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Recent Articles
- The Most Important Event In History (Big Brains Require An Explanation, Part VII)
- What Are “Hydrolyzed Soy Protein” And “Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein,” And Why Are They In Everything?
- Your Whey Protein and Whey Isolate May Not Be Gluten-Free: Beware “Glutamine Peptides”
- It’s Just Like Drug Addiction EVERYONE FREAK OUT: The Role And Limits Of Reward (Why Are We Hungry, Part VIII)
- Big Brains Require An Explanation, Part VI:
Why Learning Is Fundamental, Even For Australopithecines
- Anti-Nutritionism, L-Canavanine, And The Limitations of N=1 Self-Experimentation
- Big Brains Require An Explanation, Part V:
Re-Orienting Ourselves In Time, and Why Are There “Southern Apes” In Ethiopia?
- AHS 2012, Recommended Reading, and The Ascent And Descent Of Mountains In Winter
- Always Be Skeptical Of Nutrition Headlines: Or, What “Red Meat Consumption and Mortality” (Pan et.al.) Really Tells Us
- Foolproof Prime Rib! How To Buy, Cut, And Cook A Standing Rib Roast: The Easiest Prime Rib Recipe On The Internet
- The Paleo Diet For Australopithecines: Approaching The Meat Of The Matter (Big Brains Require An Explanation, Part IV)
- Big Brains Require An Explanation, Part III: Optimal Foraging Theory, And Our Story Begins On Two Legs
- Big Brains Require An Explanation, Part II: Sexual Selection, and What Does “Paleolithic” Mean, Anyway?
- Big Brains Require An Explanation, Part I: Why Did Humans Become Smarter, Not Just More Numerous?
- “Food Will Build A New America!” The US National Nutrition Program in 1943
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 Click to see the timeline again at full size. We’re taught, as schoolchildren (usually around sixth grade) that the invention of agriculture is not only the most important event in human history… it’s when history began! Leaving aside for the moment the awkward facts that its effects on human health and lifespan were so catastrophic as to move Jared Diamond to call agriculture “The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race”—and that the invention of agriculture apparently coincides with the invention of organized warfare, among other “inhuman” practices—we need to ask ourselves which milestone is more important…
…a change in technology, or the invention of technology itself?
(This is Part VII of a multi-part series. Go back to Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, or Part VI.)
The First Technology: Sharp Rocks
The most important event in history happened approximately 2.6 MYA. First, some genius-level australopithecine (probably with the Pliocene version of Asperger’s) made an amazing discovery:
“If I hit two rocks together hard enough, sometimes one of them gets sharper.”
However, this discovery is insufficient by itself, for reasons we learned in previous installments:
“Intelligence isn’t enough to create culture. In order for culture to develop, the next generation must learn behavior from their parents and conspecifics, not by discovering it themselves—and they must pass it on to their own children.”
…
“The developmental plasticity to learn is at least as important as the intelligence to discover. Otherwise, each generation has to make all the same discoveries all over again.”
-The Paleo Diet For Australopithecines
It’s likely that the idea of smashing rocks together to create a sharp edge occurred many times, to many different australopithecines. The real milestone was when the other, non-genius members of the tribe understood why the sharp rock their compatriot had was sharper than the ones they found lying about; learned how to make their own sharp rocks by watching their compatriot making them; and perhaps, having learned, actively attempted to teach others how it was done.
Yes, chimpanzees use sticks to fish for termites, and short, sharp branches to spear colobus monkeys in their dens. It’s likely that our ancestors did similar things—though since wood tends not to fossilize, and a termite stick looks much like any other stick, we’re unlikely to find any evidence.
Most importantly, though, and as we’ve seen in the last six installments, the archaeological record describes slow, steady changes in hominin morphology* up until the discovery of stone tools…
…after which the rate of change accelerates rapidly. So while there may have been previous hominin technologies, none of them had the impact of sharp rocks (“lithic technologies”). We’ll explore those changes in future installments.
(* Morphology = the study of physical structure and form)
What Use Is A Sharp Rock?
“And what use is a sharp rock?” we might ask.
