The Cattail’s Outta the Bag
It’s official: we’re closing up shop. They found The Bread. They still haven’t found the flying saucer from Area 51, or the second shooter on the grassy knoll, but they found The Bread.
A crack team of European archaeologists has finally uncovered the evidence that Eades, Cordain, DeVany, Nikoley, I, and a ton of other bloggers have been pooling our incomes together to suppress for years. That supplement and book stuff I sell? It’s actually a (undeclared) non-profit operation devoted to buttressing the final meager thread supporting this whole Primal/paleo thing. And it was working, too, despite our recent setbacks. See, we’ve been taking a lot of hits as of late:
The flurry surrounding the China Study. Boy, we really lost that round, huh?
The emergence of a hyper intelligent, intellectually rigorous, banana-obsessed, fruitarian hominid splinter species with a powerful online presence, before which I find myself cowering.
The piddling sales of both my books and Robb Wolf’s book.
The complete and utter failure of numerous community efforts, like the Ancestral Health Symposium, Paleohacks, or the inaugural NYC Barefoot Run. Not to mention the poor showing of the MDA community during this year’s 30-Day Challenge. Talk about ghost towns!
Vegetarians winning the heart disease wars, yet again. (I didn’t say what they won, did I?)
But through all this and all that, we could still rely on that single thread to support and maintain the veil of delusion surrounding our movement. Just as long as they didn’t find out that our ancestors were using stone grinders 30,000 years ago to process wild roots, rhizomes, corms, and the occasional seed into Bisquik, we could go on in blissful ignorance. Well, they did find the evidence. Our best efforts were for naught. And now we “fans of the so-called Paleolithic diet”, who, I’m told, “[frown] on carbohydrate-laden foods like bread and cereal, and… eat only lean meat, vegetables, and fruit,” must grapple with our world crashing down around us. I don’t know about you, but I’m headed down to the local IHOP for endless pancakes. I don’t have to hide anymore. I’m free.
Seriously, though: are people really surprised by this finding? Think about what you know about humans for a second. Humans will sample, experiment with, and nibble on just about anything remotely palatable or edible in their environment. Little kids put all sorts of stuff in their mouths. Adults go crazy for the latest ethnic food fad. We are curious, orally-fixated creatures, especially when it comes to new types of food. How do you think we got here? You think those early Fertile Crescent farmers woke up on January 1st, 10,000 BC, dropped the spear, and picked up the shovel, ushering in the perfectly organized amber waves of grain?
No!
Up close, history is messy and random. The further you are from it, the neater it looks. When most people think of the World Wars, it’s all big events. Momentous, sweeping occasions. Great men. Countries falling, balances shifting. Stuff you can put on a syllabus and teach in half a semester. The big picture. But there are millions upon millions of individual lives and experiences for which we must also account. A father’s only son going off to war, lovers parting ways, an orphaned child trying to make it in a Jewish ghetto – these are the nitty gritty details that accompany the sweeping narratives, and indeed make them real. We just don’t hear about them all that often.
This Paleolithic “bread” business is the same to me. (By the way, I love how the popular news headlines reference bread when the word “bread” isn’t used a single time in the actual study.) It’s the nitty gritty. It doesn’t shake the core of my beliefs, or whatever nonsense your vegan friend who sent you the link is probably anticipating (hoping); it merely paints a stronger, more vivid, more complete picture of our ancestors’ meandering, exploratory journey toward where we find ourselves today. I love that it came out. It’s fascinating to get an intimate vision of Grok’s daily life.
As for the “vegetal matter” in question, there’s nothing really surprising or groundbreaking to discuss. Of the nine varieties of “starch grain” (the term “grain” having as much to do with grass feed here as it does in the word migraine) discovered on the grinding equipment, seven were roots or rhizomes. If you’re anything like me, you already eat a fair amount of root material: carrots, radishes, cassava, turmeric, turnips, parsnips, to name a few. Rhizomes aren’t quite as common in the modern diet, but they include things like groundnut and cattail (which was the most prevalent starch residue found on the sites in question, actually). And, since both roots and rhizomes, by definition, “self-defend” by embedding themselves in the ground, chemical antinutrients really aren’t necessary. There were remains of a seed, too, and that of a “caryopsis,” which is another word for a grain. The grain hailed from Brachypodium ramosum, a fairly common grass variety that doesn’t seem to have any nutritional data available online. I’ll keep looking, though. So, while I suppose we can’t rule out that our ancestors were playing with small amounts of grain that may have harbored lectins or gluten-ish compounds, we do know that they were a minor player in our overall dietary regimen. Remember: this cereal agriculture stuff had to get started somewhere, sometime.
