entirely. In any case though, I don't

think that the Polynesian islands were colonized until

long after the palaeolithic, and by a people much more

culturally advanced than " cave men " .

> They eat a LOT of very sweet fruit.

Do they really though, and is this not cultivated

fruit also? Our stereotype of the polynesian islands

is one of paradise-like parks filled with fruit of

every description, but do the natives actually eat

all that much of it, and more importantly, what is

the ratio of daily calories burned to daily calories

consumed? As I stated before, extremely active people

can certainly tolerate a diet higher in carbohydrates.

> Many cultures grew or gathered starchy roots, and there ARE

> very sweet native fruits. There is some evidence that some

> cultures ate a lot of meat, but the fact that humans don't do

> well at over 30% protein in the diet says something too.

> What makes up the other 70% of the calories?

Where did the traditional Inuit get the other 70%?

> Fat is rather rare also (hence prized), and you need to balance

> the protein with fat or carbs.

If all three are needed in balance, why would fat only be

prized?

> The Inuit could get fat easily, but most wild animals tend to

> be leaner, esp. the nearer the equator. So unless they were

> superb and lucky hunters, they were likely eating a fair dinkum

> of carbs.

I doubt that ancient humans necessarily got most of their

protein from hunting, a high-calorie burning activity. I

think it most likely that a large, if not the largest,

proportion of their protein came from a slow and methodical

gleaning of the area they were moving through at the time,

for wild-bird eggs, insects, nuts, seeds, etc. In any case,

as I've already said, I'm not just extrapolating rules for

the present from the past, but am also extrapolating an idea

of the past from the present. Modern research into disease

causation has revealed that excess carbohydrate is a factor

in many, if not most, of the diseases of civilization.

Finally, and most importantly, it was not my original intent

to get into a debate over carbohydrate consumption. I don't

really care what other people believe or what they eat. I

only ever included reference to such because I felt that I

was being judged for what I eat, and needed to make clear to

those offering the advice that my dietary beliefs and goals

were different from theirs.