Well, to a first approximation, human history is sharp rocks! Recall that anatomically modern humans appear between 200 KYa and 100 KYa, depending on region…so from their first use perhaps 3.4 million years ago, to their purposeful creation 2.6 MYA, and until the first use of copper perhaps 7,000 years ago (which postdates agriculture by several thousand years), the entire narrative of human evolution has been powered by sharp rocks.
The answer to this question (“What use is a sharp rock?”) shouldn’t be a surprise—especially given the Dikika evidence we explored in Part IV. And since the abstract below is a dense brick of text containing much important information, I’ll split it into pieces and discuss each one. (All emphases are mine.)
Journal of Human Evolution
Volume 48, Issue 2, February 2005, Pages 109–121
Cutmarked bones from Pliocene archaeological sites at Gona, Afar, Ethiopia: implications for the function of the world’s oldest stone tools
Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo, Travis Rayne Pickering, Sileshi Semaw, Michael J. Rogers
“Newly recorded archaeological sites at Gona (Afar, Ethiopia) preserve both stone tools and faunal remains. These sites have also yielded the largest sample of cutmarked bones known from the time interval 2.58–2.1 million years ago (Ma).”
“Cutmarked bones” = bones scored by the scraping and chopping of sharp rocks.
“Most of the cutmarks on the Gona fauna possess obvious macroscopic (e.g., deep V-shaped cross-sections) and microscopic (e.g., internal microstriations, Herzian cones, shoulder effects) features that allow us to identify them confidently as instances of stone tool-imparted damage caused by hominid butchery.”
The cutmarks are not the result of any natural process. They are the result of deliberate butchery—hominids scraping meat off of bones, or smashing them for marrow.
“In addition, preliminary observations of the anatomical placement of cutmarks on several of the recovered bone specimens suggest that Gona hominids may have eviscerated carcasses and defleshed the fully muscled upper and intermediate limb bones of ungulates—activities that further suggest that Late Pliocene hominids may have gained early access to large mammal carcasses.”
Mark those words “early access”, because they’re extremely important. But what do they mean?
These observations support the hypothesis that the earliest stone artifacts functioned primarily as butchery tools and also imply that hunting and/or aggressive scavenging of large ungulate carcasses may have been part of the behavioral repertoire of hominids by c. 2.5 Ma, although a larger sample of cutmarked bone specimens is necessary to support the latter inference.”
“Early access” means that by 2.6 MYA, our ancestors didn’t always have to wait until the lions, giant hyenas, saber-toothed cats, and other predators and scavengers all ate their fill before running in and grabbing a few bones to gnaw scraps from and break for marrow. It means that we were very likely to either have killed these large animals ourselves—or to have been fearsome enough to “aggressively scavenge”, which means somehow forcing the killers away from the carcass.
Since our ancestors were much smaller than modern humans, and the predators much larger and more numerous than today’s, I believe that hunting is more likely than aggressive scavenging. For instance:
 Pachycrocuta: 1 Your head: 0
Click for an article about the skull-crushing hyenas of Dragon Bone Hill. And a moment’s thought should convince anyone that a large dead animal wasn’t much good to our ancestors without sharp rocks to butcher it with. (Imagine trying to gnaw your way through elephant hide—or even antelope hide.)
Conclusion
The most important event in our ancestors’ history was learning how to make sharp rocks from another australopithecine. The technology of sharp rocks took our ancestors all the way from 2.6 million years ago to the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age, just a few thousand years ago.
Furthermore, as we learned in Part II, the Paleolithic is defined by the use of stone tools known to be made by hominins. Therefore, since the Gona tools are the earliest currently known, the Paleolithic age begins here, at 2.6 MYA…
…and so must any discussion of the “paleolithic diet”.
Live in freedom, live in beauty.
JS
This series will continue! In future installments, we’ll look at what happens once australopithecines start regularly taking advantage of sharp rocks.
A close inspection of the nutrition label on most processed foods will usually turn up—among other disturbingly-named ingredients whose function is unclear—something known as “hydrolyzed soy protein” or “hydrolyzed wheat protein”.
What is it, and why is it added to so many processed food products?
What Is Protein, Anyway?
“Protein” is a generic term for an animal or plant tissue made out of individual proteins. These individual “proteins” are just long chains of amino acids linked together, end to end.