Of course, as Melissa points out, the evidence, based on bone isotope data, points pretty clearly to animal protein taking precedent in early man’s diet.
What are your thoughts? Does this “discovery” dissuade you from avoiding grains? Or, more likely, have friends and family been eagerly forwarding you various permutations of the paper with “Aha!” in the subject line?
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
Woohoo! I knew it! Now I can go back to eating bagels and Froot Loops every day, and still be adhering to my “paleo” diet!
Mark, how do you explain the proven health-success of Roman Meal foods and similar foods?
What do you mean health success? From comparative studies? What did they compare it with?
I’m guessing the bread they made didn’t taste so great given how much they left to fossilize. I have no doubt they TRIED to make bread, but they probably ate one bite and realized meat was tastier. Just sayin’
So true.
haha! nice one.
the bottom line for me is that it doesn’t matter if they ate it or not. if it makes me unhealthy and causes me problems then I’m not gonna eat it!
If the grain lovers can eat grains and still be healthy then lucky them.
I know bread is bad for me and no amount of convincing is going to make me think otherwise. Sometimes you know the answer even if you don’t know the “why”. The paleo diet for me just helps explain the why.
This finding means nothing to me. I still think the paleo diet is the healthiest diet for me. Or the “primal diet” to keep Mark happy. I’m sure every other primal/paleo diet follower out there would agree.
This one surely agrees! My and my hubby have leaner bodies, leaner kids, happier guts, better bowels, better health and better SEX to prove it!!
Bread? Great from teff and almond meal which we’ve done successfully. But from GLUTEN LADEN grains? Hell no.
Hi Malika, or anyone else who knows. Pardon my ignorance but what is teff? This teff and almond meal bread sounds interesting.
Thanks
Ahh… I found it on Wikipedia. It says that Teff has gluten though, and its some form of grass. So I think I’ll pass on that one. My husband is allergic to most of that stuff. But at least I learnt something new today
I agree with this and the whole article.
I was actually amused when I read that ‘finding’ about the bread being eaten some 30K years ago. Doesn’t amaze me in any way and certainly doesn’t deter me from the Primal Way.
Like Mark said, it had to start somewhere. Everything has a beginning – most ideas are built upon previous ideas so it would make sense that the ‘example bread’ found was a tryout of sorts and from similar tryouts the snowball effect began. If they only knew where it would lead…
The funny thing about grains is, they don’t give the immediate markers that other poisonous foods give. It actually might of taken generations to notice that our gene pool had weakened due to grain consumption. And probably it will take generations to repair it too – provided that people start shunning the grains.
Awesome ‘comeback’ Mark!
And yes, Mark, to answer your question, a skeptical friend of mine did send me this article yesterday.
Same!
The addict will always find a way to justify their addiction…
I agree completely with this statement about addicts. We as a society are so addicted to grains and sugars.
I’m the Jesster.
This study isn’t ground breaking to me. I find it natural that our early ancestors would explore various plants, starch and all, in their diets. It’s not like they could go to Fitday and plug it in like we can. And even if they did eat some grain, so what? It wouldn’t fundamentally change what we think because it would have been such a minimal amount. Added to that, it wasn’t no where nearly as processed.
Grok would have also had to harvest the grain, beat the seeds out of it, grind it, fetch wood, build a stove out of something, before he could eat it. I am sure the calorie expenditure made up for the benefit of a high calorie food. For me, I could go to the supermarket and fill my cart with thousands of calories without batting and eyelash?
(read whilst gnawing on porkchop & brussel sprouts)
bread – schmead, whatever…
Thanks for yet *another* fun article!
ok, I love the comment when you skim the mouse over the rocks
Love it! Nice catch Peggy!
Awesome! I didn’t even notice that
Whether our cave friends ate grains or not, this lifestyle works for me, so I plan to continue.
Ditto.
I have been interested in wild foraging since high school, and used to go on foraging walks with some local and very knowledgeable mycologists/foragers. One of the first foods I was taught to gather and process was arrowhead tubers – the tuberous roots at the base of arrowhead plants that grow in shallow waters. Native Americans used to wade through the mud barefoot, using their toes to dig out the tubers, which would float to the top of the water for easier gathering. They are fantastic once peeled, boiled, and served up with some butter and parsley.
