On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 4:20 PM, carolyn_graff <zgraff@charter.net> wrote:
> what stuff do we need that is only in plant food? didn't some cultures survive on only animal foods?
The Inuit ate only fish in the winter, according to reports. But in
the summer they gathered berries and plants. And they ate *whole*
fish, including the stomachs, and the stomach contents of seals and
other seafood, which included seaweed.
Every other culture I've read about ... eats plants. Lots of them. The
thing is, plants have stuff like polysaccharides, which feed the good
bacteria in the human gut. Our gut seems to be made to want butyrate,
which is created when bacteria eat polysaccharides. It *can* be
created from fats too, but very rarely in history has there been
enough fat in the diet to do that, and then mainly in outlying
cultures (like the Inuit).
Plants also provide potassium, which people need. There is a fair bit
of potassium in some seafood too, so I think people could survive
mostly on a seafood diet, esp. if it included seaweed (which is high
in polysaccharides). But inland people didn't have that option, so
they would need animals and plants.
There are also antioxidants in plants that don't exist in animal
foods. And vitamins like Vit C (which can exist in raw fish, since it
is in plankton and fish eat plankton, but isn't plentiful in land
animals except in specific organs?).
I'd guess then that if a person ate a fair bit of raw, whole fish,
some seaweed, seal fat ... like the Inuit ... you wouldn't need a lot
of plants. Maybe if you ate a diet of whole blood and raw or fermented
milk, it would work too. I don't think our usual choices of poultry or
beef would suffice though. Also a diet that was ALL beef, esp., would
lead to iron overload.
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