There are 20 amino acids in our genetic code, each an individual molecule with its own shape—and the sequence of amino acids in a protein determines its three-dimensional shape. Our cells can build anything from collagen to digestive enzymes out of the correct sequence of amino acids!
A short protein is called a “peptide”, but there’s no set number of amino acids under which the term is used. Calling a protein a “peptide” is like calling a person “short”: it’s a relative judgment.
Why Is There So Much “Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein”?
Now that we know proteins are just strings of amino acids, we can understand what “hydrolyzed vegetable protein” is.
Note that it’s no longer legal to use the term “hydrolyzed vegetable protein” on a nutrition label in the USA: the source of the protein must be listed, e.g. “hydrolyzed soy protein”, “hydrolyzed wheat protein”. (Source: USDA Flavorings FAQ.)
The process of extracting seed oils from soybeans or corn (a disturbing series of chemical reactions involving hexane, taking place in chemical plants that look a lot like oil refineries) leaves behind dehulled, defatted soy or corn meal. Typically this mush is fed to cattle…but since it’s cheap and produced by the ton due to massive, destructive subsidies for industrial monocrop agriculture, there is great financial incentive to figure out how to feed it to humans.
Wheat protein is simpler to produce: since gluten (the collective name for wheat proteins, including both glutelins and gliadins) doesn’t dissolve in water, wheat flour is simply washed with water to dissolve away the starch. (How it’s done, featuring lots of delicious phrases like “homogenized slurry”.)
As one might expect from the name “gluten”, the result is…gluey. (This is what gives bread it’s stretchiness.) As anyone who’s ever used nutritional yeast by mistake, instead of baking yeast, can attest, the result is a heavy, indigestible solid with the approximate density of a brick and the consistency of hardened wood glue. And wheat flour dissolved in water makes an excellent adhesive for putting up posters…or even wallpaper.
This lack of digestibility is among the many reasons why wheat protein, in addition to all its disruptive effects on intestinal function, is the lowest-quality protein commonly available. (Other reasons include a deficiency of the essential amino acids lysine and methionine.) Whole wheat protein scores only 0.25-0.42 on the PDCAAS, with beef protein at 0.92, and eggs and milk at 1.0. Corn protein isn’t any better: it scores between 0.22 and 0.46. (Even soy scores a 1.0 on the PDCAAS—though soy products cause other issues I don’t have space to discuss here.)
Therefore, fake vegetarian meat substitutes like seitan, veggieburgers, and Tofurky—which usually use gluten to help simulate the texture of meat—are using the most biologically disruptive and lowest-quality protein available.
What Is “Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein”?
The protein we’ve extracted can be spray-dried into “textured vegetable protein”, which would require another article to explain…
…or the protein can be “hydrolyzed”. Hydrolysis is basically chemical digestion on an industrial scale: the protein is dropped into a vat of sulfuric acid, boiled for several hours to over a day in order to break down the proteins, after which lye is added to raise the pH back to neutral. (Yum!)
I’ve been asked “If our stomachs can digest protein in a few hours, how come it has to be boiled in sulfuric acid for up to a day?”
Answer: our stomach isn’t just an acid vat. Both our stomach and our intestines contain proteolytic enzymes, like pepsin and trypsin—chemicals specifically tuned to break down bonds between amino acids. However, when hydrolyzing protein on an industrial scale, sulfuric acid and heat is generally cheaper than enzymes.
The longer a protein is hydrolyzed, the more that big, long, gluey proteins (like wheat gluten) will be broken down into shorter proteins—or even into individual amino acids.
Why Is Protein Hydrolyzed, and Why Is Hydrolyzed Protein In So Much Of Our Food?
If you’re thinking this all seems like a lot of work for not much benefit, you’re not alone. Hydrolyzed protein usually shows up near the end of the ingredient list: why would food companies go to so much trouble just to add a tiny bit of protein to their food?
The answer is simple: when we hydrolyze a protein down to free amino acids, one of the amino acids we get is glutamic acid, known as glutamate in its anionic form. And since wheat gluten in particular contains a lot of glutamine, hydrolyzed wheat protein will contain a lot of free glutamate.
