Gather

woman will be happy when I spend all day gathering 1000 tiny seeds to make tahini with instead of clubbing a deer

 While nuts are well-accepted as paleolithic foods, seeds are little more contentious. Technically nuts ARE seeds, but botanics aside, what we think of as nuts are big enough that gathering a decent amount of calories from them in the wild is feasible. The same can't be said for seeds- most are tiny and it can take a long time to harvest enough to make anything out of. I learned this harvesting pigweed seeds. I was hoping to get enough of this amaranth relative to make porridge with, but I ended up with only enough to garnish a piece of fish. 

What about their place in a modern paleo diet? After all, we eat plenty of things that would have been tough to gather. For me, the problem with seeds is that if you eat large amounts of them you will be eating nutrients in ratios and amounts that are not appropriate for us evolutionarily. Furthermore, the polyunsaturated fats in them go rancid easily. While some might find hemp useful, I think it's a bad food, at least in the US because you cannot buy it whole and how long has that hemp powder been sitting on the shelf? Probably long enough to render some of those nice omega-3 fatty acids rotten. Flax is a popular ingredient in "paleo" baked goods, but ground and shoved in the oven, the fats can't be good. 

Furthermore, if you eat lots of seeds with the exception of flax, the ratio of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids is likely to tip towards the latter, which is probably not a good thing. 

Several sources of information suggest that human beings evolved on a diet with a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 essential fatty acids (EFA) of approximately 1 whereas in Western diets the ratio is 15/1-16.7/1. Western diets are deficient in omega-3 fatty acids, and have excessive amounts of omega-6 fatty acids compared with the diet on which human beings evolved and their genetic patterns were established. Excessive amounts of omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and a very high omega-6/omega-3 ratio, as is found in today's Western diets, promote the pathogenesis of many diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and inflammatory and autoimmune disease

Furthermore, the conversion of any omega-3 from plants in your diet is hampered. The omega-3 fatty acids present in plants, alpha linolenic acid, is not immediately usable in the body. In order to be used, it must be converted to Docosahexaenoic acid. The enzymes that do this conversion are called Holman's enzymes. Unfortunately, they are also responsible for converting omega-6 fatty acids (mostly linoleic acid) to arachidonic acid. Lots of omega-6 means that there is not enough of Holman's enzymes to do the job. This is discussed in Susan Allport's book The Queen of Fats

Data for the US indicate that Americans consume between 11 and 16 grams of linoleic acid per day during the years 1989 and 91 and about 1 to 2 grams of alpha linolenic acid. At that ratio, only about 15 percent of the alpha linolenic acid is converted to DHA and eicosapentaenoic acid. At lower ratios, the conservation rate is much higher. The best conversion occurs at a ratio of 2.3:1

For paleo dieters who eat seafood, this shouldn't be a huge problem, but if not, it can be an issue. 

Let's also talk about phytic acid, an anti-nutrient present in many seeds, can reduce mineral absorption. There are a couple of other issues, like some estrogenic compounds in flax.

So that's why, in the Paleo Foods section of the site, I classify seeds as Not Paleo, but give the pros and cons. Some tahini sauce on your kale probably isn't as bad as some whole bran bread, but I would recommend keeping their consumption low. Use them as if you had to gather them yourself. 

Are you still putting your leftovers in Tupperware or old plastic takeout containers? Well, you are not alone and that just mystifies me. When I see someone putting their short ribs into a scratched container that they got when they ordered Chinese food ten years ago, I want to tell them about Ball jars...and how they are ballin'

You see, plastic isn't all its cracked up to be. It scratches, possibly getting plastic into your food and leaving a nice little home for bacteria. Many plastics also leech cancer-causing toxins, especially when put in the dish washer or god forbid, the microwave. Tupperware is probably the safest, but some contain the dreaded BPA and have they really done studies on long-term use? 

I always hated how difficult it was to get grease off of plastic containers anyway and I eat plenty of grease. 

Luckily, one day out of the blue I was given a large amount of small wide-mouthed Ball mason jars. I started putting everything in them and they are awesome! They don't scratch and you can easily put them in the dishwasher. We can all agree that glass is just about the safest thing you can put things in. 

But don't they shatter if you even look at them the wrong way? Nope, I have the visual acuity of a naked mole rat and the grace of a hippo and I have carried them on the subway, on horses, and pretty much everywhere and I have never broken one ever. 

