DIE DIE DIE!!!

I know this is off topic, but the idea of "shoving a double espresso up your ***" reminds me of beer chicken.

LMHO!!

Paleo.

Just.... everything Paleo.

Bull**** you are eating like Paleolithic man.

Paleolithic man did not have Whole Foods. He did not have New York strips or non-GMO raw salads or raw, vegan, berry cheesecakes.

Our meat is not his meat. Our vegetables are not his vegetables. You are following a fad diet espoused largely, if not exclusively, by the ignorant, pretentious, and CrossFit-addled minds of the fitness world.

Now kindly take your grain and legume-free dinner, and choke on it.

Paleo.

Just.... everything Paleo.

Bull**** you are eating like Paleolithic man.

Paleolithic man did not have Whole Foods. He did not have New York strips or non-GMO raw salads or raw, vegan, berry cheesecakes.

Our meat is not his meat. Our vegetables are not his vegetables. You are following a fad diet espoused largely, if not exclusively, by the ignorant, pretentious, and CrossFit-addled minds of the fitness world.

Now kindly take your grain and legume-free dinner, and choke on it.

It is said that poop is the perfect evidence. If it is ingested then you can find it there. Recently there was very well preserved fecal matter found from neanderthal and in that glorious morning cake was found traces of phytosterol, a cholesterol like compound that is produced in plants and only in plants.

"Gram for gram, there’s more cholesterol in meat than there is phytosterol in plants, so it would take a significant plant intake to produce even a small amount of metabolized phytosterol.." [Citation http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/did-neanderthals-eat-their-vegetables-0625]

Grain was consumed by our ancestors, it was traded, used for payment and in the end is responsible for the human condition evolving past throwing rocks at pygmy deer in an attempt to catch dinner. It's cultivation gave rise to empires, allowed longer lifespans, larger frames, sharper minds. Eat your paleo if you want, not my problem, but do it knowing the facts.

I heard my boss (and bear in mind we help people who want to make some lifestyle changes and start down the losing weight/get fitter road, so she really should know better) tell a client that if she stopped exercising 'her muscle would turn to fat'! What?? Um....no!!

^this. "Muscle weighs more than fat" implies unitary equivalence. Do cars weigh more than children? NO BECAUSE 1KG OF CARS WEIGHS THE SAME AS 1KG OF CHILDREN!

Paleo.

Just.... everything Paleo.

Bull**** you are eating like Paleolithic man.

Paleolithic man did not have Whole Foods. He did not have New York strips or non-GMO raw salads or raw, vegan, berry cheesecakes.

Our meat is not his meat. Our vegetables are not his vegetables. You are following a fad diet espoused largely, if not exclusively, by the ignorant, pretentious, and CrossFit-addled minds of the fitness world.

Now kindly take your grain and legume-free dinner, and choke on it.

Paleo.

Just.... everything Paleo.

Bull**** you are eating like Paleolithic man.

Paleolithic man did not have Whole Foods. He did not have New York strips or non-GMO raw salads or raw, vegan, berry cheesecakes.

Our meat is not his meat. Our vegetables are not his vegetables. You are following a fad diet espoused largely, if not exclusively, by the ignorant, pretentious, and CrossFit-addled minds of the fitness world.

Now kindly take your grain and legume-free dinner, and choke on it.

Our cafeteria at work decided a month ago to go paleo...

mostly true...... but agriculture lead to people becoming smaller framed, not larger framed. (if by frame size you mean postcranial robusticity, which is the nearest scientific equivalent: large framed = robust postcranial skeleton; small framed = gracile postcranial skeleton)

Palaeolithic Homo sapiens sapiens (aka. cro magnon man) was large framed and robust by today's standards. And cro magnons were small framed compared to neanderthals. Modern people are, on average, smaller framed than palaeolithic Homo sapiens sapiens, because agriculture, and to some extent upper palaeolithic hunting methods, meant people didn't rely on brute strength so much. Neanderthals hunted huge mammals like bison, woolly rhino and mammoths with only thrusting spears. That said, their frame size still overlaps with the high end of modern human frame size - modern humans have much more variation in that, as in small framed neanderthals didn't survive ice age winters (large framed people withstand the cold better) and didn't have the strength to hunt that way... but in modern people frame size no longer determines whether or not you survive... in post-agricultural populations large framed people would have made better warriors but small framed people survived too and probably specialised in other things (e.g. crafts/trades) and the higher level of technology meant people withstood cold weather and didn't need brute force to get food. And because average is the middle value, there are people today whose frame size is way smaller than palaeolithic Homo sapiens sapiens, and the average is smaller than the average for cro-magnons. And as Homo sapiens sapiens is the smallest framed of all species of human, it's clear that frame size has become significantly smaller since agriculture was invented. (albeit with a lot more variation)

the new evidence from neanderthal poop is interesting - but I don't know why people are saying this is the first evidence for plant eating in neanderthals (as some are, I know you didn't say that - I read it somewhere else) - previous evidence from their teeth also showed they ate plants as well as animals, and i've even seen a scientific paper discussing the consumption of root storage organs by neanderthals (i.e. roots tubers, like the European/Asian pleistocene equivalent of potatoes and carrots (but not actual potatoes (they're from the new world), although it could have included the ancestors of carrots)) - sources of carbohydrate would have been scarce in winter in the climate and area they lived in; these kinds of root storage veggies would have been a valued source of carbohydrate, and obtainable with middle palaeolithic technology (e.g. by using a digging stick of some sort). Also I think the amount of vegetables consumed by neanderthals would vary with geographic, seasonal and climatic conditions. I haven't seen the poop paper yet but I think it would be significant whether it dates to a glacial or interglacial period. Vegetable foods would have been a lot more available in interglacial periods.

