>ww4.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/

I believe Loren made a small typing error here; I believe the proper URL is:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/

Note that Medline is also available for free at:

http://www.healthgate.com/ -- just click the link for "Free Medline" when
you arrive at this site.  If you look carefully on the Medline search
screens on this site, you will see an "advanced search" option that allows
more flexibility than what I see available at the NIH site Loren mentions.
It's still not ideal as there are search capabilities it could have but
doesn't, but it's fairly advanced and quite useful (and quite free).

When I am being good on my dietary regimen, breakfast for me might consist
of eggs and meat and/or berries and nuts.  Lunch will usually be steak or
chicken or fish with some olive-oil based mayonaise (made with eggs, lemon
juice, and olive oil) and perhaps some fresh salsa.  Supper might be fruit,
fresh green vegetables, and usually some other form of meat.  Snacks are
usually nuts, green leafy vegetables, olives, perhaps some jerky.  An
infinite variety of dishes can be made from a base of meats, nuts, eggs,
green vegetables, fruits (including cucumbers, tomatoes, and other fruits
commonly thought of as vegetables), berries, and flavorful stuffs such as
black pepper, oregano, marjoram, sage, mustard, jalapeno, cayenne, garlic,
onions, celery, and so on.

The basic rule would seem to be: whatever can be eaten raw, or with only
minimal cooking, is acceptable.

Ray Audette has an interesting book with interesting recipes on it; you can
find the book referenced at http://www.sofdesign.com/neander/

An essential diagram of what modern paleolithic nutritionists would be
something like this:

Meat--any variety, including fish.
Eggs--any variety.
Nuts--any variety, so long as it is a true nut (peanuts, for example, are
not nuts, they are legumes and are quite poisonous in their raw state; they
must be roasted or boiled to remove toxic molds and other antinutrients)
Fruit--any variety so long as it can be eaten raw
Berries--any variety.

Staffan Lindeberg has a certain disagreement with some on this issue as he
seems to feel that potatoes are just fine in moderation, while some purists
insist that the potato is inedible in the wild and therefore would not be
part of the ancestral human diet. Some also seem to feel that eggs should
not be allowed except occasionally.

Some seem uncomfortable with significant meat consumption, apparently since
vegetarianism and attacks on red meat have made such major inroads into
modern nutrition. But the overwhelming bulk of the data I'm aware of says
that meat is and always has been an important part of human diet.  (I
invite serious disagreement if anyone is familiar with peer-reviewed data
contrary to this proposition.)

A few seem to feel that all foods should be eaten raw.  This is an
extremist position that's difficult to support as there is considerable
evidence of use of fire by hominids going back quite some time, including
at least one recent archaeological dig of what appears to be a 500,000
year-old hearth (as Mavis recently referred us all to).

Fruit is also something of an item of controversy because as Loren points
out, modern fruits have been adapted to be more sugary and less fibrous
than their natural cousins.  Some seem to feel this should not be a major
issue while others caution that such fruits should only be eaten in
moderation.

As Jennie Brand-Miller has so excellently documented in her work, honey
appears to be a very common source of food that is far more common among
primitive peoples than would seem intuitively obvious.  This may be a
too-often overlooked food source for early humans, if bees were as
ubiquitous in the past as they are today.

There seems to be fairly universal agreement that cereal grains, dairy
products, and most legumes would either be nonexistant or only an
occasional part of the ancestral human diet.  Enig & Fallon are the only
ones to date to make a very strong defense of dairy.  Some others doubt
whether the ancestral human diet really has much relevance to modern people
and view this as an entirely intellectual matter with no practical
application.

Eaton has suggested in his published work that the basic paleolithic diet
would be relatively low in fat.  A few of us have taken issue with this and
feel that fat, most particularly animal fats, have been attacked quite
inappropriately in the last couple of decades.

A crucial question that has also not been addressed strongly is whether or
not a pre-agricultural diet (which is what most of us really mean when we
say "paleolithic diet" --although archaeologists are understandably a bit
disturbed by this since the paleolithic period is a huge one and
constructing an exact human diet based solely on archaeological data is
impossible without invoking deductive reasoning they are rightfully
skittish of) is really the most appropriate diet for current humans living
in advanced Western societies.  There is clearly much to discuss in this
area alone.

And this is entirely leaving aside discussions of the actual archaeological
evidence and what can be said definitively there (and what cannot), which
we hope the archaeologists among us can help us understand better.  For
example, it seems fairly clear from the literature that humans have always
eaten animal proteins of some form, but can more than this be said with
conviction from the archaeological record?

I'm hoping at some point to see Loren expand on why he feels that cereal
grains are a serious health issue for humans; although Staffan has
elaborated at length about the issue of phytates, and Loren has spoken
briefly about some of the antinutrients to be found in cereals, and a few
of us have glanced briefly at the possible autoimmune reactions caused by
the unusually large and complex proteins in most cereals, this seems to
bear much more discussion.

I offer more questions and equivocations than answers, but this may help
explain to some what we're trying to learn about here.

The important thing to remember is that this group does not exist to put
forward any particular proposition (except, perhaps, that there is such a
thing as a pre-agricultural diet and that it is worth talking about).  We
are here to discuss the data, hypothesize, and learn from each other.
There are no limits here, no preconceived ideas.  While I have my own
opinions, I'd be quite happy to see someone with a considerable array of
facts, figures, and references to suggest that everything I believe is
wrong and that humans evolved eating nothing but ruminant feces--if the
data were legitimate and the reasoning well-articulated (although we would,
I hope, dispense with suggested recipes).

Sharing data, putting forward hypotheses, and testing them to the best of
your ability is science at its very best, no?

 -=-
 "Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something
  mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time."  Goethe (1749-1832)