Quote Originally Posted by shootingstar View Post
I'm looking for what my ancestor, Beijing man, paleo era might have eaten.
Well, those plants and animals don't exist any more than the contemporaneous European plants and animals do. That's the main point of the article (and the other article that made news last week, about how agriculture has bred all the nutrition out of food).

I know this is of interest to archaeologists, and from an archaeological/anthropological standpoint it is interesting, but to me, from a dietary standpoint it has no more point than arguing about whether Dr Atkins's family changed the spelling of their name when they immigrated, or whether what's-her-face really killed the Scarsdale doctor.

Much more interesting to me would be some discussion of the sustainability of a grain-free diet. It's unfortunate since my experience and, it seems, the personal experience of most everyone who's tried it, is that it feels much better to get most of your calories from vegetables, with some meat. And from an anthropological standpoint, it's undisputed that humans developed a lot of chronic illnesses at the same time they started eating grains. But the empty calories of grains are what allowed the population to explode, too. I have a feeling that there's no way the world's population could eat a reduced-grain diet, even if we all magically returned to an agrarian life. Which really does sharply accentuate the dietary differences between the haves and the have-nots. But it seems no one wants to talk about that angle.