Denis:
>On the definition of Natural Diet :
>I understand your point. If I made this remark, it is simply because, from
>my earlier experience on the list,  I fear a danger that your historical,
>evolutionary   conception of man's natural diet , as you defined it,  be
>perverted  the "static thought" so prominent amongst  advocates of
>paleolithic diets .   Sort of : "our ancestors ate this in the past in
such >proportion  , so we should eat it also ".  This problem is very
peculiar to >the US instincto movement because paleolithic diet is
something unheard of >here (apart from a restricted circle) . The risk , as
I see it, is deriving >the notion of "natural diet"   from a given period
of time of our history >. Paleolithic studies can tell us only about the
Paleotlithic, but the >truth lies millions of years before. Does it make a
difference ? For sure. >Just think about the quantity and attractiveness of
meat you can get from >the tropical forest without any arrows, and compare
it with the  amount of >fat  buffalo meat eaten on the average by any
pre-columbian indian hunting >the rich plains of Iowa . Paleolothic studies
has yet to reveal us, if it >can,  how much durian we used to eat  during
each of these glorious golden >days .....   Which comes down to : "since we
cannot  expect Prehistorical >studies to tell the whole truth, let's avoid
historical concepts in the >definition of man's natural diet." Makes sense,
no ?

No. Just because something doesn't tell the whole truth (which, of course,
nothing can) hardly means it should be avoided.

** Hi, Kirt. Glad you're still interested by  my verbiage.
Of course I do agree that the evolutionary/prehistorical framework is also
relevant to a description of natural diet. All I intended to say is if I
had to define what a natural diet is in only one precise synthetic
sentence, like Tom tried to do, I would not choose the prehistorical
concept on account of possible confusion, habitual prejudices , and
elusiveness of the concept . There are many arguments for us to be taken in
the field of paleostudies, especially  paleopathology, but we needn't use
their concept  to synthetically, pragmatically  define our habits


Even so, instincto falls victim to the same reasoning you accuse
paleo-diets of: 'deriving the notion of "natural diet" from a given period
of time of our history; namely, pre-fire homonids as opposed to late
paleolithic as paleo-diets generally do.

**This is why I think we should reject any  allusion to any part of our
history, when again we have to define  in a single sentence what and how
we eat.

Tigers reportedly favor durian as well, but I hardly think it proves that
they shouldn't eat a high portion of animal foods. Elephants reportedly
favor durian as well, but I hardly...

** Hmmmm, still worried to drive out the vegetarian devil  hiding in the
mind of raw fooders ? .. I never intended to say that the fact that we eat
durian proves that we shouldn't eat meat. That would be pure nonsense. I
just used durian as an exemple to illustrate the deficiencies of the
paleodietary concept, which, being used as it is in the states as an
ideologiacl, anti-vegetarian weapon, might  lead one to put an overemphasis
on certain foodstuffs like red meat. This overemphasis can, in my view, be
dangerous for raw eaters on the long run. In other words, I'm of the
opinion that our instinct is not really designed to cope with daily or
weekly instinctive (ie large)  intake of meat as I see it too often. This
remark only applies to meat as opposed to  eggs, seafood, insects, ie
crawling/still  animal foods.


Cheers,
Denis