sorry for the ramble... I'm a science nerd and this is my favourite topic in the whole of science (i.e. neanderthals/middle palaeolithic era, not poop lol)

What happened to number 4?

if I lift anything heavier than these tiny pink dumbbells, I'm going to suddenly sprout muscles and look like Arnold Schwarzeneger.

actually, this isn't a fitness myth I wish would die... I wish it was true.... I wish it really was that easy to get big muscles!!

mostly true...... but agriculture lead to people becoming smaller framed, not larger framed. (if by frame size you mean postcranial robusticity, which is the nearest scientific equivalent: large framed = robust postcranial skeleton; small framed = gracile postcranial skeleton)

Palaeolithic Homo sapiens sapiens (aka. cro magnon man) was large framed and robust by today's standards. And cro magnons were small framed compared to neanderthals. Modern people are, on average, smaller framed than palaeolithic Homo sapiens sapiens, because agriculture, and to some extent upper palaeolithic hunting methods, meant people didn't rely on brute strength so much. Neanderthals hunted huge mammals like bison, woolly rhino and mammoths with only thrusting spears. That said, their frame size still overlaps with the high end of modern human frame size - modern humans have much more variation in that, as in small framed neanderthals didn't survive ice age winters (large framed people withstand the cold better) and didn't have the strength to hunt that way... but in modern people frame size no longer determines whether or not you survive... in post-agricultural populations large framed people would have made better warriors but small framed people survived too and probably specialised in other things (e.g. crafts/trades) and the higher level of technology meant people withstood cold weather and didn't need brute force to get food. And because average is the middle value, there are people today whose frame size is way smaller than palaeolithic Homo sapiens sapiens, and the average is smaller than the average for cro-magnons. And as Homo sapiens sapiens is the smallest framed of all species of human, it's clear that frame size has become significantly smaller since agriculture was invented. (albeit with a lot more variation)

the new evidence from neanderthal poop is interesting - but I don't know why people are saying this is the first evidence for plant eating in neanderthals (as some are, I know you didn't say that - I read it somewhere else) - previous evidence from their teeth also showed they ate plants as well as animals, and i've even seen a scientific paper discussing the consumption of root storage organs by neanderthals (i.e. roots tubers, like the European/Asian pleistocene equivalent of potatoes and carrots (but not actual potatoes (they're from the new world), although it could have included the ancestors of carrots)) - sources of carbohydrate would have been scarce in winter in the climate and area they lived in; these kinds of root storage veggies would have been a valued source of carbohydrate, and obtainable with middle palaeolithic technology (e.g. by using a digging stick of some sort). Also I think the amount of vegetables consumed by neanderthals would vary with geographic, seasonal and climatic conditions. I haven't seen the poop paper yet but I think it would be significant whether it dates to a glacial or interglacial period. Vegetable foods would have been a lot more available in interglacial periods.

sorry for the ramble... I'm a science nerd and this is my favourite topic in the whole of science (i.e. neanderthals/middle palaeolithic era, not poop lol)

:flowerforyou:

I don't have time to respond to this, but I will say that you are 100% correct and thank you for taking the moment to type all that out. The period I was more referencing was the expansion of homo-erectus into other climates, at which point we were smaller for the most part, depending on climate and local circumstances. Of course, my knowledge on the matter could very well be dated and wrong and if it is I will find out tonight when I look it up!

Homo erectus didn't cultivate grains though... your post seemed to be saying that cultivation of grains led to an increase in robusticity. (apologies if I misunderstood) Grains were not cultivated until around 10,000 years ago - the absolute latest date for H. erectus I think is more like 100,000 years ago.... I can't remember the exact date but all other human species besides H. sapiens sapiens were already extinct before any grain cultivation started.

Going through the lower and middle palaeolithic era, human frame size/robusticity was increasing steadily along with brain size, but the likely evolutionary driving force for this would have been hunting bigger and bigger animals. In particular, the increase in skull thickness was probably due to the increasing risk of head injury from hunting. Larger brain size = greater ability to co-operate and use strategy for hunting and developing better weapons (better hunting weapons and more sophisticated stone tools appear in the fossil record alongside this). Only in the upper palaeolithic with Homo sapiens did frame sizes start to get smaller - this is likely due to the use of projectile weapons, which require less brute strength and more skill and accuracy, and also greatly reduce the risk of injury to the hunter. This is likely what gave cro-magnons their advantage over the neanderthals. Neanderthals never adopted projectile weapons technology (although the very latest of them did start eating fish, which probably was learned from Homo sapiens, as Homo sapiens were known to have eaten a lot of fish long before they got anywhere near Europe)........ anyway, it is correct that frame sizes got bigger throughout human evolution, but then Homo sapiens went against that trend. And since the start of agriculture, Homo sapiens frame sizes became even smaller (on average... although like I said there's lots of variation and also quite a lot of archaic genes knocking around the gene pool, e.g. neanderthal, denisovan, and probably more yet to be discovered)

It's a really interesting question from an evolutionary perspective. I really think that projectile weapons hunting was a major advantage that our species had over other human species. And if you compare Homo sapiens anatomy to neanderthal anatomy, Homo sapiens seems to have been built for overarm throwing and running, while neanderthals were built for brute strength, in particular with a really strong grip and strong legs. In fact if you were to redesign human anatomy for optimal deadlifting, what you'd get is something pretty close to neanderthal anatomy. Homo sapiens on the other hand had favourable limb proportions for running and a greater range of motion in the shoulders, and narrower hips and proportionally wider shoulders, i.e. built for running and throwing spears.

Anyway, I'm quite happy to type plenty on this subject lol... it's my favourite topic in science and I can type at 90 words per minute.

erectus *giggle*

No eating after 8p.m.

Calories can't tell time.