Category Archives: Cuisines

Paleolithic Cuisine: How Gourmet Was It?

Posted by on February 20, 2013 30 comments

The Perfect Health Diet is based on biological evidence for what it is healthiest for humans to eat, not on mimickry of Paleolithic diets. Nevertheless, we believe our diet is a pretty good representation of what Paleolithic hunter-gatherers ate – in fact, a better representation than conventional “Paleo.”

We also frequently note that our diet resembles gourmet cuisines. Julia Child would have loved PHD food!

(Hat tip: Cheeseslave)

So does this mean Paleolithic humans were eating gourmet food?

It sounds unlikely. Modern hunter-gatherers tend to eat similar foods day after day, often prepared simply. Lacking supermarkets, it is difficult for them to gather ingredients; lacking refrigeration, they often have to eat food soon after it is obtained; lacking kitchens and equipment, many cooking techniques were not available to them.

But in many ways Paleolithic food may have been quite a bit more Julia Child-like than anthropologists suppose.

Delicious Macronutrient Ratios

In the book, we argue that:

  • The most healthful macronutrient mix is about 30% carb 15% protein 55% fat, with over 90% of the fats saturated or monounsaturated.
  • This healthful mix of macronutrients is also the most delicious, because the reward system of the brain evolved to encourage us to eat healthful food.
  • Paleolithic humans usually succeeded in approaching this optimal macronutrient mix. The Paleolithic diet was typically minority-carb – 15-20% carb much of the time with excursions toward 50% during periods of carb availability – and minority protein – generally 15-30% – and therefore roughly half fat by calories.

Paleolithic food may have been simple, but it had the most delicious mix of macronutrients.

That Paleolithic diets were rich in fat is supported by the observation that hunter-gatherers have always striven for a high fat-to-protein ratio in their diet. Here is anthropologist John Speth:

Inuit diet was actually composed primarily of fat, not lean meat, with the protein contribution seldom surpassing about 35 per cent of their calories, and usually lower, closer to 25 per cent. Pemmican, the traditional mainstay of Native Americans and First Nation peoples (‘Indians’) inhabiting the Great Plains of mid-continental North America, was a mixture of rendered fat and dried, pulverized lean meat, the mix carefully prepared so that the protein component did not exceed 25–30 per cent of total energy (eg, Stefansson 1956; Speth 2010). [1]

Classic gourmet cuisines also generally have this fat-rich macronutrient mix. Classic French cuisine, for instance, is notably rich in saturated fat. This has influenced everyday French eating in a healthful direction, as Wikipedia notes in its discussion of the “French paradox”:

In 2002, the average French person consumed 108 grams per day of fat from animal sources, while the average American consumed only 72 grams. The French eat four times as much butter, 60 percent more cheese and nearly three times as much pork. Although the French consume only slightly more total fat (171 g/d vs 157 g/d), they consume much more saturated fat because Americans consume a much larger proportion of fat in the form of vegetable oil, with most of that being soybean oil. However, according to data from the British Heart Foundation, in 1999, rates of death from coronary heart disease among males aged 35–74 years were 115 per 100,000 people in the U.S. but only 83 per 100,000 in France.

French cuisine is famously delicious. The resemblance of the macronutrient proportions in French cuisine and Paleolithic food suggest that the Paleolithic wasn’t a time of dreary food.

Delicious Plant, Herb, and Spice Combinations

Paleolithic hunter-gatherers ate a much wider variety of plant foods than we do. Gordon Hillman found archaeological residues from 157 plant species at the village of the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers at Abu Hureyra, Syria, and believed that at least another hundred species must have been eaten that left no residues. (Source: note 15 of chapter 24 of our book.) Modern Americans, in contrast, typically confine themselves to about 30 plant species.

So it’s fair to say that Paleolithic cuisine had a much richer variety of plant foods, herbs, and spices than modern cuisines. Paleolithic humans were intimately familiar with their natural environment, and made full use of the diverse foods available to them.

Likewise, hunter-gatherers ate a much wider range of animal organs and tissues than modern Americans, and probably a wider range of fish and animals too. They must have been familiar with a great diversity of ingredients.

What about flavor combinations? Evidence is sparse on this point, but as far back as we have archaeological evidence, we find that foods were combined in tasty ways.

