Re: Guidance for minimising amines in foods

[Guest guest]

> Where I'm from in Texas there was clear evidence of tendence of

> stuff like pecans and grapes by the natives...

Nuh uh. I'm in Texas too and I seen em! It's dem rodent farmer

Neolithic squirrels burying seeds all over. Why I get dem pecan

sprouts e'rywhere, dag nab it! If a-they only would plant em in a

good spot, why, I'd be a-selling dem organic peacans in the farm market.

Deanna

[Guest guest]

On 9/21/06, Furbish <efurbish@...> wrote:

> At any rate I think it's more dangerous to

> conflate lack of archaeological evidence with nonexistence than it is

> to follow the intuition that humans would have taken obvious

> opportunities... the picture drawn from direct evidence is bound to be

> skewed due to the fact that only a tiny bit of the leavings were

> nondegradable enough to survive. We see lots of tribes today that use

> only tools that would degrade in less than a generation or so.

It seems, also, to be a semi-regular occurrence that the date of

food-related developments is revised backward as new evidence emerges.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

> It seems, also, to be a semi-regular occurrence that the date of

> food-related developments is revised backward as new evidence emerges.

>

Same is true of migration dates of humans across the globe, especially

with mtDNA.

Deanna

[Guest guest]

> Or in Texas for that matter. Instead, New Mexico and much of the >

arid south-western US was covered in lakes due to higher annual rainfall.

>

> Not sure where all that's leading anyway-- just trying to point out

> that " ice age " doesn't by any stretch mean the whole earth was frozen.

Nor does some arbitrary marker called the arrow of time give a rats

behind about individual cultures of the earth. The Neolithic

" Revolution " as it is named did not encircle the globe in one fell

swoop. My people in Sweden didn't adopt anything close to the diet

nor the social structure of civilized men until circa AD 1 or later.

But by Emma's logic, they were Neolithic once modern man

retrospectively deemed it so. Hogwash. That again is why Dr. Price's

work was and remains such a modern snapshot with modern equipment of

the very real and vibrant past. And his observation of the hunter

gatherer groups, who for all practical purposes were following their

Paleo ways with little intrusion for millennia, are especially

illuminating.

Deanna

[Guest guest]

Deanna-

>as I was a bit put off by Sally Fallon's suggestion in NT that the

>best source of all the B complex vitamins is whole grains, even though

>the 1980s published anatomy book declared animal foods mostly, including

>liver again and again).

Join the club!

-

[Guest guest]

Emma-

>Since pottery is neolithic, this limits possible paleo fermenting

>vessels to gourds or animal stomachs. It's fairly hard to pound and

>chop things in objects that themselves get shredded by pounding and

>grinding, so this limits fermenting to soft objects like fruits, which

>are limited, seasonal foods, and normally fermented to produce an

>alcoholic concoction.

Dairy was traditionally fermented in animal stomachs and leather bags

in some cultures, and some tribes chewed fruits and then buried the

juice and masticated pulp in the ground to ferment. Nor is it

necessary to pound and shred meat to ferment it. Game used to be

hung, some predators bury their kills for a time, etc.

>Are you suggesting that the gardening of vegtables came before the

>neolithic revolution? Do you have evidence for this? The pottery

>evidence says grains, which are high calorie compared to vegetables.

Grains didn't become calorie-dense overnight.

-

[Guest guest]

I think bee pollen is a pretty good source too.

Allyn

_____

From:

[mailto: ] On Behalf Of Idol

Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 10:07 AM

Subject: Re: Re: Guidance for minimising amines in foods

Deanna-

>as I was a bit put off by Sally Fallon's suggestion in NT that the

>best source of all the B complex vitamins is whole grains, even though

>the 1980s published anatomy book declared animal foods mostly, including

>liver again and again).

Join the club!

-

[Guest guest]

>You may see tending a garden as an obvious opportunity, but if you

>were a nomad who followed grazing animals for miles across the plains

>(or mammoths through the snow), spending hours planting and tending

>low-calorie foods would seem a bit of a waste of time if you're going

>to move on. Most human tribes made the connection that seeds grow into

>plants, but that doesn't mean they always bothered to actively use it

>to grow gardens. We know for a fact that a neolithic revolution

>happened, it's there in the archeological record.