For more than you probably wanted to know about glutamate vs. glutamine and their metabolism, try these articles and papers:
Glutamine: The Essential “Non-Essential” Amino Acid
Ivy Greenwell, LE Magazine, September 1999
J. Nutr. April 1, 2000 vol. 130 no. 4 978S-982S
Intestinal Glutamate Metabolism
Peter J. Reeds, Douglas G. Burrin, Barbara Stoll and Farook Jahoor
And free glutamate is the molecule that plugs into the taste receptor we call “umami”…
…the same taste receptor that’s tickled by the abundant free glutamate in soy sauce, Parmesan and Roquefort cheese, Vegemite and Marmite, fish sauce, nori, kombu, and MSG.
Glutamine And Glutamate Are Not Gluten…But “Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein” Can Still Be Gluten
It’s easy to get confused due to the similar names, so I’ll restate the point: glutamine (and glutamate, its carboxylate anion) is not the same as gluten!
Gluten is the collective term for the proteins found in wheat and other gluten grains, like barley, rye, and triticale. Glutamine and glutamate are forms of a single amino acid. They’re found in almost every protein in the world, and they can’t cause a celiac or allergic reaction by themselves.
However, “hydrolyzed wheat protein” can still contain the peptides which affect zonulin signaling and cause problems for celiacs and the allergic…it all depends on the degree of hydrolysis. I wouldn’t risk it myself.
(Note that another name for “hydrolyzed wheat protein” is “glutamine peptides”, often found in sports nutrition products like whey protein. Beware!)
What Is “Umami?”
The easiest way to explain “umami” is “that yummy taste that’s in all the condiments I just listed”, usually described as “savory” or “meaty”. But why would humans have a taste sensor for free glutamate?
The answer becomes clearer when we realize that all the foods in the above list are heavily processed products of agricultural civilization. if we look down the list of free glutamate-containing foods until we find non-processed foods available to Paleolithic humans, we find shellfish (100-200), meat, fish, and milk (20-70).
In other words, we find sources of good, complete protein. So it’s clear that our taste sensors for “umami” evolved to sense protein…
…that we’ve discovered how to trick our protein sensor by creating lots of free glutamate out of things like seaweed and hard cheese…
…and, most recently, hydrolyzed soy, corn and wheat protein.
You’ll note that many other popular neolithic foods contain free glutamate far in excess of their protein content…which, I suspect, is one reason we enjoy their taste. Peas, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, grape juice, and cured ham contain far more free glutamate than meat or shellfish…and green tea contains almost as much glutamate as soy sauce! (Table, again.)
Conclusion
- “Hydrolyzed vegetable protein” is a flavor enhancer…
- …because it stimulates our umami taste receptors, just like soy sauce, Parmesan cheese, or MSG.
- However, it’s much cheaper than real food, because the USA heavily subsidizes the production of corn, soy, and wheat…
- …and, in the case of soy and corn, it’s made from a byproduct of soy and corn oil manufacturing that would otherwise be fed to cattle.
And that’s why we find “hydrolyzed wheat protein” and “hydrolyzed soy protein” in so many processed “foods”.
Live in freedom, live in beauty.
JS
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No, whey protein isn’t paleo…but it sure is convenient to have a portable, non-perishable, and relatively cheap source of quickly-digested protein for when I don’t have access to real food or the time to cook it.
However, as with any dietary supplement, we must always be on the alert for misleading packaging or adulterants—as white pills and white powders all look basically the same.
This is yet another reason to prefer real food: it’s much harder to counterfeit eggs, vegetables, or a steak than it is to counterfeit pills and powders.
How I Found The Gluten
I purchase unflavored whey protein for several reasons. First, it’s typically sweetened with Splenda (sucralose):
Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, Volume 71, Issue 21 January 2008 , pages 1415 – 1429
Splenda Alters Gut Microflora and Increases Intestinal P-Glycoprotein and Cytochrome P-450 in Male Rats
Mohamed B. Abou-Donia; Eman M. El-Masry; Ali A. Abdel-Rahman; Roger E. McLendon; Susan S. Schiffman
“Evidence indicates that a 12-wk administration of Splenda exerted numerous adverse effects, including (1) reduction in beneficial fecal microflora, (2) increased fecal pH, and (3) enhanced expression levels of P-gp, CYP3A4, and CYP2D1, which are known to limit the bioavailability of orally administered drugs.”
