Wes said:
The most logical conclusion that I can muster is that one should do
what one finds works best for one, if optimum health and well-being is
what one wants (not everyone necessarily wants that, in my
observation).


While I'd like to agree with you, Wes, what needles at me is how lousy
people often are at judging their own health in the short term.  What
makes you *feel* healthy doesn't necessarily do you any good at all.
It may even be harming you.  How do you really know what works?

If you're looking at only yourself, you have to wait many, many years
(if you even live that long) before getting really valuable data (did
the subject ever develop cancer?  heart disease?)  By the time you
have amassed enough life data to draw any clear conclusions from,
isn't it kinda too late?

That's why, for me, work like that of Weston Price is invaluable.  He
found people in excellent health who were eating a very wide variety
of diets (including both raw and cooked food) and living in a wide
variety of climates.  The conclusions he drew - as I remember them -
were not about 70% anything, but about the foods of these healthy
people being "uncivilized" (minimally processed) and being in
advantageous combinations.  Whether these health-promoting
combinations of foods originated through some sort of lost science or
just dumb luck, we can't say, but they became traditions that served
these people well.  That we certainly can say.

Of course, if one is looking to live 300 years in "paradise health",
that's a whole other can of worms and one that I find pretty silly,
personally.

:)
Carol