Jim Swayze wrote:

> It's great to have you on board, Gordon.  You must have
> signed off just about the time I signed on in 2000.

Thanks. Glad to be back. 
 
> Let me start by saying that what most people on this list
> mean when they use the word "paleo" is simply "those foods
> which will allow us to thrive."  

If that is what people now mean by paleo foods then I am saddened to learn
that this list has lost its scientific rigor. 

Paleo foods should be defined as those foods that our paleolithic ancestors
consumed. I thought that was an obvious given. It is according to paleodiet
*theory* that eating paleo foods will allow us best to thrive. That is the
theory, not the definition. If the theory were found to be wrong, i.e., if
it were found that paleo foods do not allow us best to thrive, then the
definition of paleo foods would nevertheless remain the same.

> Jens brought up a good point
> that a particular food didn't necessarily have to be
> available to us before farming and ranching in order for it
> to be good for us today.  Olive oil's the perfect example.

I consider olives and olive oil to be paleolithic, so I don't see how it is
an example of anything.

 
> Now some comments on your proposed standard:
> 
> "Eat only those foods to which you are genetically adapted" Agreed
> One Hundred Percent. 
> 
> "where genetic adaptation is defined as having occurred
> before at least approximately 12 thousand years ago, at the
> end of the Paleolithic and before the dawn of agriculture and animal
> husbandry" 
> 
> Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but if it could be shown, and
> I do NOT think it can, that genetic change had occurred in
> the time since an individual's ancestral abandonment of
> hunter-gathering which would allow one to eat the previously
> inedible, then one should eat the newly-adapted stuff.  

Yes, but in that case the entire premise of paleodiet theory would be wrong.
Paleodiet theory fails if humans evolve fast enough to be well-adapted to
foods that our paleolithic ancestors did not eat.

> Another point that needs to be made on the alcohol thing.
> I'll give you for the sake of argument your point that
> alcohol was generally available to our ancestors in the form
> of rotting fruit and that it was actively sought out.  It's
> still not paleo because not everything paleo man consumed was
> good for him.  

Again, I think you are putting the cart before the horse here. A "good" food
is *defined* by paleodiet theory as any food that was a staple of the
paleolithic diet. 

If you believe certain foods existed as staples of the paleolithic diet that
are not good foods for humans then you disagree with paleodiet theory. 

-gts