On Wed, 24 Jul 2002, Don Wiss wrote:

> It seems the whole focus of the list these days is people trying to expand
> the paleo diet and justify eating non-paleo foods. This is supposed to be a
> support list for people on the paleo diet, and we shouldn't be tempting
> people to cheat.

People on the paleo diet surely need to think about what it means
to be on the paleo diet, which is what we're doing here.  I don't
think anyone should feel threatened by discussion about whether
certain foods really are or aren't paleo.  In the end we must
make our own decisions about such things, but I don't think
we gain anything, as a group, by not discussing them.

The danger of cult thinking is as high among us as it is among
vegans or other idealistic diet proponents.  I don't think it
profits anyone to accept the words of Cordain, Audette, Eaton,
the Eades or anyone else as the Last Word on what counts as
paleo.  And I think we too quickly forget that we are operating
with a large margin of ignorance.  The clues concerning actual
paleolithic diets are few and changing.  For example, in the five
years that I have been on this list, there have been discoveries
that tend to push back the taming of fire by hundreds of
thousands of years.  Granted, the trail of evidence is faint, but
it suggests that cooking may be far older than we thought, and
that complicates the picture even more.  The whole point of the
"edible raw" rule was that if it's not edible raw we could not
have been eating it long enough to have adapted to it.  But that
may be just wrong.

Todd Moody
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