With the consent of both parties I am forwarding to the list the
following dialogue between Ward Nicholson and Stefan Joest which I
think might be of interest:

Best, Peter
[log in to unmask]

Ward:
Hi Stefan, thanks for another friendly email. I am not sure if you are
subscribing to both Paleo lists and have seen any of my postings to be
able to judge for yourself (it seems like you said you were subscribing
to both of them), but I am not really as active as it seems Peter may
have characterized it--or at least not very active by my own standards.
It is true I was briefly active on both Paleo listgroups when each
first started up, but after I put in some initial queries and comments
to the experts and occupants of both lists, my participation since that
time has been quite sporadic, particularly on Paleodiet. I still post a
little now and then on Paleofood, but for the most part I am now
basically more of a lurker than a participant. Most of my internet
participation these days other than lurking is now confined to private
email like this, and to listgroups that have something to do with my
paid work as a graphic designer such as the listgroups discussing Quark
XPress, Aldus FreeHand, Adobe Photoshop, etc.

Stefan:
>The month of suspension you were given should be over long ago.
>once again I invite you to resubscribe to raw-food.

Ward:
Yes, I believe the suspension ended around the 7th or 9th of
February--something like that. Sorry to disappoint you about not
re-joining the raw-food list, Stefan, but it is just as Peter said--I
"burnt out on discussing issues pertaining to raw foods." I really am
just not very interested anymore. Interested enough to reply one-to-one
in private email occasionally, as we have done, but not enough to
endure protracted discussions. I basically learned all that I felt
there was to learn--or at least all that I was interested in
myself--from talking with raw-foodists in general; though as I said, I
enjoy talking with individuals like you via private email. As I said
earlier, the list became quite repetitive for me.
The Paleo lists are much more relevant to my current interests.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but my diet is more on
auto-pilot now and my energy ia going into other things, particularly
rehabilitating my freelance design career (also meditation and
spiritual study) which unavoidably suffered during the years I was
taking so much time off getting my health back on track. Actually, all
the time I have spent in the dietary world from one perspective has
been something of a "sidetrack" that I got into after my health failed
in 1990. I got into it heavily to put my health back together, but now
that I have learned most of what what I needed to learn, my interest
has naturally turned back to other things. I "eat to live" rather than
the other way around, and am glad to be able to now focus on other
things. My first love as far as practical and theoretical interests is
actually psychology, meditation, and the mind (subconscious, emotions,
etc.)--that sort of thing. So now I am finally returning to that
after several years hiatus in the raw-food/ Paleodiet world.

Stefan:
>I have read the first part of your interview with H&B. I think I would
>really try cooked food (something that I thought I would never do
>again) but only if my instincts give me a strong hint that I need it.
>Sofar they seem to do: if lacking a protein, be it animal or
>vegetable, my body tells me that cooked food starts to smell good and
>interesting. If I ignore the need the smell becomes stronger from day
>to day and my thoughts will be heavily loaded with the imagination of
>eating some-thing cooked. But so far I have always found a raw protein
>that satisfied my need completely. Immediately after eating it, the
>cravings for cooked food disappeared and its smell returned to boring.

Ward:
It doesn't sound to me like you need cooked food, then. Your experience
seems to confirm the view that Loren Cordain suggested to me recently:
the cooked food is probably not so much being desired because it is
cooked, but rather because, other than nuts/seeds (which you can only
eat so much of before getting satiated with them), it is about the only
way one can get enough protein/extra nutrition when eating only plant
foods (grains, starches, legumes, etc.), which would otherwise be
gotten mostly from animal foods. The conscious mind desires  "cooked"
food, missing the subconscious "knowing" by the body that the needed
cooked foods are the ones higher in protein, etc.

I have come to the tentative conclusion after subscribing to the
Paleodiet group for awhile now, and seeing the very high percentage
(50-65%) of animal foods that humans would have eaten in the past (if
modern hunter/gatherers are any guide) that protein is a hell of a lot
more important than I used to think. For raw-food vegetarians this has
become a big "blind spot" psychologically speaking, because by now
there has been years of self-serving propaganda designed to defend the
low-protein vegetarian creed. Nuts alone from the vegetable kingdom I
no longer think will do it for most vegetarians (though there are
always exceptions, of course), and this is why many vegetarians find it
very hard to stay away from cooked foods like grains, legumes, starchy
veggies, etc.: Their bodies may be literally starving for
broader-spectrum proteins and creating these cravings for cooked food.

Part of this, you see, is a game of "mental associations," in my
opinion. What food we desire is partially due to subconscious "learned
associations," reinforced by what satisifies our bodies, even though
consciously we may assign a different mental concept that signifies the
mental association in our own minds. But the craving is probably not
really so much for the cooked foods as it is for the foods themselves
that cooking enables us to eat. At least that's my current thinking,
and it will be reflected in the updates I am going to be making to the
Health & Beyond interviews.

Stefan:
>Anyway, your ratio of 60/40 raw vs. cooked seems to be much too much
>cooked food to me.

Ward:
It probably is. As I said, my current dietary practice is an
intentional compromise. However, now that my thinking has been changing
again with respect to cooked foods, I am just now starting to reduce
the cooked food component of my diet again. Things are always in flux.

Stefan:
>What do your scientific results suggest here? I
>would rather assume a 98/2 ratio or even 99.8/0.2.

Ward:
Right now after talking in more depth with Loren Cordain, I would guess
the cooked component would not exceed 10%. Or maybe even 2% like you
say. In an "ideal world" of course. But I don't really know. Cordain
actually thinks it's 0%. He and I have slightly differing opinions.

Take care,

Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]>

P.S. Stefan, there is something else I forgot to mention with respect
to the ratio of raw vs. cooked foods in the diet. Perhaps it is ironic
for someone with my past history of devotion to raw foods, but I am
also becoming convinced that compared to other much more important
factors in eating patterns, the impact of raw foods vs. cooked foods is
by comparison relatively minor in the overall scheme of things. Not
that it is completely unimportant, by any means.

However, it is becoming evident (from my point of view, at least) from
the research discussed on the Paleodiet and Paleofood lists that the
ratios of macronutrients in the diet like protein vs. fat vs.
carbohydrates--as well as the presence or absence of different kinds of
fatty acids and whether they are from plant or animal sources,
domesticated vs. wild, and so on and so forth--have by far the greatest
impact on health. I also believe, if I remember correctly, that most
known recent hunter-gatherer groups ate up to half their food cooked
while eating an otherwise Paleolithic-style diet, and for the most part
have pretty exemplary health. This, to me, illuminates the true
importance of the different aspects of "natural" eating.

Thus, I am coming to think the attention traditionally paid to raw
foods by vegetarian and Instincto groups, while of course not at all
wrong, is greatly overemphasized and myopic (near-sighted). I have come
to think its prominence on listgroups such as raw-food is considerably
out of proportion to its actual impact on health, and it leads to
ideological mindsets among  participants that I just do not any longer
enjoy interacting with. (I've done so for years already, and had my
fill.) Again, not that I do not think eating raws foods is not
important--I do! But I think that once one is at the level where they
are eating at least half or more of the diet raw, other characteristics
of the diet become the deciding factors.

Hopefully, this may give you some further insight as to why focus of a
listgroup that revolves around that is not attractive to me
discussion-wise.