Anyway, I think jars are awesome and I scavenge them greedily, trying to stay ahead of my main competitors: the sugar-loving canning crew. I have bought some awesome ones too, mainly large ones from the dollar store that now proudly hold lard and bone stock. 

Gene Expression has a facinating post on the transition from foraging to agriculture and how it affected human welfare. The graph Razib drew is interesting:

Thinking about it in a dietary context, I added a green line. Of course it is a rough approxamation. It would certainly be interesting to do a really well-researched version of this graph taking into account the archeological evidence, but this graph does show some important things. We in the modern era (well, some of us in 1st world countries at least) are lucky in many ways, as mortality is pretty much lower than its ever been. We don't have to worry very much about ourselves and our children getting felled by a random infection or being eaten by wild animals. But the so-called diseases of civilization really keep us from living up to our full genetic potential.

Where on this timeline do you want to eat? There are actually several good choices that seem to allow one to avoid diseases of civilization.

• The paleolithic diet, emulating hunter-gatherers.
• The mesolithic diet, emulating peoples who would have eaten small amounts of agricultural products, but also would have supplemented with wild foods. I think some diets that are similar to this would be the acorn-based diets of some Native west coast cultures or the reindeer-herding Sami. Many foraging cultures that survived beyond the paleolithic, don't really eat a diet that would be considered paleolithic. Reliance on nuts as a major food source, for example, seems to start after the paleolithic period.
• and traditional nutrition, which emulates the diet of healthy peasant societies. The modern Weston A. Price society aims for this diet.

I suppose it all depends on that dotted line from this graph on Demeter's Legacy. Certainly, there are both cultural (soaking and fermenting grains) and genetic adaptations that make agricultural food less harmful to humans. Eliminating the basic poisons of the Industrial Revolution like refined sugars and grains is often enough to restore health. I suppose it is up to you as an individual to decide if you are experiencing maladaptation from an agricultural diet. The cause of maladaption could be genetic, but it also could be that the illnesses developed on an inappropriate diet require going back to the basics. I feel that is certainly the case for me.

This paper explores the diets of gorillas and uses it to recommend a diet for humans low in fat and high in dietary fiber. This is a common mistake. Dozens of vegetarian groups say that because the great apes are vegetarians (which they aren't...but animal food intake is fairly low) that humans are also naturally vegetarians. The most extreme groups say we should eat only fruit because, as primates, we thrive on sugar.

But read the paper carefully. The gorilla diet is very very high in fiber, but that fiber is getting converted into free fatty acids. This conversion is vital for gorillas, providing them with 57% of their calories. That leaves 15.8% of calories from carbohydrate, making the gorilla a defacto low carber! Humans claiming to emulate ape diets by eating lots of fruit aren't able to get the same nutrition. Fruits that are palatable to humans are much higher in sugar and lower in fiber than what the great apes eat. Furthermore, the human colon is tiny in comparison to great ape colons, so even if we did eat high-fiber fruit we wouldn't be able to process very much of it into free fatty acids. 

Here is why a fruity "ape" diet is bird-brained:

• There is some fermentation of fiber into FFAs in humans, but much less since our colon is only 17% of gut volume. In apes it is typically around 50% of gut volume. 
• Since apes are basically converting most of their food into FFAS, they are basically low-carbers. Humans gorging on melons are eating an amount of sugar that no ape in the history of the world has ever eaten. 
• Humans are a fairly unusual species. Contrary to popular misconception, gorillas and chimps are our relatives, not our ancestors. Re the latest fossil evidence "indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings." It also means that comparing our digestive system to lions and cows is pretty pointless since we are a unique clade. 
• Humans are the longest lived primates. A diet high in sugar cannot support this longevity. Without modern dental-care, humans eating high sugar diets would not live very long because they would lose all their teeth. Our "natural" diet would not be the one that makes our teeth fall out. Apes experience tooth decay in the wild, but it matters less since they don't live as long. 
• Our brains require nutrients like iodine and DHA that simply can't be found on a diet of forest foods. Furthermore, our brains are big and hungry for calories. While modern fruit eaters can survive because of the wealth of sugar-rich fruit at the grocery store, there is no evidence that a homo sapien could survive by foraging for only wild fruit. In fact, there is strong evidence that homo sapiens could not survive in a forest environment at all without access to cultivated foods.