Thursday, May 9, 2013

Paleo twaddle


Menu:

2 Poached eggs
Baby spinach
Bacon
Mushrooms
Tomato
Avocado.
+
Regular coffee.

How much of this is really part of a Paleo diet?  From wikipedia: "The Paleolithic..., is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered... and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools, probably by hominins such asaustralopithecines, 2.6 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BP"

So; 10,000 years ago what parts of these menu items would a paleo eater have to eat?

Poached eggs?  Nope, chickens were domesticated in southeast asia only a few thousand BCE.  And chickens are native to southeast Asia, so no way they could have been eaten on the African savanna.

Spinach?  Dunno.  Seems to have been from Persia, so maybe.

Bacon?  Same situation as chickens.  Another southeast asian native.

Mushrooms? Very probably.

Tomato?  A native plant of south America, so no, not available.

Avocado.  Ummm. The avocado (Persea americana) is a tree native to Central Mexico. FAIL.

Coffee; it was only harvested in Ethiopian highlands in the last few thousand years.

Yumm, a big plate of mushrooms is what you need to keep authentic paleo.