Hunter-gatherers in Tanzania rank honey as favorite!

[Kasper]

http://www.bioanth.cam.ac.uk/fwm23/tube ... 40_ftp.pdf

A study done in 2009 shows honey hunter-gathers in Tanzania rank honey as favorite food.
The five food most available in their diet where honey, meat, baobab, berrries and tuber.
Baobab is a fruit high in vitamin C and the seeds are high in fat.
Tubers are various types of modified plant structures that are enlarged to store nutrients.

Males top 5:
1. Honey 2. Meat 3. Baobab fruit 4. Berries 5. Tuber
Female top 5:
1. Honey 2. Berries 3. Baobab fruit 4. Meat 5. Tuber

Hadza men usually go foraging alone. They hunt only with bow and arrows, poisoned arrows in the case of larger game.
They always have their bow and arrows with them, even when they carry an ax to access honey.
While on walkabout they often feed themselves on berries and baobab.
They take back to camp mainly meat and honey, as well as some baobab.
They may eat much of the honey they find but take back to camp about half of their haul on average, and about 9/10 of their meat.
Grown men rarely dig tubers.

Hadza women go foraging typically in groups of three to eight women plus nurslings and some older children.
They mainly collect baobab fruit, gather a variety of berries, and dig tubers of several species.
They use firehardened,sharpened branches as digging sticks to dig tubers almost every day.
They usually roast some of their tubers once they finish digging and take the remainder ( 3/4 of their haul) back to camp to feed others.
The species eaten most frequently by the Hadza is //ekwa (Vigna frutescens).
All of their tubers have high-fiber content but it is so high in //ekwa that one cannot swallow it and must spit out the quid after chewing it for a while.
It is still not clear just how important it is to roast tubers. Tubers eaten by the Hadza are usually roasted for about 5 min.
Nevertheless, they are quite willing to eat them raw. Hadza women often say they roast them because it makes them easier to peel.
However, the Hadza sometimes say roasting tubers makes them taste better (though to us the change in taste is slight).

Composition of several foods consumed by the Hadza foragers of northern Tanzania was determined. 11 different foods, collected during both the dry and wet seasons, were examined including: honeys from 3 different types of bees, 6 fruit species, baobab fruit pulp and a flour made from baobab seeds dispersed throughout the fruit pulp. Levels of moisture and starch in the 3 honeys were similar to honeys from the US, although protein, fat and ash contents were higher in the former; several samples had significant levels of fat. The 6 fruits, although similar to agricultural fruits in terms of macronutrient composition, had higher levels of crude protein, carbohydrate and energy, and lower levels of fat. Baobab seeds were high in protein and fat, and it is suggested that they represent important sources of energy and protein for the foragers. However, baobab seed flour and fruit pulp were found to be low in energy compared with previous results, although this is attributed to the fact that fibre was measured directly in this study.

[Kasper]

http://books.google.nl/books?id=8p-AG8c ... &q&f=false

Other information about those last hunter-gathers in africa.

[dime]

Ok, and? What's the conclusion? :)

[Kasper]

Do you mean the article, or the book?

The diet they were eating seems to be quite Wai-like :)
I thought that this is nice to know... isn't it?

There is a large primal diet community, who seem to think we evolved at eating 90% meat/fish.
Than there is david wolfe community who seems to think we evolved at a vegetarian diet.
And there are of course many more opinions.. MOST think that we evolved at low-carb diet.

Now, we see that the diet of those hunter/gathers exists for a large portion out of simple sugars (honey,berries,baobob).
I questioned this myself also a lot. I mean, if you're active, most people need to add sugar to this diet.
I wondered how our ancestors would have worked that out.
Honey was the solution of those hunter-gatherers.
The article shows that up to 25% of the total kilograms food brought into camps was honey.
Never guessed people would eat that in such large amounts.
Has anybody here experimentated which such large amount of honey?

Besides that, I want to know how Baobab fruit taste!
Does anybody know if I can get it somewhere ?
Seems to be an excellent fruit nutrition wise.

[dime]

I meant, the article just states some facts about their diet, and that's it.
Were they very healthy/no diseases, long life, etc. because of their diet? This is what would be interesting for us to know.