I also learned how to gather cattail roots and cattail pollen to use in making biscuit-like patties and pancakes. When I read the Yahoo! article, I was neither shocked nor surprised – this kind of stuff is also basic Anthropology 101, but considering that course is used by most people as a blow-off class to satisfy a humanities requirement, anyone who took it but didn’t take is seriously would have either forgotten or never known about the diet/lifestyle of early man (not to mention the erroneous info and the “short, nasty, brutal life” hypothesis many people still hold about Neandertal/Cro-Magnon man).
I am with that, You have to be almost completely ignorant not to know about foraging for tubers. There was a great book I read in High School (’78) called Parapsychology or some such that detailed a study proving that plants had measurable responses to painful stimuli, and even had responses to pain inflicted on nearby plants and animals.
Wish I could find that again and use it to hand out to ALF types when they are handing out their literature
I don’t think you have to go back 10,000 years for the PB argument. my fathers family were/are farmers and they were all in terrific shape. they ate mostly meat and potatoes, vegetables etc. He hates pasta and rice because that’s what they ate when they were “poor”. even 100 years ago, people knew what to eat. common sense, the more processing the bigger your gut.
I’m generally in agreement with the Paleolithic/Primal formula to follow when it comes to understanding diet. But what I never see anybody on this website discuss the traditional ways of preparing grains and legumes that do not result in metabolic syndrome. Many primitive cultures did have grains in their diet but they prepared them in such a way as to remove the ant-nutrient phytic acid so that it could be beneficial to consume in moderation or during a famine. Should grains be avoided? Generally, yes, especially if we’re talking about anything you can buy at the grocery store. Are their traditional ways of preparing them that make them much less harmful and possibly even beneficial? Yes.
It’s the same story with fat. Are there in existence fats which can be detrimental to your health? Yeah, lots of them, like trans fats and hydrogenated fats. Does that mean that all fat is bad? No! It means that we should eat fats that our ancestors would have eaten: mostly animal fats and a few vegetable fats.
The Weston A. Price foundation has contributed greatly to the understanding of primitive diets, and yes, many of them included grains, prepared in traditional ways that are perfectly normal for our bodies to consume, e.g. sprouting or soaking.
I love the website. I love the Primal Blueprint. But I really would like to see more balance applied to grains.
On the other hand, I follow exactly what I prescribe of others with respect to grains: if you’re not doing all the milling/sprouting/soaking/preparing yourself in your own kitchen, DITCH THE GRAINS.
I think it’s mostly a matter of convenience. Preparing grains properly takes a ton of time and effort, too much for most (like me). I’d rather just skip them and make things even easier. I think that’s how most folks who read this blog feel. If you’ve got kids to take care of and a job to keep up with, soaking and fermenting every day isn’t really in the cards, especially when you can serve up a sweet potato and a slab of meat and call it a day (and not miss out on any nutrition).
I will admit, I have it quite good. I have a job and six children, but my dear wife is the chief soaker/sprouter and she is the one that keeps our grains so nicely prepared for the family. You are 100% right though – if you’re not willing or don’t have the time, just avoid them altogether.
Even freshly ground, sourdough spelt bread is addictive to me. I think that for a lot of us, we’ve been eating so much, so highly hybridized, so improperly prepared, grain for so long, that we just can’t tolerate grains of any kind in moderation. I have great hopes that when we finish GAPS, we’ll be able to tolerate properly bred, properly ground, properly prepared, properly risen grains occasionally, w/o addiction, bloating, and all the rest. Very occasionally.
I have been reading the Weston Price Foundation website (and Sally Fallon/Mary Enig) for many years, and they hardly argue for a lot of wheat in the diet – if anything quite the opposite. Indeed, there is no need to “balance” any diet with something so (human) metabolically unnecessary as wheat. The WPF generally advocate a VERY high fat (of the right fats, mostly animal) and adequate protein diet, along with a lot of fermentation, of vegetables mostly. This is where they also discuss the ancient methods of soaking, sprouting, and fermenting wheat, soy, and other otherwise toxic grains and legumes. Their focus is elsewhere however, as is Mark’s. The place they really differ is: Mark advocates raw veggies, they advocate mostly traditional indigenous societies’ use of fermentation.
Their reasons for doing so are good, and backed up by research and science. Unfortunately people still blindly cling to their drilled-in beliefs about “the goodness of whole wheat” and that horrific “food pyramid” foisted upon us all as children.
It’s enough to make me want to put on those 15 pounds I just lost and cover up those newly defined abs!
Hilarious how they make the leap from ‘small amounts of plant roots ground up to form a ‘flour” to ‘Caveman ate Bread’!
You’ve got to love it, obviously the week for everyone’s world to come crashing down around them.
Cavegirl – the non-bread-eating variety!