Via John Hawks, I learned of a story in Slate (The Mystery of Curry) that reported the discovery of residues of a ginger, garlic, and turmeric curry from an ancient cooking pot of the Indus civilization. The sub-head of the story: “It turns out we’ve been eating the spiced dish [curry] for a lot longer than anyone ever imagined.”

Paleolithic Cooking Techniques

If Paleolithic humans had access to a great variety of foods and combined them in delicious proportions and flavor combinations, the last obstacle to the Paleolithic Julia Child would have been cooking methods. What cooking technologies did she have?

Fire has been under human control for a long time – the first known use of fire was a million years ago, and fire for heating and cooking was in routine use by 300,000 to 400,000 years ago; heat treatment of tools is known to have been practiced 164,000 years ago (for sources see the discussion in Chapter 2 of the book).

Roasting and broiling on hot coals or stones heated in a fire was undoubtedly the first Paleolithic cooking technology. Cooking in earthen ovens was routine among Native Americans [3] and probably was a Paleolithic technology.

But boiling is more controversial. Ceramic pots were invented only fairly recently, about 20,000 years ago in China and were not used in western Eurasia until the Neolithic. Steam-cracked rocks, a sign that fire-heated rocks were being used to boil water, were not common in Europe until about 25,000 years ago.

Yet archaic humans seem to have been boiling foods long before 25,000 years ago. Neanderthals were boiling their starches at least 46,000 years ago [2], and Speth has argued that to survive at northern latitudes, they must have been obtaining fat from boiled animal bones 200,000 years ago.

So how did they boil without fire-safe pots? Speth again:

Boiling can in fact be done quite effectively without fireproof containers or heated stones. I first became aware of this possibility … [from] an episode of ‘Survivorman’ on the Discovery Channel (2008, Season 2, Episode 4, Part 3, Day 3, African Plains), a program in which wilderness survival expert Les Stroud had to use his wits to stay alive and functioning for several days, alone, in the bush, having with him only the cameras needed to record his daily activities and a very minimal assortment of modern items that he either brought with him or found along the way. He had to improvise almost everything. What caught my attention on that particular occasion was that Stroud had decided to boil water, but the only container he had was a plastic water bottle. To my utter astonishment, he filled it with water, suspended it over an open fire with the bottle squarely in contact with the flames, and proceeded to bring the contents to a rolling boil without destroying the container, noting in passing that so long as the portion of the bottle that came in contact with the flames was filled with liquid the bottle would not burn. [1]

Here is a re-enactment of Stroud’s demonstration on Youtube:

Speth notes that the Ojibwa commonly boiled water and cooked in birch bark baskets, and states, “Direct boiling over an open fire in perishable containers made from paunches, skins, or birch bark – without the use of heated stones – seems to have been a fairly common practice in the temperate and northern latitudes of North America, as amply documented by Driver and Massey (1957:229–231).” [1]

Herodotus, too, noted that the Scythians commonly boiled meaty stews in paunches, with fatty animal bones supplying fuel for the fire when wood was unavailable. In east and southeast Asia and Melanesia, bamboo tubes were the most popular choice for boiling water and steaming rice.

If Paleolithic chefs didn’t bother to invent pottery, perhaps it’s because it wasn’t superior to their hides, bark, and bamboo:

Experiments conducted by Margaret Holman and Kathryn Egan (1985; see also Munson 1989) … [showed that] direct heating with the tray-like bark vessels required substantially less fuel and less time than applying heat indirectly by stone-boiling … [and] also showed that producing syrup in flat-bottomed bark containers was only marginally less efficient in time and labour than using a metal kettle. [1]

From Speth’s perspective, the invention of pottery and stone heating probably signified the increased use of slow-cooking methods such as simmering, not any dramatic change in how food was prepared. [1]

What about frying? If Paleolithic chefs were using hides as pots for boiling, could they have used the same hides to hold fat for frying?

Leather ignites at 210ºC / 410ºF – a warm enough temperature to support frying. Hides can be tanned using vegetable compounds or brains, both materials available to Paleolithic man. I suspect that frying was, if not an everyday technology, certainly a technology that more sophisticated Paleolithic chefs would have experimented with.

Summary

It looks like Paleolithic chefs employed a variety of cooking methods – roasting, broiling, boiling, baking, and possibly even frying at temperatures up to 210ºC / 410ºF – and had regular access to a variety of foodstuffs which they were able to combine in the most delicious proportions and flavor combinations. They had, in other words, the ingredients, knowledge, and technology to engage in gourmet cooking.