…
“The intake of Splenda by rats significantly reduced the number of indigenous intestinal bacteria resident in the gut, with the greatest suppression for the generally beneficial anaerobes (e.g., bifidobacteria, lactobacilli, and Bacteroides).”
…
“The reduction in intestinal bacteria in this study was accompanied by an increase in fecal pH that typically occurs when there is a decrease in the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) by colonic bacteria.”
…
“At the end of the 12-wk treatment with Splenda, numerous alterations were observed that did not occur in control animals, including lymphocytic infiltrates into epithelium, epithelial scarring, mild depletion of goblet cells, glandular disorganization, and focally dilated vessels stuffed with intravascular lymphocytes.”
And in case that isn’t bad enough, even the lowest Splenda dose apparently caused a significant increase in body weight.
The second reason: buying whey protein that tastes like a chocolate milkshake or a cinnamon bun (yes, that flavor exists) would just tempt me to consume it instead of real food.
The third reason, and the one most important to this story, is that I can taste if the product has been adulterated. Most whey powders are so heavily flavored and sweetened that they could be made of laundry detergent and no one would notice. And sure enough, upon snapping up a ‘bargain’ from a source I’d never bought from before, I found that it tasted like powdered Ebola virus mixed with oven cleaner. Blech!
What could have been added that made this “100% Whey Protein” taste so terrible? It sure wasn’t whey protein, which tastes sort of like skim milk and sort of like Ricotta cheese.
Trivia fact: Ricotta “cheese” isn’t cheese at all: it’s boiled and pressed whey.
“Glutamine Peptides” Are Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein
I’ll skip forward through several days of research: the horrible taste is hydrolyzed wheat protein, camouflaged under the name “glutamine peptides”. (van Hall et.al. 2000, Shugarman)
Hydrolyzed vegetable protein is produced by boiling cereals or legumes, such as soy, corn, or wheat, in hydrochloric acid, and then neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide. Still feel like reaching for those “healthy” Bragg Liquid Aminos?
Hydrolyzed vegetable protein can also taste extremely bitter, which was my first clue.
And here’s another useful fact: since grain proteins (especially wheat) contain a lot of glutamine (hence “glutamine peptides”), heavily hydrolyzed vegetable protein is often a way to sneak MSG into foods without listing it on the label.
The size of the resulting gluten and gliadin fragments depends on how long, how hot, and how acidic the hydrolysis was: it takes many hours at high heat to fully break down proteins into their constituent amino acids. Note that the bitter taste of hydrolyzed protein is “attributed to peptides with hydrophobic character and with a molecular weight of 1000-5000″ (Maningat et.al. 1994). Since amino acids have a MW of 89-204, these peptides are sufficiently large to leave the immunogenic and disruptive gluten and gliadin peptides intact. (For some examples, see Fasano 2011.)
Finally, I don’t want my whey protein cut with cheap, foul-tasting adulterants.
No, I’m not going to “out” the company I bought mine from, because it’s a relatively common practice. There’s even a 100% hydrolyzed wheat protein product that’s been packaged and named to look almost exactly like whey isolate! Caveat emptor.
Conclusion: Avoid Any Product Containing “Glutamine Peptides”
- “Glutamine peptides” are hydrolyzed wheat protein. They’re cheaper than whey protein, which is why some companies dilute their products with them.
- Hydrolyzed wheat protein that tastes bitter is nearly guaranteed to contain immunogenic and disruptive gluten and gliadin peptides in their intact form.
- Therefore, no one should consume “glutamine peptides”—especially not the celiac, wheat-allergic, or gluten-sensitive.
- Look carefully for “glutamine peptides” on the description and on the label before buying any whey protein, any whey isolate—or any other protein supplement.
- L-glutamine is different than “glutamine peptides”: it’s a single amino acid, and should be fine to consume. I’ve never seen any added to whey protein, though.
- Don’t trust the name to tell you what’s inside. I’ve seen “glutamine peptides” hiding in products labeled “Pure Whey” and “100% Whey”.
Live in freedom, live in beauty.
JS
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