According to Bill Molison in " The Permaculture Book of Ferment and Human

Nutrition " West Australian Aboriginies developed extensive yam fields over

hundreds of acres of alluvium, where they dwelt *seasonally* as gardeners

approx. 40,000 years ago! That was duing the paleolithic era. As someone

else already pointed out, paleo folks didn't all live in one spot eating the

same foods, namely large game.

And, according to the same source, cultivated varieities of yam and taro

were present in the New Guinea Uplands 30,000 years ago. He also states that

traces of food was found on stone pounders. This also indicates that people

in the paleolithic era were cultivating and preparing plants.

Suze

[Guest guest]

On 9/22/06, Emma Davies <emma@...> wrote:

> If they figured out the connection, what then did they do with it? Did

> they carry on eating amines, treating the foods as a delicacy or a

> drug, as they would have treated hallucinogenic herbs? Did they try to

> ensure the amines were minimised by not fermenting/hanging/drying for

> too long? We have an in-built gag reflex when we smell the cadaverine

> and putrescine in rotten meat. The native sense of smell was probably

> far more attuned through actual need to off-smells and flavours.

I've never fermented terrestrial meats, but I've fermented fish, and

it lasted for months without developing any putrefication-related

scents.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

On 9/22/06, Emma Davies <emma@...> wrote:

>

>

> > The point being just that it wouldn't take eons of cultural

> > development to realize that stuff... it wouldn't have to be a

> > neolithic revelation.

>

> It would if you were nomadic and follow animals around and move in

> order to find new forage, as many, many hunter-gatherer tribes are.

Right, but those migratory routes were *cyclical*, and people have

always had an excellent grasp of the cyclical. They weren't stupid,

they knew they were returning to the same places every year. I'm

thinking of Marshack's " The Roots of Civilization " as an

example of how paleolithic people were very well aware of cyclical

patterns and were even applying them to flora and fauna (this is hard

evidence-- patterned markings on bone and rock that follow lunar

cycles and are accompanied by pictures).

And really almost every primitive mythology incorporated some

fundamental notion of a cycle of time. Linear and developmental

evolution emerged relatively recently. Which is simply meant to point

out the awareness of time and place that people were posessed of since

forever. This all feels fundamentally oriented toward stasis rather

than progress, which would tend to reinforce tendence and awareness of

the local environment. (sort of thinking publicly, always dangerous)

> > At any rate I think it's more dangerous to

> > conflate lack of archaeological evidence with nonexistence than it is

> > to follow the intuition that humans would have taken obvious

> > opportunities...

>

> Vegans " intuitively " believe humans are naturally vegan.

>

> I just don't think " intuition " is enough to start making value

> judgements about what is and is not a " normal " part of humanity. For

> that I want to see some actual hard evidence.

Of course... People often confuse intuition with opinion, doctrine,

conditioning... saying that intuition exists is not the same as saying

that everyone's " intuition " is right. Ultimately the only intuition

to trust is your own and that of others intimately trustworthy, and I

mean that as a fundamental principle of living in the universe.

But with respect to prehistorical reconstruction, where are we left if

we refuse anything but direct evidence? The link that Deanna sent is

a perfect example of how " objective " the ancient evidence is...

ultimately every author cited or involved in that article followed

some form of intuition in drawing his fundamental conclusions. The

final statement was nothing but pure opinion. Surely we can dispense

with the illusion of objectivity in such matters. Vastly incomplete

and misleading evidence would cry out for intuitive judgement (from

someone truly posessed of it... not me, that is, but...).

> You may see tending a garden as an obvious opportunity, but if you

> were a nomad who followed grazing animals for miles across the plains

> (or mammoths through the snow), spending hours planting and tending

> low-calorie foods would seem a bit of a waste of time if you're going

> to move on. Most human tribes made the connection that seeds grow into

> plants, but that doesn't mean they always bothered to actively use it

> to grow gardens. We know for a fact that a neolithic revolution

> happened, it's there in the archeological record.