It’s sad that writing was not invented earlier. We have forever lost the lore of the Paleolithic Julia Child who 50,000 years ago might have written Mastering the Art of Neanderthal Cooking!

References

[1] Speth JD. Middle Paleolithic subsistence in the Near East: zooarchaeological perspectives – past, present and future. Before Farming 2012(2): 1. http://www.waspjournals.com/journals/beforefarming/journal_20122/abstracts/index.php. Hat tip John Hawks and Melissa McEwen.

[2] Henry A, Brooks A & Piperno D. Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (2), 486-491. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/12/17/1016868108. See also Henry A, Brooks A & Piperno D. (2011) Reply to Collins and Copeland: Spontaneous gelatinization not supported by evidence Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1104199108. Hat tip Julien Salvatore.

[3] Kroeber, AL 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 78. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Cited in [1].

Bengali Fish Curry (Machher Jhal), 2: The Recipe

Posted by on December 27, 2011 19 comments

Dr. Shilpi Bhadra Mehta is a Doctor of Optometry, a Board Member of the Archaeological Institute of America, and leader of the Boston Paleo group, Living Paleo in Boston. I asked her to tell us about Indian cuisine, and she offered a discussion of Bengali Fish Curry. We’re doing it in two parts: first, a discussion of its health benefits; second, a recipe with pictures. — Paul

This recipe for Bengali Fish Curry provides 6-8 servings. It will be good up to 5 days in the fridge after cooking. Keep the skin on the fish if it’s wild!

Ingredients

2 pounds fillet or steak of wild fish with skin-in (preferably a high Omega 3 fish like salmon)

1 Large Onion, diced or sliced

3 Tablespoons Ginger Paste (Don’t use if taking warfarin, blood thinners, or have gallstones)

2 Teaspoons Kalo Jeera/Kalonji/Nigella Seeds (available in South Asian grocery stores)

Macadamia Nut Oil

Turmeric powder

Juice of Half a Lemon or 1 Small Lime

1 Cup chopped fresh Cilantro

1 Teaspoon Sea Salt (more can be added to taste by the individual)

Optional:

2 medium Vine Ripe Tomatoes, chopped

1 Green Chili Pepper

1 Teaspoon Red Chili Powder/Cayenne /(Paprika for less heat)

Preparation:

Sprinkle turmeric and salt lightly over both sides of the fish (but not the side with skin if your fish has it). Squeeze the juice of half a lemon/lime on the fish (but not the side with skin if your fish has it). Let it marinate on the counter for 15 minutes, or longer in the fridge for up to 2 days.

Sautéing the Fish:

1) Heat oil in a pan at medium to medium-high heat (depending on your stove). The oil should be sizzling but not smoking. If oil is too cool or the pan gets dry then the fish might break or stick to the pan. Slide fish pieces carefully into hot oil, in a single layer placing them flat.

2) Sauté fish about 2 min to a light brown on each side and flip only once. Do not fry to a dark brown, or they can become stiff and chewy. Then set the fish pieces on a plate.

Making the Sauce/Curry:

1) Heat the remaining oil in the pan to the same temperature as before. Add more oil if necessary – do not let your pan get dry or the fish will stick! Add the Nigella/Kalonji seeds.

2) When the seeds sizzle, add the onion in and fry for 2 – 3 minutes till they get translucent.

3) Stir in the chili, tomato and the ginger, and continue to cook about another 3-5 minutes till the tomatoes become soft and start to break up.

4) Pour in about 2 cups water, and return fish to pan and place them in a single layer, with the skin surface touching the pan. Add fresh cilantro, cover the pan, turn down heat and let simmer for about 10-15 minutes until fish is cooked, and then turn off heat.

5) Enjoy with rice cooked in butter or ghee (you can top with ghee or butter, too) and a vegetable of choice (in this case it was bok choy) for a Perfect Health meal!

Bengali Fish Curry (Machher Jhal), I: Health Benefits

Posted by on December 26, 2011 16 comments

Dr. Shilpi Bhadra Mehta is a Doctor of Optometry, a Board Member of the Archaeological Institute of America, and leader of the Boston Paleo group, Living Paleo in Boston. I asked her to tell us about Indian cuisine, and she offered a discussion of Bengali Fish Curry. We’ll do it in two parts: first, a discussion of its health benefits; second, a recipe with pictures. — Paul

My husband, Amit, grew up in a vegetarian family and never cared much for fish. But when he went Paleo for health reasons he fell in love with this traditional Bengali recipe, so I make it almost weekly! Bengal is part of India and Bangladesh, it is the home of Bengal tigers, but it is most famous for eating and cooking fish.

