Bob Avery writes:
>It was unclear to me from from reading the recent Paleoposts whether the
>grain indictment referred only to (1) wheat, (2) wheat plus other
>glutenous cereals (if so, please enumerate), or (c) all cereals,
>glutenous and non-glutenous alike.  In some parts it appeared that only
>gluten was being indicted, but in others the word "cereals" was used with
>no distinctions being made as to their type.  Or do all cereals ,
>including rice, contain gluten?  Could you clarify?

I would like to add a related request here to the researchers on this list
who are posting to try if at all possible to translate your findings and
communications into plain English.

As a lay person with a very keen interest in Paleodiet, I have spent many
hours at the local university library digging up references, and my
number-one complaint by far is feeling like I am reading language from
another planet. In having written up some of the research myself for other
lay people interested in the subject, I found most of my time was spent
simply trying to decipher what I found in the research journals and put it
into a form I felt people of intelligence but without the specialized
training or understanding of all the jargon could understand.

If Paleodiet research is not to seep out and have a widespread influence on
the public until long after it is past-due to be heard, I believe those
communicating the research need to make a concerted effort to write in
terms others can understand. I have discussed privately with a couple of
others interested in the field why Paleodiet research is lagging in getting
out to the public and has not had the influence on the nutrition field that
it should have yet, and in my opinion, the complicated research lingo
amounting to a communication gap is the reason.

Also there is fact that researchers generally tend to keep in their own
world and do not make concerted efforts to publish popularly, but primarily
in obscure journals. Then, too, there is the question of the research being
scattered all over the place in these obscure journals, making it
exceedingly difficult to find even if you are keenly interested in it like
I have been.

Aside from Eaton, Shostak and Konner's "Paleolithic Prescription" which
seemingly went mostly unnoticed in the bookstores when it was first
published in 1988 (although it seemed to have made some inroads and in the
medical community's thinking) little attempt to present the scientific
research (complete with references not only for credibility but for those
who want to pursue the material further) in a unified, coherent,
all-in-one-place fashion has been made by the Paleodiet community. I
personally think it would behoove researchers to follow the lead of people
like Stephen Jay Gould in publishing for the popular science press, who has
shown you can write popularly with rigor and need not fear sullying your
scientific reputation, but in fact, perhaps, increase it.

So to summarize, one thing I would like to see discussed on this list
besides just the research are ways to see that Paleodiet is better
publicized and communicated to the nutritional world at large which seems
largely ignorant of it so far. And hopefully we can begin breaking down the
communication gap by beginning to address it first right here on this list
itself. Thanks,

--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]> Wichita, KS