These aren't exactly trash foods-- nuts, tubers, fruits, these were

staples of human diet along with animal foods. And they were foods

people actively sought to make plentiful.

But as I said above, these people were following well-worn routes

their ancestors had followed for generations. The neolithic

revolution happened, yes, out a fundamental urge to remain in one

place and to have steady, predictable access to food and shelter. And

certainly it was a *development*, not an instantaneous transition. So

the tendence of wild plants is a step in that direction and amounts to

" gardening " in one degree or another. Really that's all I'm trying to

point out... humans were never benign environmental factors; they've

always significantly altered habitats to their own purposes. This

alteration by definition affected the development of every animal and

plant in those ecosystems.

As an example, the native american alteration of landscape by burning.

They created the American grasslands. Reforestation set in after the

whites encroached, but early records and subsequent development show

clearly how fundamentally the landscape was altered. They did that to

expand and tend the habitat of the nomadic animals they hunted. They

recognized the seasonal and locational patterns and used them to their

advantage, and this is a paleolithic-era phonomenon, arguably.

And that's one class of people. Another fact is that not every human

ancestor was a nomadic plains hunter. They might have been a relative

minority. People also lived in places that didn't require regular

migration or pursuit of large game and those people were even

better-equipped to turn tendence into agriculture.

Really I'm not trying to argue that fermented/aged foods were a priori

natural for humans or vice versa-- I'm just taking issue with some of

the arguments taken to justify one or the other position. To say that

neolithic pottery was necessary to exploit a basic feature of a

well-worn and understood environment seems to ignore some fundamental

features of humanity.

[Guest guest]

Emma,

> > How do you figure? I have no idea how anyone can have any idea how

> > paleolithic man processed his meat, but all traditional cultures that

> > have been studied to my knowledge have aged their meat in some way,

> > including ones studied and revealed to be *healthy.* And that direct

> > observation trumps any speculation or unreliable inference about what

> > paleolithic man was doing.

> You can't infer from what neolithic people do and assume that's what

> paleolithic people do, they live in different parts of the world, eat

> different foods, have different enemies and different technologies at

> their disposal. Paleo man didn't even bother making pottery, but he

> did make a lot of spears.

I wasn't making that inference. I explicitly stated " I have no idea

how anyone can have any idea how paleolithic man processed his meat. "

What I said is that traditional neolithic cultures, especially

hunter-gatherers, have been studied and found to be very healthy by

the endpoints that were measured, and *they* aged many of their foods.

This is direct observation about what some groups of people have done

while mataining what is to the best of our knowledge superb health.

Any inference about what paleolithic man was doing beyond what hard

evidence is left is just speculation. You seem to be applying a bias

to this uncertainty by elevating your speculation that they did not do

x, y and z over other people's speculation that they did do x, y and

z, when the two are equivalently speculatory.

The idea of using the absence of hard evidence that paleolithic humans

*did* ferment foods as positive evidence that they did *not* ferment

foods is invalid, because, as pointed out, there are many ways to

ferment foods that would *not* leave hard evidence.

> If you were starving on a hot savannah with a bunch of vultures, wild

> dogs and lions, would you wet hang your meat for three weeks before

> you tucked in? Hanging meat is simply not done in this environment,

> because if you leave it for more than a couple of days it's covered in

> maggots, and if the maggots don't get it, the vultures do.

I honestly don't know much about nutritional anthropology, so maybe

I'm speaking out of ignorance, but it seems to me that burying is a

more reasonable alternative to hanging, and that meat can be

dehydrated over fire and the type of fermentation used when meat is

not dried can be modified by modifying the ferementing environment.

> We have a

> pretty strong gag reflex when we smell cadaverine/putrescine in rotten

> meat, and I'm willing to bet it's a genetic survival mechanism.

Well I don't expect anyone would want to eat *rotten* meat, but I do

not understand why you are conflating this with *fermented* or *aged*

meat.

