On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Eva Hedin wrote:

> What do you mean with alcoholism? The moral bit, the economic bit or the
> medical bit? In Sweden we have always said that we drink so very  much and
> that we cannot handle alcohol because here the men used to get pissed on 40%
> booze every Saturday night (in modern time they started on Friday night) and
> then they sobered up to fit for work on Monday morning.

I'm not sure I fully understand the question, but wasn't referring to the
economics or moral aspects of alcohol consumption. Maybe the term
alcohol-ism ('ism' denoting a doctrine or belief system) is not the
appropriate term to use in the context of that table. Maybe 'sensitivity
to alcohol' or as you pointed out the tendency to get 'pissed' is more
appropriate :)

Our paleo ancestors (or at least the vast majority) didn't consume beer,
wine or whiskey. They weren't situated in agricultural settlements, so
making these substances wasn't practical. Nonetheless, we all in a greater
or lesser degree have certain enzymes that break down alcohol.

Whether alcohol is paleo or not is of no interest to me. Everyone needs to
decide for themselves if they want to include alcohol in their diet or
not. The interesting point though is alcohol as an example of natural
selection since the dawn of agriculture.

In the evolution of the human species, the development of agriculture and
hence the city/state is just one tiny blip on the screen. If you break
that down in to population groups. It's an even smaller blip for certain
peoples. American Indians and Australian Aborigines come to mind as two
groups of people that have only recently stepped on to the stage of
"civiliazation".

So you could say that some groups of people are more 'paleo' than others,
in the since that they have had less time to adapt to the products of the
civilized world: grains, legumes, dairy, alcohol, et cetera...

Let's say theoretically that budweiser and mcdonalds became the
predominant foods worldwide (or is it already? :). People on this list
probably wouldn't fair to well, but given enough time (10, 20, or 100,000
years) a population of humans would exist that thrive on Budweiser and
Mcdonalds.

The inverse also being true, that since the dawn of agriculture some
people are just better adjusted to the products of agriculture than
others. Alcohol being a good example of this.

Am I being redundant redundant?

Craig