Monday, June 21, 2010

The logic of paleo diets

I am sympathetic to the idea that we return to hunter-gatherer diets, but I find myself thinking about what that actually means. How did we happen to start farming? How did we decide as gatherers what was edible? Was it starvation that drove us to try new foods? I like the idea of climate change driving early agriculture. "Gee, these grass seeds are hard to eat, but I'm hungry. Gee, look at that, I survived the winter eating grass seeds and roots." I'm afraid the logic that some paleo-philes present as to the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer feels very weak to me. I think that without that transition, perhaps humans would have come close to extinction, if we didn't disappear altogether.

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