> Why is there the assumption that paleolithic people regarded

> hung/dried meat as superior to fresh meat? Given the choice, would you

> rather eat pemmican or fresh meat? Or, when you'd had your fill and

> eaten 5 pounds of fresh meat in one sitting like a Masai warrior,

> would you then sit down and process your leftovers (if you had any) by

> drying them and saving them for hard times?

If I had a herd of cattle waiting to be milked and bled for the rest

of the meat-free season I would probably not bother.

> And during those hard

> times, surely you would complain that things were hard, and you had no

> fresh meat?

I have no idea how to judge paleolithic man's taste preference, which

I doubt where the same for every person, but I would think that I

would certainly compain if there were *no* meat, and I'd probably want

to save meat the next time the downseason came around.

> > Possibly, or maybe they didn't have the defects in enzyme functioning

> > that are probably largely attributed to poor nutrition.

> No. That is only ONE theory of many for what is going on, you can't

> make that judgement until we know more.

I think I can make pretty much any judgment beginning with " Possibly,

or maybe... " without full confirmative evidence.

> However, native people do a lot of strange stuff along with their

> clever stuff, like smoke tobacco plants and eat magic mushrooms. The

> yanomomo live on a diet that is 90% bananas (which might explain why

> they *are* bananas). Amines are just a part of this strange stuff.

I don't necessarily think that natives will do something that gives

them scombroid poisoning because they will also do something that gets

them high.

> > Agreed, but your problems metabolising certain food chemicals are not

> > universal, so there's no reason to identify the diet that works best

> > for you at this time in your life as the ideal human diet.

> I can only repeat what I posted earlier: at high enough doses ALL

> people react to these chemicals. Most people will rarely cross that

> threshold so their diet can be as liberal as they like. But as I

> demonstrated in the asthma article on my blog, these problems are

> really, really common, and not restricted to a small group of the

> population with a strange defect of their metabolism (like autistics).

I don't understand all the biochemics of it -- yet -- but isn't the

trans-sulfuration pathway important? If that is dependent on vitamin

D (as well as certain trace minerals) isn't the fact that nearly

everyone is deficient in vitamin D relevant?

> If you pick the wrong cheese, 90% of the population are going to get a

> tyramine headache from a 100 gram serving. The detox enzymes are

> zero-order, rate-limited enzymes, they have a fixed capacity that they

> are never going to exceed no matter what the nutritional status of the

> individual is.

I'm not sure what it means for an enzyme to be zero-order. In a

zero-order reaction, the rate of the reaction is not dependent on

substrate concentration, but when you add enzymes, it is proportional

to the concentration of the enzymes. See figure 1 below:

==============

http://www.worthington-biochem.com/introBiochem/enzymeConc.html

==============

How can an enzyme itself be zero-order?

> When someone shows me evidence that on average, people

> eating a native diet can eat 200, 300 or 500 grams of the wrong cheese

> without getting a headache, I'll believe them.

I think that traditional cheese-eating groups probably would have

figured out which cheeses did not give them headaches and used those

cheeses. I think that paleolithic humans would have done the same for

whatever meat and vegetables they aged/fermented (for example, I doubt

that *all* bacteria break salmon down to histamine equally), but I

doubt also that the ability to tolerate these chemicals in today's

general population is just as high as it was for paleolithic humans.

I don't have proof, but I'm using the observation that modern humans

eat like crap and and suffer from generational cumulative malnutrition

effects -- which I think induce some genetic defects -- that I suspect

probably contribute to problems metabolizing these chemicals like they

lead to problems metabolizing everything else.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

On 9/23/06, Emma Davies <emma@...> wrote:

> ...in this rather irrelevant argument ...

Sorry, it's what this list does best. Fireworks, grand sweeping

arguments, a bunch of people who aren't really sure what the

conversation was originally about.

Love us.

[Guest guest]

>On 9/23/06, Emma Davies <emma@...> wrote:

>> ...in this rather irrelevant argument ...

