Hey Frugivore, it’s Freelee.
Let’s talk about this idea that humans are “starchivores.”
The late Dr. John McDougall popularized the theory that all successful civilizations were starch-based and that we should identify as “starchitarians.” But here’s the truth, starch isn’t even a food. It’s a storage molecule. You can’t walk up to a tree and pick starch.
This myth exists largely because of preservation bias. Archaeologists find ancient grains because they survive fire, carbonized remnants of cooked or burned storage foods. Fruit, on the other hand, leaves almost no trace. It’s eaten raw, the seeds regrow, and nothing remains to fossilize. So the record reflects what survived combustion, not what was actually eaten most.
Ancient writings tell a different story. Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Greeks all wrote about fruit as staple food, dates, figs, raisins, even honey, which often made up more calories than grains. One hectare of date palms could yield more calories than the same land used for barley. The first cultivated crop wasn’t grain at all, it was figs, over 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley.
Starch didn’t build our biology; fruit did. Every part of human physiology, our teeth, intestines, enzymes, and fructose metabolism, screams frugivore. We only produce a small amount of amylase, enough to digest the small starch content in ripe fruit. Evolution hasn’t shifted enough in 10,000 years to redesign us as starch-eaters.
Starch may have helped humans survive famine, but it didn’t shape our evolution. With all respect to Dr. McDougall, we are not starchivores, we are frugivores.
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Love, Freelee.
