Getting a clear idea of just what a "hunter gatherer" eats is difficult. There is a belief that the Australian Aboriginal lived almost entirely on some form of meat, judged on midden evidence and observation of family groups sitting around a fire. It was not until about twenty years ago that I first walked through the bush with groups of tribal and semi-tribal Aboriginals that I could observe, first hand, their daily habits. As they move through the landscape they are continually eating "bush tucker" and will collect some meat, which is generally carried until the next meal time and cooked in the fire. Much of this is small game: lizards, birds, grubs etc. Larger game such as Kangaroo, Wombat, Emu etc, tends to be less frequent. Of the bush tucker taken on the walks, it is mainly vegetable - leaves, roots, tubers, berries and fruits. There are also sizeable amounts of grain and seeds eaten, usually with some preparation. From my experience, I would suggest that the Australian Aboriginal would eat less than one third meat in their total diet. But if you sit in the base camp and watch them, you would think they ate little else than meat.
Gil
Moen Creek wrote:
But What Did the Cow Have for Lunch?By John O'Neil
Maybe the problem in the modern diet isn't the amount of meat we eat,
but the diet of the animals whose meat we're eating, according to two
studies based on research comparing current diets with those of
Paleolithic man.Wild animals not only have less total fat than livestock fed on grain, but
more of their fat is of a kind (omega-3) thought to be good for cardiac
health, and less of a kind (omega-6) that promotes heart disease, said
the studies, published in the March issue of The European Journal of
Clinical Nutrition. Many of the same benefits were found in grass-fed
livestock, also known as free range.The lead author of the studies, Dr. Loren Cordain of Colorado State
University, was part of a group of researchers who drew attention in 1985
by their suggestion that Americans could benefit from imitating the diets
of modern-day hunter-gatherer tribes. Then, they described that diet as
low in protein.But in an interview, Dr. Cordain said that the group later discovered that
the dietary data had been compiled incorrectly and that about two-thirds
of hunter-gatherers' calories came from animals.To try to reconcile this finding with the low rates of heart disease in such
societies, they compared the fat found in game animals to grass-fed and
grain-fed livestock. What they found, said Dr. Cordain, is that "we need to
get back to the character of wild meat.""You can still eat meat and be healthful," said Dr. Cordain, if what you eat
fed itself the old-fashioned way.New York Times February 19, 2002