>

>Sorry, it's what this list does best. Fireworks, grand sweeping

>arguments, a bunch of people who aren't really sure what the

>conversation was originally about.

>

>Love us.

>

>

ROFLMAO!

We're also a bunch of joksters.

Suze

[Guest guest]

On 9/22/06, Emma Davies <emma@...> wrote:

> > I've never fermented terrestrial meats, but I've fermented fish, and

> > it lasted for months without developing any putrefication-related

> > scents.

> And did you get scromboid poisioning from it?

I don't recall getting any problems from it at all, but I only ate it

one or two cubes at a time, rather than as a whole meal's worth of

protein.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

" Emma Davies " emma@... vitaminkgirl wrote:

My original point was:

Did paleolithic people eat more than 50mg of histamine and tyramine on

a regular basis?

Wanita: According to the table of phenylalanine and tyrosine foods on pgs. 84

and 85 in The Edge Effect by R. Braverman M.D. 6-8 ozs. of wild game has

1.5 " gms. " of tyrosine and in the same portion is 2.6 " gms. " of phenylalanine.

Genes have been found that are associated with asthma, and ADHD.

Incidentally, one of the ADHD associated genes, DRD4, which is a

dopamine-receptor mutation, appeared between 10,000-40,000 years ago.

Wanita: Braverman associates ADHD with dopamine neurotransmitter dominance

and/or deficiency. I've posted this article of Braverman's in response to you

before.

http://douglaslabs.com/pdf/nutrinews/The%20Edge%20Effect%20NN%20(Spring-05).pdf

These are some normal degradations of amino acids into amines:

histidine > histamine

ornithine > putrescine > spermidine

lysine > cadaverine

arginine > agmatine > putrescine

tryptophan > 5-HTP > serotonin

tryptophan > tryptamine

glutamic acid > glutamate > GABA

tyrosine > tyramine

tyrosine > levodopa > dopamine

phenylalanine > phenylethylamine

Wanita: Most of the above Braverman puts to his dopamine, GABA or serotonin

natures. That leaves his acetylcholine nature, the only one not requiring amino

acids for specific neurotransmitter production. Iirc, you've said before your

entire family has CFS and takes acetaminophen but you stopped. You've also said

you've spent a lot of money on supplements that didn't work and were wondering

about cysteine. Did you know NAC is the treatment for acetaminophen poisoning?

Have you found that? http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic7.htm Please excuse me if

my memory doesn't serve me totally on the above.

So far people have extrapolated that paleolithic people " must have "

eaten fermented meat, quantity unknown.

Wanita: I know of no Native American or Canadian First Nations (Inuit excepted)

culture that ate fermented meat or other food post paleo as well. All dried

and/or smoked. There's less than half a dozen paleo sites in the East. Maybe a

dozen throughout the country.

If this is the case then they " must have " overdosed on amines

sometimes, unless they were possessed with a supernatural ability to

produce vastly greater quantities of detoxification enzymes than the

general population of today.

Wanita: Genetically there is next to no difference between paleo and now. All

other environmental factors including and besides food quality aren't comparable

then to now.

Wanita

[Guest guest]

Emma,

> ... amines are amino acids that have lost their carboxylic acid

> group ... they don't exist in significant quantities in fresh

> proteins, but are caused when bacteria excrete decarboxylation or

> other enzymes.

>

> These are some normal degradations of amino acids into amines:

> histidine > histamine

> ornithine > putrescine > spermidine

> lysine > cadaverine

> arginine > agmatine > putrescine

> tryptophan > 5-HTP > serotonin

> tryptophan > tryptamine

> glutamic acid > glutamate > GABA

> tyrosine > tyramine

> tyrosine > levodopa > dopamine

> phenylalanine > phenylethylamine

Verrry interesting. Thanks for all your helpful info. I didn't

realize that seratonin was an " amine " . Looks complicated with

multiple pathways and effects. Aren't seratonin, GABA, and dopamine

important in mental health? Also, I recently read that histamine is

one of our primary defenses against viruses like colds and flu.

