Certain diet and fitness gurus argue that despite the advent of agriculture, dairy cows, the Frigidaire and neighborhood 7-Elevens, our genetic and digestive makeup is pretty much that of Stone Age hunters and gatherers.
They insist, against commercial evidence, that we were not meant to dine upon fat-laced steaks, Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Twinkies.Perhaps not even on bread and yogurt.
So, adding to the Babel of modern weight-loss and lifestyle regimens, the gurus have been coming up with retooled concepts for back-to-basics grub, among them the cave-man diet, the Darwinian diet and Hawaiian, Mediterranean and other traditional native fare.
It makes you wonder:
What might the prehistoric "Utah diet" entail?
Maybe roasted muskrat with grasshoppers and a side dish of pickleweed.
Key to the survival of foraging peoples like the Utes, Goshutes, Piutes and, before them, the Fremont, were birds, some game animals and, particularly, harvested plants and seeds, scientists say.
"Their main diet, especially later on in the archaeological sequence, is probably plants supplemented by small game," said David Madsen, senior scientist with the Utah Geological Survey.
Among other things, "they gathered bulrush seeds and hunted waterfowl," like ducks, said Duncan Metcalfe of the Utah Museum of Natural History. "We've found evidence that they were eating these little tiny seeds archaeologists call cheno-ams," produced by shrubby plants like goosefoot, he said.
And, yes, some ate insects.
Ants. Grasshoppers. Crickets.
"There are lots of stories about the use of crickets," the legendary bane of Utah pioneer crops, Madsen said. He and his historian father, Brigham D. Madsen, once wrote a paper on the subject.
"Our end line, I think, was that the pioneers should have been killing the seagulls and eating the crickets," he said.
In plague years, the overabundant insects fly or get blown into the Great Salt Lake. "There would be windrows of sun-dried crickets," Madsen said. The pre-salted yummies were like the Mr. Peanut snacks of another time.
"They sort of taste like Beer-Nuts," Madsen said with lip-smacking first-person certitude.
Indians would also take the crickets, remove the heads and legs and grind them up with berries and make them into vittles that had a pretty good shelf life.
"Early pioneers used to trade for them," Madsen said. "They called them 'desert fruit cake.'
"Most things are actually edible," he added. "We just sort of turn our noses up and think there's something wrong with them. It's mostly our cultural background that we think crickets aren't good. Places all around the world eat insects."
Prehistoric and pre-settlement Indians hunted antelope, mountain sheep and even buffalo when they could. More common were rabbits, mice and wood rats, which are really squirrels, Madsen said. "They would do a lot of trapping with little snare traps for those small
game animals."
Among the favored plants were Indian ricegrass, Great Basin wild rice and pickleweed. The latter, he said, "grows out on the saline flats, and it's a prolific producer of really small seeds. Most caves in the Great Basin are full of the chaff of the pickleweed seeds. It's difficult to process, difficult to work, but there's lots of it because there are lots of salt flats."
What we know about the eating habits of Utah's early foragers is limited. Researchers have investigated archaeological sites and they've talked to Native American descendants.
A few years ago Elaine York, a Utah anthropologist and biologist, interviewed Goshute tribal elders, seeking to preserve knowledge of traditional foods, medicines and dyes.
"Even they said, 'If only you could have talked to my grandmother!' " she noted. "They felt there was a lot they didn't remember."
But the elders recalled harvests of specific thistles, the common sunflower "and one in bloom right now, the arrowleaf balsamroot," York said, both leaves and seeds. "I tried that once, and it wasn't very tasty."
Berries were a godsend. In Utah, "you can find wild raspberries, chokecherries, wild strawberries," she said. "The wild strawberries are wonderful. They're only the size of a pea, but they have more flavor in them than the strawberries you find in the stores today."
They put parsley and sage in teas for colds and would soak sore feet in hot water and curly gumweed, York said.
All of the elders remembered as children eating the bulb of the sego lily, "both raw and boiled," she said. " Sego" is a Goshute word, York added. The edible plant is Utah's state flower, honored for its role in feeding the pioneers in times of famine.
And of course the pinyon pine nut is a key traditional food of many Great Basin tribes, including the Goshutes. " Some still travel to certain areas just to collect pine nuts," York said.
Scientists have suggested that the widespread modern distribution of the pinyon tree might be in part attributable to prehistoric peoples carrying them around, Madsen said.
The nuts were easy to harvest and could be stored for a long time, which made them preferable to the labor-intensive foods they might resort to in times of scarcity.
"If you had a good pine nut year, you didn't have to worry so much about pickleweed," Madsen said.
And of course the flavorful seed remains a gourmet favorite.
"I love pine nuts," Metcalfe said, "especially if you add basil and parmesan and put them in a blender."