EXTRACT
Potatoes and other plant foods are neither ‘primal', nor do they promote health, leanness, or longevity.
For many reading this post, the application of an evolutionarily appropriate diet for the purposes of obtaining and sustaining health and longevity, is axiomatic. The need to engage foundational, evolutionary principles is rendered even more pertinent considering our severely depressed adaptation to the suboptimal environments, novel foods, lifestyles, and states of metabolic and endocrinological derangement in which we subsist. Far too little evolutionary time has passed for us to be successfully acclimated to the novel conditions of agricultural life. Consequently, modelling our current food choices and nutrient profile on food groups we are biologically attuned to, appears to be the most accessible and conceivable way of gaining and maintaining health in modern society.
However, paradoxically, many proponents of a ‘Paleo’ (i.e.: pre-agricultural) diet have promoted the use of tubers and other starches as – not only benign – but necessary health foods to consume for the correction of metabolic and endocrine disorders. Potatoes, rice, and other oxymoronically-labelled ‘safe’ starches, are being promoted in spite of the fact that they are exclusively Neolithic foods. Consequently, it is the conflation of starches, safe, and ancestral that I now wish to address, and hopefully correct.
