1.      What does a paleodietitian eat for breakfast.

        I suspect that Ray Audette or Art DeVaney could give a bit of
practical advice here.    Pre-agricultural people would probably not
have consumed cereal grains, dairy products, vegetable oils,  refined
carbohydrates, legumes, yeast containing foods or salted foods on a
regular basis for any meal.   All meals would have been derived from
mimimally processed foods which could be obtained in the local
environment according to season and availability.    Modern
paleodietitians have a much wider plate from which to choose.  We can
obtain virtually any fruit, vegetable, nut, seed, tuber or animal
product in unlimited quantities all year round, and if we are willing to
pay the price from virtually any locale.   However, our foods are almost
always limited to  domesticated fruits, vegetables and meats which can
be obtained at the supermarket.   Clearly there are nutritional
differences between wild foods (both plant and animal) and domesticated
foods.    Through artificial selection, farmers have succeeded in
developing plant foods which are generally, sweeter, larger and have
less fiber and seed than the wild version.   Domesticated meats are
quite different in macronutrient composition from wild meats,
particularly in their lipid composition (1,2) and our ancestors would
not have thrown out the organs (brain, marrow, liver, spleen, kidney,
gonads, mesenteric fat etc) as we do today.
        I have had a number of conversations with Boyd Eaton who has
suggested that the morning meal of present day hunter gatherers may have
consisted of a "little bit" of what was consumed at the previous
evening's meal.   So, if a kangaroo was bagged, it may have been
remaining portions of the carcass.   There are many excellent
descriptions of hunter gatherer meals in a wide variety of
anthropological texts describing the food habits of these peoples.
Perhaps one of our anthropologists on the listserve could provide a
reference or two.
        Modern day "paleodietitians" could eat a bowl of mixed nuts(
brazil nuts from South American, pecans from American, almonds from the
Mid East, walnuts and hazel nuts from Europe) with dried fruit (raisins
from California, dates from Iraq, pineapple from hawaii etc) and honey.
Obviously, a meal like this could never have been reconstructed by our
ancestors, nor was it likely that this kind of food combination was
consumed at a single meal (nuts, dried fruit and honey) except under
very unusual situations.  However a modern day "paleodietitician" could
consume this meal every day of the week if he/she so desired.    Because
of its high sugar content (dried fruit and honey) and fat content, this
so-called "paleo meal" could produce the very same hyperinsulinemic and
dyslipidemic profile characteristic of western "civilized", high fat,
high carb meals.    I sometimes wonder if  the extreme obesity
represented by the "Venus" figurines found throughout europe at the
close of the pleistocene (3) were representations of female "godesses"
who were fed a diet of the choicest  foods of the time (honey, dried
fruit, nuts, marrow and fatty meats).
	
2.      How many times a day/week did our ancestors eat?

Now that Boyd Eaton and his son are on our listserve, perhaps they could
comment.   I offer the information that the modern meal pattern of
breakfast, lunch and dinner is a fairly recent phenonmenon (4,5).
Also, because the killing of game and the location of edible plant food
was not a "sure thing", meal timing and frequency would have been
somewhat dependent upon the availability of resources.
	
3.      What literature managing database do some of you use, to be able
to respond so effectively.

I can't speak for others, and I'm not so sure that I respond effectively
- However, I have a personal library of articles totaling ~15-20,000
that are arranged into  ~25 subcategories.    Each subcategory contains
anywhere from 50-100 files which contain my articles.   I would like to
someday put all of my articles on a database - for now I use my memory
which seems to fail more frequently as I approach 50.
        I typically use MEDLINE or CARL (UNCOVER) to locate information
on a topic.   I'd be interested in hearing from our colleagues in the
anthropological sciences which on line reference data bases they employ.
By the way, MEDLINE is now available for free on the web at:
ww4.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/


                                        Cordially,


                                        Loren

                                REFERENCES

1.      Eaton SB.   Humans, lipids and evolution.  Lipids
1992;27:814-20.
2.      Sinclair AJ, O'Dea K.  Fats in human diets through history:  Is
the western diet out of step?  In: Reducing fat in Meat Animals.   JD
Wood & AV Fisher (Eds).  Elsevier Applied Science, New York, 1990, 1-47.
3.      Pontius AA.  Stone age art venuses as heuristic clues for types
of obesity: contributions to iconodiagnosis.  Perceptual and Motor
Skills 1986;63:544-46.
4.      Fenton A, Kisban E.  Food in Change: Eating Habits from the
Middle Ages to the Present Day.  John Donald Publishers, Glasgow, 1986.
5.      Tannahill R.  Food in History.  Crown Publishers, New York,
1988.