This is the review of NeanderThin in the May '97 issue of Healthy & Natural Journal.
I hope my readers will respond with a letter to the editor at the e-mail address below
Ray Audette
Author "NeanderThin: A Caveman's Guide to Nutrition"


    "Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes by the age of 34, Ray Audette relates in
NeanderThin he began reading about the probable causes and concluded they, along with allergies,
colitis, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, lupus, many cancers and cardiovascular diseases, as
well as obesity were associated with civilization.  Cut out our overpopulated, over-poluted,
over-weight civilization, he reasoned, and you'll do away with these devastating diseases. He
began eating only the foods that would be edible if he were armed with only a sharp stick and a
rock.
    Well, almost.  Audette is really more of a supermarket hunter-gatherer.  His diet eliminates
technology-dependent foods such as grains, beans, potatoes, dairy products and sugars.  But he
includes store-bought meats (lots of it), fruits, vegetables, nuts and berries, all preferably
eaten raw, though again he cooks quite a bit.  He's especially keen on pemmican - equal parts of
dried raw meat and suet (beef fat).  He assures us that the extra animal fat will be offset by
not using vegetable oils, trans-fatty acids and dairy fats.
    Caveman diets are nothing new -- pun intended. Every generation has had a few exponents, some
more persuasive than others.  Audette, who hail from Texas -- where else?-- sounds sincere and
his little book has some insights -- for example, he argues that we should try living closer to
nature and eating less processed foods.
   I might be convinced by someone who heads for the wilderness and lives only on wild animals
and plants.  But to consume animals and plants which have undergone tremendous genetic changes
over the generations that they have been domesticated, and which are pumped full of chemicals,
pesticides, hormones, synthetic feeds and increasingly bio-engineered, then to call that a
caveman diet is a delusion.
    The basic premise is also false: the "diseases of civilization" are associated primarily with
Western civilization: Asians, for example, who eat less meat are less prone to these diseases.
Animal fat is not the nutrition equivalent of fats derived from plants.
   Audette's arguments that humans are innately meat eaters is contradicted by human dentition
and the human digestive system, which are not those of carnivores.  His argument that the
principle cause of animal extinction is the plow not the slaughterhouse (because farmland denies
wildlife habitat is ludicrous: what do domestic animals eat (it takes 7 pounds of grain to
produce one pound of beef) and where do they roam?
    His choice of Neanderthals as a model is unfortunate.  Neanderthals were probably not direct
ancestors of ours, but a specialized adaptation to Ice Age Europe who died out - an evolutionary
dead cul de sac.  Their average lifespan was 30, meaning they would not be prone to diseases such
as Alzheimer's and many cancers; yet they still suffered from arthritis, rickets and scurvy.
They were survived in Europe by Cro-Magnon who ate a more balanced diet of plants and meats."

Review by Alain Dessaint
Posted with permission of Healthy & Natural Journal  <[log in to unmask]>