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> it’s probably closer to historical diets of Hunter gatherers. My understanding is that this is not true, or at least extremely unlikely. The majority of hunt

• barry-cotter 5y ago
  > My understanding is that this is not true, or at least extremely unlikely. The majority of hunter-gatherer societies seemed to have subsisted mostly on plants, with meat being a minority of their calories, possibly more of a special-occasion food. As with every statement about hunter gatherers or hunter gardeners it varies. If you’re living in the far north like the Inuit, Eskimos or similar your diet is going to be almost all meat, maybe some berries for two months of the year. Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans living in the far North of Eurasia would have had more plants but not a lot more. Humans can live on diets of 80% plus gruel, on potatoes with some milk, rice and beans, on noting not meat (as long as you eat organs and fat). Humans are really varied. We can’t eat pure vegan without deficiency diseases but there’s a lot of variety in human diet.
  • lettergram 5y ago
    It’s really a math problem. If you look up the weight needed to live off berries or veggies and it would be impractical. Do the same for nuts, and it might work; but nuts don’t work well due to the time consuming collection. Meat is produced from animals gathering plants and creating an energy dense food source. One which almost exactly matches what humans need. Some tribes do milk and honey; but that’s another energy dense food source (not really hunting and gathering). Meat was and is the primary energy source for Hunter and gatherers — period. Simply wasn’t alternatives. It’s why tribes used to follow the herds.
    • SamBam 5y ago
      Did you look at my source above? The studies show that many of these peoples would have lived on diets of about 70% roots/fruit/vegetables, and only 30% meat. So unsure how the math says that's not possible.
      • lettergram 5y ago
        I did read it. However that wasn’t a study, it was a comment by a magazine (National Geographic) on the current groups today (not historical). I didn’t even see the data to back it up, nor is it evenly distributed. Aka many groups will have higher or lower distributions. Further, it didn’t say 70% were roots/fruit/vegetables it said 30% was meat. The article didn’t clarify if that was be weight, volume, count, etc. it’s possible 30% by volume is meat, but by that measure I could eat a watermelon and a steak and only 5% of my diet is meat. It also mentions an African tribe that survives mostly on milk and honey. That tribe isn’t hunters and gatherers (they manage herds), but let’s assume they count that (no data listed), then that still isn’t meat nor vegetables/roots/fruits.
        • SamBam 5y ago
          > The article didn’t clarify if that was be weight, volume, count, etc. Sure it did, and it did it in my quote. 30% of their calories. That's extremely different than the watermelon and steak in your example. It's closer to about 7 kilograms of potatoes for every kilo of meat.
    • igetspam 5y ago
      What's the mathematical breakdown of what you need to maintain a healthy weight on a mostly or entirely plant based diet? I know the source is biased but these people have done the math: https://www.nomeatathlete.com https://www.nomeatathlete.com What's fun is the articles they've done on NFL players (like Brady, whose diet is 80% plants) who obviously have professionals working for them but have no negative performance issues.
      • lupire 5y ago
  • SamBam 5y ago
    Inuit and Eskimos are the standard counter-example, and they are mentioned in the article, but they are a very small percentage of world-wide hunter-gatherer societies throughout history. They also weren't around in the Paleolithic.
• nec4b 5y ago
  Your understanding would be wrong for at least temperate climate zones (North America, Europe, much of Asia, forest and steppes alike). Not much grows there for half a year. Meat is around all the time.