On Sat, 26 Jul 1997, Don Wiss wrote:

> This is the second time you have recommended a product that you, a friend
> or a relative sells. This is prohibited on this list and all other mailing
> lists that I know of. Please refrain from such recommendations.

Don, in all fairness, I asked him for information about this.
Perhaps I should have done so in private e-mail, in which case I
apologize.

> Paleolithic diet should be preventative against all civilizatiory diseases,
> also called Western diseases.

There is an important distinction between prevention and
correction.  It is quite possible that paleolithic diet prevents
these diseases (although some may be caused by aspects of the
civilized environment other than diet); it doesn't follow that
paleolithic diet corrects them, once they have come to exist.

While I don't have a lot of criticisms of NeanderThin, one of the
criticisms that I do have is directed against the claim that the
human organism can be restored to its paleolithic state of robust
health simply by restoring its dietary "initial conditions."
This assertion is supposed to be based on chaos theory, but as
far as I can make out there is no warrant for it in that theory.
That is, I don't think there's anything in chaos theory that says
that when a system is pushed out of equilibrium it must go back
into (its original) equilibrium simply by removing the
disturbance that pushed it out of equilibrium in the first place.

Many of us are already metabolically damaged by our long exposure
to civilized (and post-civilized) diet.  It's a good idea to
*try* the restoration of paleolithic initial conditions as a
first step in exploring ways to restore health, I don't think
there's any good reason to believe that this will always, or even
often, be sufficient.

> Again you have no evidence that fiber is needed for someone on a
> Paleolithic diet.

Well, my own case is at least suggestive.  My LDL levels are well
in excess of high risk boundaries, having arrived there *after* a
few months of paleolithic dieting (with considerable strictness,
I might add; my lapses have been few).  There is a substantial
body of evidence that dietary soluble fiber can correct this
problem, and the more elevated the LDL the more likely it is to
help.  There is also good reason to believe that the vegetables
consumed by cro-magnons were considerably higher in fiber than
the vegetables we consume today.  I don't think it is a wild
conjecture to suppose that somebody in my position might benefit
from ingestion of fiber in amounts beyond what a contemporary
paleolithic dieter would be able to consume, at least
temporarily.

Todd Moody
[log in to unmask]