> As biogenic amines are neurotransmitters the body normally tightly

> regulates the amount it creates, and destroys any that are eaten as

> fast as it is able to. People's ability to do this varies widely,

> and that's when we get problems.

I can't help but wonder if there are dietary aspects that could

influence people's ability to handle amines properly. Perhaps this

would be a better approach in the long run to correct improper

metabolism of amines than just avoidance.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but if I were to say:

" amines are bad, therefore they should be avoided in diet and

minimized in the body " ....

Isn't that a gross over-simplification, rather like saying:

" cholesterol is bad, therefore it should be avoided in diet and

minimized in the body " .

I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe we need to be careful

that people don't get a total amine phobia here. The same may be true

to some extent for salicylates and polyphenols? Some people are

saying that polyphenols can be good for us

http://www.mercola.com/2004/jun/16/pure_polyphenols.htm

<...knows just enough to be dangerous ... crash ... burn>

[Guest guest]

Emma,

> We try our best to refrain from making judgements about what is or is

> not an optimal human diet that cannot be backed up by proper evidence

> - just as a prisoner in the dock is innocent until proven guilty, I

> want to see actual evidence that paleolithic people ate " five a day "

> fruit and vegetables - when this quantity is enough to make a majority

> of asthmatics wheeze - before going out and telling people that it is

> " good for you " to eat fruit and vegetables, and part of " a paleolithic

> diet " .

I have yet to see an example of a traditional group that ate a lot of

fruits and vegetables. I do not have calorie data for more than four

of Price's groups, but from his extra-NAPD writings Price estimated

the following caloric intakes for the specified group:

North American Indians -- 100 calories out of 3,000 as " vegetables,

barks and roots. "

Eskimos -- 100 calories out of 3,000 as " Plants, roots. "

Swiss Alps -- 100 calories out of 2,000 as " Vegetables. "

Hebrides -- 0 calories out of 2,000 listed. That is, he does not list

any vegetables at all.

I used to work at Old Sturbridge Village, which is a living history

museum set in 1830s New England. I studied a bit about foodways as

part of my job. We had time set aside for studying, and I would

preferentially study foodways when I had a choice, because I was newly

introduced to the NT/WAP paradigm so it interested me. In this time

period, vegetables were reagarded as a " condiment. "

They kept gardens, but the only use for green vegetables grown in

these gardens was to boil the heck out of them into " green sauce, "

which was used as a condiment in soups and so on. They also ate

berries and so on seasonally, but they never ate plant foods raw,

which they considered difficult to digest. Actually, I think food was

changing during the 1830s and they had also adopted the use of some

vinegar-preserved sauerkraut and so on. The green sauce was the more

exclusive use of vegetables in the time periods preceding the 1830s if

I remember right.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

>> [suze]> According to Bill Molison in " The Permaculture Book of

>> Ferment and Human

>> > Nutrition " West Australian Aboriginies developed extensive yam

>> fields over

>> > hundreds of acres of alluvium, where they dwelt *seasonally* as

>> gardeners

>> > approx. 40,000 years ago! That was duing the paleolithic era. As

>> someone

>> > else already pointed out, paleo folks didn't all live in one spot

>> eating the

>> > same foods, namely large game.

>

> [Emma] 40,000 years ago doesn't really count as paleo in my book - it

> counts

> as the pre-neolithic ice ages when a lot of changes were taking place.

> Find me something from half a million years ago and I'll believe this

> was a paleo way of life.

Well, it counts in the books of numerous scholars, and as such, should

count as evidence. 40,000 years ago happens to mark the very beginning

of the Upper Paleolithic Period, according to the 2004 Encyclopedia

Britannica. To require that Suze go as far back as 500,000 years ago to

find something to satisfy you is just unreasonable, imho. That happens

to be the first evidence of the emergence of our species. We hadn't

even gotten into the groove at that time.

And as far as humans wasting mammoths: Fine. But you still have not

offered anything on what these people ate during the off season. (And I

apologize for not referencing that quote here) Fasting for some weeks I

can go along with. But they had to eat. They didn't have special

markets from which to buy un-aged meat.