This small amount of “grain” intake will never lead up to the 300 grams of carbs that a “normal” human consumes today due to the high grain recommendation.
Back in the day, we had to work hard for our food. If we found something that was food and was edible then we ate it. Animals were not always abundant. It’s a little different in todays world…
Saw the headlines and half expected fossilized remains of a half finished baguette. Read the story and shrugged.
What I don’t understand is the animus toward Paleo/Primal. I suppose “movement” is the right term. I stumbled upon it and it simply works for me. I’ll have to get used to the fact that many ingrained (rimshot) interests from farms to pharma have much to lose and will seek to discredit it whenever possible.
This one has a a little zing at Paleo: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101018/india_nm/india522760
Anyway, glad you brought this up.
you know what, It really doen’t matter to much to me at the moment. I stopped eating grain (all processed and whole), processed sugar and lots of starchy vegatables and lost over 40 pounds in about 4 months and feel and look great. To me that is all that matters.
My world won’t end just because some ancient man eat ground cattail root and grass seed.
You…mean…it’s all …a shame? Who would have thunk us poor idiots could have picked up a tool and ground some seeds? Might have to stop on the way home from work. I saw our cattails on the side of the high way have opened. Might have some garlic cattail bread with dinner tonight?
I had a friend send me that article. I just asked how many 30,000 year old spearheads have they found?
Good one!
Bingo
Aren’t we talking evolution here? 10,000 years or 30,000 years – - – they are effectively the same thing on the evolutionary scale. Both are about 1% of the 2 million years we evolved.
LOL the IHOP line was priceless!
roots – tubers – a grass seed or two. . Doesn’t make it “bread” – or pizza – or hobnob biscuits. I’m sure quite a lot of carbs were eaten, in various guises and ways. But I’m sure most food was meat or veg based.
Also – how else would they get the roots etc for dyes – without they first ground them down to extract the colours more easily?
We process bauxite to make aluminium – doesn’t automatically mean we eat it.
Mmmmm…fresh, hot, buttered aluminium bread…
I’ve been waiting to hear your take on this mark. Personally doesn’t effect me at all. Even if grok ate grains. They were minimally processed compared to today’s breads and pastas. It still doesn’t rule out the fact that people feel, look and perform better without today’s processed junk. I still indulge in quinoa every now and again. But lean meats, veggies fruits and healthy fats is the way to go
Where’s the bread?! And since when are cattails and various plant matter and one type of seed grains?! Even if the researchers found a loaf of petrified Wonder Bread, it wouldn’t change anything for me. I am soaring on Primal and don’t plan on changing a thing.
but we all know Wonder Bread would never petrify. That crap stays “fresh” forever.
Good point there, chima.
Maybe they’re talking about the tails of actual cats, rather than the cattail plant!
Mmmmmm… Cats….
That? Was so funny I just spit out my lunch because I was laughing so hard. Oh, btw..I do love cats and own two of them…but still!
There we go! You might be Primal if you named your cat Sparemeal…
Classic! Mind if I use that line!
ho-hum. I’m reasonably certain than human beings will do whatever necessary not to starve – including grain consumption. High starch foods are simply portable sustainance and you’d have to be a complete moron to abstain from it when starving is the alternative – and we know from written history that it’s been used as a “staple” throughout times of famine. why would we think the these events would be limited to written history? seems fairly straight forward to me that evidence of even much-earlier grain consumption will be found and it will indicate this exact same thing.
Humans try stuff. A peek at the old Japanese version of Iron Chef should be ample evidence that we haven’t stopped eating weird stuff to see what it’s like.
I think this is just another symptom of the ever-growing antipathy toward personal responsibility. Paleo/Primal points out that there are consequences for eating grains and dairy, eat them at your own risk. Trying to justify a crappy lifestyle choice by implying that cavemen ate “bread” is still just justification.
Because whenever I hear “BREAD” I think of ground root matter. Did they find any evidence that this stuff was cooked? How do we know it wasn’t used in soup?
I thought this study and accompanying articles were really cool! Finding tools from ancient people is fascinating.
Muahaha. Love this post. Go have fun with the pancakes.
Whatever they say, my body tells me the truth. It doesn’t like bread or potatoes or rice. I don’t want to sink down on my bed to sleep just because I ate. And don’t get me started on my skin….
I second…my body doesn’t like the rice, potatoes, wheat; and it tells me so by bloating me up.
I’ll stick with the initial plan thank you very much.
Thank you! It sounds like my inbox wasn’t the only one receiving this from a dear ole’ relative, excited to prove to us we were all wrong and a heart attack was only moments away.