When Amit and I first tried Paleo we had some minor setbacks, but our experience improved wonderfully on the Perfect Health Diet version of Paleo so we are grateful for the Jaminets’ wonderful book and website. Amit and I are organizers of the Boston Paleo Meetup Group, and hosted a great potluck and lecture by the Jaminets in October 2011. It’s a pleasure to give back by providing a Perfect Health Diet recipe for you!

Health Benefits of Fish Oil, Ginger, and Turmeric

I’m a practicing optometrist and recommend that all my patients regardless of age or health (except those on blood thinners or a week before surgery) eat about a pound of oily fish per week (about 4-5 servings) like wild salmon, sardines, and sablefish (black cod). For those resistant to eating fish, I recommend fish oils (about 1-3 grams total/day depending on age and health). Fish is great for the whole body – especially the heart, brain, and eye!

There are many health benefits to the omega-3 fatty acids in oily fish. They:

  • Exercise anti-inflammatory effects throughout the body.
  • Help with brain and mental issues such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, anxiety, depression (including prenatal and postpartum), mood, cognition, Huntington’s disease, bipolar, schizophrenia, etc.
  • Help prevent and reduce age related macular degeneration (AMD/ARMD – a blinding eye disease) even in those with a strong genetic history.
  • Improve cardiovascular health in aspects such as blood pressure, circulation, triglycerides, VLDL, heart attacks, and stroke.
  • May improve immune function, rheumatoid arthritis, and insulin sensitivity.

The long-chain omega 3s EPA (Eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (Docasahexaenoic acid) are especially important. DHA is the most common Omega 3 in the brain and the retina – the neural part of the eye that senses light, and part of the central nervous system (CNS)! About 60% of the polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in the retina are from DHA, and 40% of the brain’s PUFA is DHA. Low levels of DHA are associated with senility, depression, and suicide risk.

DHA is also important for sperm and erythrocytes (red blood cells). In the often blinding eye disease Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), RP patients compared to normals had far lower DHA in blood and sperm. The RP patients had fewer and lower quality sperm. Since DHA is found in many tissues, the abnormalities in one tissue may share a similar biochemical cause as in other tissues.

The best and most easily absorbed source of omega-3 fatty acids is wild fish. EPA and DHA are most abundant in oily fish and in the breast milk of women who consume fish. Algae, pastured/grass-fed animals, and pastured dairy and eggs from grass-fed animals are other possible sources.

The body can convert some ALA (alpha linolenic acid) found in plants such as flax and chia into EPA and DHA, but this conversion is often poor – as low as 0.05-15% in healthy humans and worse in older people and those with some medical conditions! ALA has not shown the cardiovascular improvements of fish oil.

Although I typically recommend 1-3 grams of fish oil/per person a day for dry eye and other health issues, I cannot recommend the amounts of flaxseed that would be needed to deliver equivalent amounts of omega-3s. In flaxseed this would require 6-60 grams/per person a day which might cause diarrhea, intestinal blockage, nausea, constipation and other GI side effects.

I cannot recommend flaxseed also for women due to estrogenic effects that could negatively affect hormonal conditions like PCOS, endometriosis, fibroids, or any reproductive cancers. I believe flaxseed should be avoided in women of childbearing age – especially pregnant and breastfeeding women – since in animal studies and some human epidemiological studies it has been associated with preterm birth. In rodent studies flaxseed affected menstrual cycle, lowered birth weight, and altered reproduction in offspring including infertility.

In addition to oily fish, Bengali Fish Curry provides healthy plant foods such as onion, ginger, turmeric, and lemon/lime.

Ginger may help improve mood since it affects serotonin receptors. It helps with nausea from morning sickness, chemotherapy, and seasickness. Ginger also may have some antimicrobial properties. In animal studies it prevents skin cancer, kills ovarian cancer cells, and reduces diabetic complications such as cataracts.

Turmeric has anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antitumor properties. A component known as curcumin has been shown to help cancer, osteoarthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, pancreatitis, psoriasis, and some infections.

There are so many benefits to Bengali Fish Curry, and probably more will be discovered in time – that is why I recommend it!

Selected References

Wikipedia also has a good introduction to each.