Deanna

[Guest guest]

> I have yet to see an example of a traditional group that ate a lot of

> fruits and vegetables. I do not have calorie data for more than four

> of Price's groups, but from his extra-NAPD writings Price estimated

> the following caloric intakes for the specified group:

>

> North American Indians -- 100 calories out of 3,000 as " vegetables,

> barks and roots. "

>

> Eskimos -- 100 calories out of 3,000 as " Plants, roots. "

>

> Swiss Alps -- 100 calories out of 2,000 as " Vegetables. "

>

> Hebrides -- 0 calories out of 2,000 listed. That is, he does not list

> any vegetables at all.

Yeah, but you can get a whole lot of some vegetables for 100 calories

(over 5 servings in some cases). From the Joy of Cooking list per 100

calories:

2 cups broccoli

5 cups cabbage

over 1.5 cups carrots

over 1 large head of lettuce

over 1 cup black, rasp or blueberries

almost 2 cups strawberries

1 cup peas

1.3 cup pumpkin

2.5 cup summer squash and spinach

3 tangerines

2 cups or 4 whole tomatoes

1.5 cantaloupes

32 asparagus stalks

about 90 green grapes

But besides that, these groups are not Paleo. Not that those

traditional groups that never took up farming might not give us a good

glimpse of Paleo people, but ....

Deanna

[Guest guest]

Been following this for awhile and I just have to say something here. These

people did not live where they had grocery stores where they went in and

bought what they wanted. They had to hunt, gather, etc. to get their food

and it was seasonal!! In the summer months they probably ate some berries,

etc. but they also had to preserve their food to get through the long winter

months (of course depends on where they live) but even here in Florida,

meats, fruits, veggies are seasonal. I bet most of these people during the

cold winter months ate very little veggies and fruits and subsisted on

meats, fish etc. and I tend to think most of that was dried or fermented or

something. On a good day during the winter they might venture out to hunt

but they had to be prepared for the winter and have their food stores ready.

Of course I don't have references on any of this only the tons of things I

have read over the past 50 years and the natural history museums I have

visited around the world to glean my information from. I am an Army brat so

I have been around. LOL. I was just in Taos, New Mexico and visited the

Indian reservation there and they had store houses. Now this was a 1000

year old Pueblo which is still inhabited but has not been changed in 1000

years. Very interesting trip. Of course that is only 1000 years old but

most of the Indians have this information passed down for many, many, many

generations. They will also not tell you about their religion, etc. so that

other tribes can not find out about it, etc. I don't think a whole lot has

changed in that regard. We think because of our life styles and how quickly

things are changing that is how it always has been but it took thousands of

years for anything to change and I don't think the way they ate or stored

their food changed a whole lot over thousands of years.

Just my opinion.

Allyn

_____

From:

[mailto: ] On Behalf Of yoginidd

Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2006 5:13 PM

Subject: Re: Guidance for minimising amines in foods

> I have yet to see an example of a traditional group that ate a lot of

> fruits and vegetables. I do not have calorie data for more than four

> of Price's groups, but from his extra-NAPD writings Price estimated

> the following caloric intakes for the specified group:

>

> North American Indians -- 100 calories out of 3,000 as " vegetables,

> barks and roots. "

>

> Eskimos -- 100 calories out of 3,000 as " Plants, roots. "

>

> Swiss Alps -- 100 calories out of 2,000 as " Vegetables. "

>

> Hebrides -- 0 calories out of 2,000 listed. That is, he does not list

> any vegetables at all.

Yeah, but you can get a whole lot of some vegetables for 100 calories

(over 5 servings in some cases). From the Joy of Cooking list per 100

calories:

2 cups broccoli

5 cups cabbage

over 1.5 cups carrots

over 1 large head of lettuce

over 1 cup black, rasp or blueberries

almost 2 cups strawberries

1 cup peas

1.3 cup pumpkin

2.5 cup summer squash and spinach

3 tangerines

2 cups or 4 whole tomatoes

1.5 cantaloupes

32 asparagus stalks

about 90 green grapes

But besides that, these groups are not Paleo. Not that those

traditional groups that never took up farming might not give us a good

glimpse of Paleo people, but ....

