Tom wrote:

>Todd Moody wrote:
>
>
>
>It is not so much particular foods, but types of foods.
>Fruits have been in a very long time. Grasses not. New world
>fruits are still fruits. New world grass, corn, is still a grass.
>
>Turkey is a new world bird. So we should stop eating turkey?
>

If one accepts the "foreign protein" theory espoused by Ray Audette,
then it makes no sense to accept or reject foods by type, since proteins
are highly specific.  There is no such thing as "berry protein", only
the protein in this or that berry species.  So the protein in a New
World berry is as foreign as any grain protein.

If we don't accept the forein protein theory, then some other
justification is needed for the "long exposure time" criterion, which
seems to be the true basis of the various paleo "rules", e.g., the sharp
stick rule.  What does it mean to be "adapted" to a food, anyway?  If
it's not about some sort of adaptation to specific proteins in specific
foods, then what is it?

Another theory is that paleo (i.e., sharp stick) foods have *fewer*
"secondary compounds".  These include lectins, toxins, and
anti-nutrients.  This is true, but the whole point of cooking is that it
reduces secondary compounds in foods to levels comparable to those in
paleo foods.  If this is so, then there's no real reason to reject
properly prepared non-paleo foods (which is the position taken by Enig
and Fallon, by the way).

Imagine giving every food a secondary compound "score" from 1 to 10.
 Suppose that any food with a score greater than 5 is pretty much
inedible.  Prior to cooking, humans could only eat foods with scores
between 1 and 5; after cooking they could reduce the score of many foods
to below 5.  Most or all meats, including turkey, already have scores
well below 5.  If this is the right way to think about it, then what
matters about a food is its score, and if cooking gives a food a "paleo
score" then that should be good enough.  The paleo concept pretty much
collapses and is replaced by the secondary compound concept.

Perhaps, on the other hand, we should simply accept or reject foods on
the basis of known health problems.  If so, then we would have to
include so-called paleo foods in our scrutiny, and in particular we
would have to apply something like a uniform standard of evidence.  That
is, it would make no sense to accept uncritically any study that appears
to validate the food choices that we have already decided are paleo, but
then become arch-skeptics of studies that appear to contradict them.

Todd Moody
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