Ginger

Ernst and Pittler. Efficacy of Ginger for Nausea and Vomiting: A Systemic Review of Randomized Clinical Trials. British Journal of Anaethesia. 2000. 84 (3) 367-371. http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/84/3/367.full.pdf+html

Kato et al. Inhibitory Effects of Zingiber officinale Roscoe Derived Components on Aldose Reductase Activity in Vitro and in Vivo. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. 2006. 54 (18), 6640-6644. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/jf061599a

Turmeric/Curcumin

Frautschy et. al. A Potential Role of the Curry Spice Curcumin in Alzheimer’s Disease.” Current Alzheimer Research. 2005. Apr; 2(2): 131-6. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1702408/pdf/nihms3585.pdf

Rajasekaran, Sigrid. Therapeutic Potential of Curcumin in Gastrointestinal Diseases. World Journal Gastrointestinal Pathophysiology. 2011 February 15; 2(1): 1–14. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3097964/?tool=pubmed

Omega 3 Fatty Acids/DHA/EPA/Flaxseed

Amminger et al. Long-chain omega-3 fatty acids for indicated prevention of psychotic disorders: a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. Archives General Psychiatry. 2010 Feb;67(2):146-54. http://www.eiyh.org.uk/silo/files/fatty-acids-for-indicated-prevention.pdf

Tou et al. “Flaxseed and Its Lignan Precursor, Secoisolariciresinol Diglycoside, Affect Pregnancy Outcome and Reproductive Development in Rats.” Journal of Nutrition. 1998 Nov;128(11):1861-8. http://jn.nutrition.org/content/128/11/1861.long

Ho et al. Reducing the genetic risk of age-related macular degeneration with dietary antioxidants, zinc, and ?-3 fatty acids: the Rotterdam study. Archives Ophthalmology. 2011 Jun;129(6):758-66. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21670343

Barker et al. Nutritional manipulation of primate retinas, V: effects of lutein, zeaxanthin, and n-3 fatty acids on retinal sensitivity to blue-light-induced damage. Investigative Opthalmology & Visual Science. 2011 Jun 6;52(7):3934-42. Print 2011 Jun. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175953/pdf/z7g3934.pdf

Wong et al. Prevention of age-related macular degeneration. International Ophthalmology. 2011 Feb;31(1):73-82. Epub 2010 Sep 23. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3021198/pdf/10792_2010_Article_9397.pdf

Wang et al. n-3 Fatty acids from fish or fish-oil supplements, but not alpha-linolenic acid, benefit cardiovascular disease outcomes in primary- and secondary-prevention studies: a systematic review. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2006 Jul;84(1):5-17.

Brenna et al. alpha-Linolenic acid supplementation and conversion to n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids in humans. Prostaglandins Leukotrienes Essential Fatty Acids. 2009 Feb-Mar;80(2-3):85-91. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19269799

Connor et al. Sperm Abnormalities in Retinitis Pigmentosa. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science. November 1997 vol. 38 no. 122619-2628. http://www.iovs.org/content/38/12/2619.long

Chicken, Shrimp, and Egg Salad

Posted by on December 15, 2011 6 comments

This is a simple dish which Shou-Ching’s father used to make for them as children. It can use almost any meat – whatever you have handy. And it cooks in only a few minutes.

Eggs are always worth including. Cook some eggs in a wok at low heat with a healthy oil (we used butter, olive oil or coconut oil will do):

We added pre-cooked shrimp, and some shredded chicken meat left over from a chicken soup. With shredded carrot and cucumber, it was served like this:

Next you need a sauce. Ours was made by mixing:

  • 3 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 1 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • Salt and pepper
  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tbsp almond butter (or crushed nuts, or nut butter of your choice)
  • Optional: a few drops of soy sauce and sesame oil

The sauce is crucial for the dish; we consider rice vinegar and Dijon mustard essential. If you are serving children, add a little sweetness to the sauce with some rice syrup or diced fruit.

Drizzle the sauce over the food:

By the way, this is a good sauce also for any “safe starches” you may include in your meal. As discussed in “How to Minimize Hyperglycemic Toxicity,” Oct 20, 2011, mixing vinegar and fats or oils with starches will reduce their impact on blood glucose levels.

Serve the chicken, shrimp, and egg salad with white rice, Homemade Seasoned Seaweed (Jan 9, 2011) or Fermented Mixed Vegetables (Nov 27, 2011), and you have a complete meal in a traditional style of Asian home cooking. Don’t be shy to mix all the food together!