Deanna

[Guest guest]

Emma-

>Find me something from half a million years ago and I'll believe this

>was a paleo way of life.

What are you looking for, a 500k-year-old pickle jar? Such a find

would be particularly surprising since Homo sapiens is generally

considered to be only about 250kyrs old. So what are you actually

asking for? Proof of fermentation by h. heidelbergensis? By h. erectus?

-

[Guest guest]

Deanna-

>I guess

>the real question is: can one get optimal nutrition on such a plan?

The magic eight ball says: outlook not good.

That doesn't necessarily mean there's no value to a temporary

elimination diet, though.

-

[Guest guest]

Emma-

>I've also found that WAPFers tend to assume that all human health

>problems can be solved with the right combination of vitamins. But it

>just doesn't work like that. WAPFers generally don't have a clue that

>the natural poisons that exist in plants or are produced by

>bacteria/yeast are just as harmful as vitamin deficiencies.

If by " vitamins " you mean " supplements " , you couldn't be more

wrong. The WAPF community is generally pretty strongly

anti-supplement -- to its own detriment IMO.

As to natural poisons, a lot of WAPF doctrine covers proper

preparation of vegetable-kingdom foods specifically to deactivate

antinutrients. Of course that doesn't cover anything remotely close

to the whole spectrum of problem substances, but compare your average

WAFPer's awareness with your average SADer's and then maybe you'll

get a different perspective.

-

[Guest guest]

> >I guess

> >the real question is: can one get optimal nutrition on such a plan?

>

> The magic eight ball says: outlook not good.

Just like, or similar to the raw food plans? Cuz it sure seems like

that is the kind of debate we have going on here.

Cooked food(or amines in this case) = poison

> That doesn't necessarily mean there's no value to a temporary

> elimination diet, though.

And might some few people perhaps need to watch it more permanently do

you think?

Deanna

[Guest guest]

>>>The issue I have with this is that we know paleo people used

flat stones to crack open bones and nuts on, but a flat stone isn't

really a good tool to use when you have some wet vegetable

matter...<<<

This is going to be tough to convince me about. It's just, I'd bet

with some experimentation, I could figure out how to lacto-ferment

wild foods, and, with hundreds of thousands of years to experiment,

and nutritional gain to be had, I bet ancient humans did too. They

figured out a way. This is strictly speculative, of course! But

there's a logic to it.

>>People have been taking from this discussion the idea

that " fermented foods contain amines so they're bad " , which isn't how

it works...<<

I admit I had been thinking that.

>>I don't know whether we have any experts in kefir drinking here,

but Iwonder if any of them have noticed what I have noticed - I've

read plenty of anecdotes suggesting " normal " people do experience

this - that some strains/batches of kefir make you relaxed and calm

(GABA), others give you a rush and make you feel overstimulated

(glutamate), others send your thyroid into overdrive and keep you up

all night (tyramine). This is because it depends exactly what bugs in

what proportions produce what results. Would paleolithic and neolithic

people not have noticed this and tried to select their ferments for

the most favourable effects?<<

Well ~I~ do make and drink kefir. I most definitely ~have~ noticed

the relaxed/calm rush -- it's pretty noticeable and happens within 2

or 3 minutes of drinking the kefir. I find it pleasant. I assumed

it was a kind of alcohol unfamiliar to me that the kefir mother

created. So is GABA one of the -amines- you're saying can be toxic?

I haven't felt at all stimulated or wired by kefir -- stimulation

tends to turn me off to a food or other substance.

I don't feel that ancients or primitives would have stuck with the

ferments that intoxicated them or not. Like anyone else, they could

see the effects these things on their ability to gather food, protect

themselves, and have a satisfying dream life, and would have

responded in kind. If anything they were probably more aware -- and

more responsive -- to chemical sensitivities than us moderns have

learned to become.....

Tim