November 15, 2010
My vegetables are fruit!
I was letting my mind wander and I realized that most the "vegetables" that I have been consuming are actually fruits in biological sense and was wondering if this distiction is recognized in the paleo diet. I have been eating a lot of squash, zucchinni, and peppers. Should I be staying away from these, or does the term "fruit" refer to the conventional usage (berries, bananas, ect)?
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This is just my opinion, but I think that some of the best food choices may be non-sweet fruits like avocados, tomatoes, and red bell peppers.
ReplyDeleteFruits co-evolved with animals for their mutual benefit. The fruits benefit from animals dispersing their seeds in nice warm piles of fertilizer, and the animals benefit because the fruits have to be nutritious so that the animals will survive and come back for more.
However, our distant primate ancestors would have evolved while eating fruits that are not the excessively sugary fruits that we have today, after thousands of years of agriculture. The non-sweet fruits today are generally ones which managed to escape those thousands of years of cultivation, such as the avocados, tomatoes and peppers of South and Central America.
Vegetables? Questionable, because what we call vegetables are non-fruit plant parts, like roots, stems, and leaves. If those parts are eaten or damaged, the plants suffer, so many of those parts have chemical toxins to discourage, sicken or kill animal predators. That's why we can usually eat fruits raw, but we have to cook many vegetables to make them edible.
So go ahead and enjoy your squash, zucchini, and peppers, but stay away from beans, potatoes, and peanuts.