>From the live-food list:

 Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 13:29:44 -0700
   From: caltura <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Meat and Vegetable Toxins

Hi everyone,
I just came across an article called "Meat-eating was essential for
human
evolution, says UC Berkeley anthropologist specializing in diet" and
found
this passage particularly fascinating:
"Buffered against nutritional deficiency by meat, human ancestors also
could intensify their use of plant foods with toxic compounds such as
cyanogenic glycosides, foods other primates would have avoided, said
Milton. These compounds can produce deadly cyanide in the body, but are
neutralized by methionine and cystine, sulfur-containing amino acids
present in meat. Sufficient methionine is difficult
to find in plants."
from:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html

This seems to offer support for Aajonus' assertion that vegetable toxins
are not a problem on the primal diet since eating all the meat would
neutralize the toxic elements in plants.  I wonder if cooking the meat
would change its ability to detoxify the toxins in plants.  The journal
article (from evolutionary anthropology) that this article is referring
to
is quite interesting overall.  It discusses Katherine Milton's theory
that
meat eating was the major catalyst in the evolution of our genus, partly
because the extreme nutrient density of meat allowed humans to rely on
nutrient poor plant foods (tubers) for energy (for our brains).  I like
this theory because it really brings together the two major competing
theories (meat eating vs. tuber eating) on the role of meat eating in
human evolution, although I am still hesitant to believe that tubers
were
an especially significant food item overall (for the evolution of our
lineage).  Anthropologist/primatologist Margeret Shoeninger argues that
wild tubers are so fibrous that they couldn't have provided a
significant
energy source.

-Charles

I am trying the SteakLover's diet.

William