Starchy Vegetables page 2

[Vivian]

so what do you think about plantains--ripe or green---and other cooking bananas? would they be considered a fruit?

[FairyRae2]

Just for clarification purposes, here is the evidence/research Don was referring to irt tubers being available to folks during the ice ages:
[quote]


As I noted in The Garden of Eating, in 1996 anthropologist Melissa Darby, M.A., of Lower Columbia Research and Archaeology (Oregon) demonstrated that Northern Hemisphere paleolithic humans had access to arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia) a prolific wetlands plant that produces a tuber very similar to the white potato. Pollen data indicates that this tuber —called “wapatos” by the Chinook tribe – thrived in the last Ice Age throughout North America, the North American Great Basin, Siberia, and Northern Europe – overlapping the time that during which Perry et al estimate that humans started showing extra copies of the AMY1 gene.


Darby has harvested approximately 5,418 calories per hour gathering wapatos from a knee-deep pond. The tuber is most abundant from late fall through spring, when other plant foods are scarce. People can eat these tubers without grinding or mashing, and they cook thoroughly in a bed of hot ashes in 10 minutes, no oven required. They keep fresh in a cool place, and also dried.


American Prairie Indian women also gathered and cultivate the starchy camas bulb. Darby says that a woman gathering camas could net 5,279 calories per hour. This would consist primarily of starch: nearly 1000 g of it.


Thus, we know that humans had access to tubers—I’ll call them primal potatoes—even during the Ice Ages. It seems fairly certain that we have descended from a long line of tuber-eaters extending back at least a quarter of a million years. I have more to say on this in my next post.
</blockquote>


I know nothing about the validity or accuracy of this, just really wanted to clarify...

[Anand Srivastava]

@Tarlach


Chimps have only two AMY1 copies, while for humans it varies from 2 to 15 copies.


Do you think we ate more fruits and plant matter than Chimps to obtain upto 7 times the copies? I don&#39;t. I think we ate plant matter much more rarely than them.


Also it couldn&#39;t have been a thing that we adapted in just the last 10,000 years. We all agree that if we could have evolved so fast for grains, we wouldn&#39;t have been having any problems with grains.


Don said in the article that AMY1 copies increased sometime in the last 200,000years. This is the time when homo sapiens evolved. It is also the time when it is accepted widely that we had control of fire.


The problem is not that we have AMY1 copies, the problem is that we have so many of them. It means that this cannot have happened due to something that chimps already eat. This rules out fruits and plant matter. It also must be a much more concentrated source of starch to force such a severe adaptation, considering that we eat so much less of it.


It has to be starchy nuts (plain nuts won&#39;t do) and/or starchy tubers. Both have to be processed before eating, which chimps could not have done. Starchy Nuts need to be denatured in some way (washing/soaking in water etc), and tubers must be cooked.


It is very easy to cook tubers in the ambers after the meat is cooked, and the fire has died down. Since the period of AMY1 increase begins after fire control, it strongly points in that direction.


Is there any other option? Don&#39;t tell me that we eat much much more plant matter than chimps, because that is not convincing at all.


I do know that it is anathema to your thinking. But please do consider the possibility. I think that humans were very intelligent and would have used any source of substantial energy that was available, including tubers.


The variation in AMY1 gene copies also means that some people (with very few AMY1 copies) are not well adapted to starch, and those will be better off not eating much starch.


But on the other end there are people (with very high AMY1 copies) who need to have starch in their diet. They can handle starch well and will not feel good without it in their diet. Their metabolism now depends on it. It may not be possible to undo the change in their lifetimes ;-). The basic tenet of Paleolithic principle is to do what your genes tell you to do, not something counter to it.


I don&#39;t know why there is so much variation in this, but it is there and it cannot be ignored.


I am sure that you have only two AMY1s ;-), so ZC is fine for you. But please don&#39;t think that your n=1 results must necessarily apply to others. Consider that others might be telling the truth when they say that they don&#39;t feel good without starch even after going VLC for months. It must be in their genes, which are different from yours.


Everybody must experiment to find what their genes tell them to do. Paleolithic principle provides broad guidelines, but specifics will matter, and differently to everybody.

[Anand Srivastava]

Most of the glycoalkaloids in potatoes are present near the skin so if cooked on ambers would be burnt, and removed. This does mean that skin must be removed from the potatoes or other tubers, when eating it.

[Tarlach]

What particular tubers were Grok eating?


Potato, cassava and sweet potato are new world foods and Grok didn&#39;t have access to any of them.


African yams require extensive preparation, involving pounding, leaching, and boiling to remove the toxins.


There&#39;s only one tuber that I&#39;m aware of that Grok had access to over 65,000 years ago (that might have been be safe to consume when cooked) and it&#39;s part of the mint family. It&#39;s certainly not related to any of the tubers available to us today.


Also, as I mentioned earlier - less ripe fruit has more starch than ripe fruit. Not that I think Grok preferred it, but just sayin.


Tubers might have been a fallback food and not part of the regular diet:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16085279


Just good for storing some body fat when real food was scarce


Chimps will also eat tubers as a fallback, so tubers may not be able to explain a difference between chimp and man:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20080283

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18032604

[Anand Srivastava]

I wouldn&#39;t think that it would be a particular tuber. Just like we don&#39;t rely on a particular fruit, a particular nut.


Why should Tuber be any different?

[Tarlach]

For the same reasons that peanuts are not primal. Because it matters if we evolved eating it or not.


Different species of tubers have different toxins to prevent decay/bacteria/fungus/insects and if we were not exposed to those toxins, we didn&#39;t evolve to handle them.


That&#39;s pretty much the whole premise of the paleo diet and how PB works. We are able to eat what Grok evolved eating and anything outside of that is inherently risky or downright harmful.


If we evolved eating a mint tuber then we are not automatically able to eat potatoes.


Potatoes contain the glycoalkaloids solanine and chaconine. Solanine is found in the plants of the nightshade family and not the mint family. The concentration of these glycoalkaloids in wild potatoes makes them toxic to humans.

[Tarlach]

I found a potential candidate for a fallback tuber foodsource for Grok - Tiger Nut. It doesn&#39;t look like it was around in Africa, so we haven&#39;t had very long to adapt to it though.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyperus_esculentus


Interestingly quite high in oil (20-36%) - 18% saturated (palmitic acid and stearic acid) and 82% unsaturated (oleic acid and linoleic acid) fatty acids.


Making them a far cry from the modern tubers and probably a much better food source.


I don&#39;t know how well you would do trying to gather a feed of them in the wild, but in times of desperation they might have helped Grok survive?

[Tarlach]

Here&#39;s some info on the one tuber I can find from Africa that may have been consumed by paleo man. Part of the mint familiy:


http://database.prota.org/PROTAhtml/Solenostemon%20rotundifolius_En.htm


Of the 3,000 members of the this family, only two (treat synonymously) from Africa produce human food below ground. However, quantities produced in any one location are generally small.

They also have much more protein and amino acids than modern potatoes and some localized types can safely be eaten raw.

[chima_p]

I drool a lot.


Does that mean I have many AMY 1 genes haha!


I hate white potatoes though.