Hello,

There seems to be a lot of random facts being stated in this thread.

There are two diet possibilities that seem rational to me:

1) Examining human physiology, and eating what seems to be most beneficial for
human physiology.     This possibility has only existed for about 10 years or
so - despite the fact that people thought they knew something about it long
before that. :-)   The problem with this method is that there is also a
possibility that we still don't know all the important factors.    From my
research, the most advanced theory using this method is the Zone Diet, which
tries to keep all hormonal substances in a "zone" in between excessive and
insufficient.   In that theory, it's not a question of eating some things and
not eating other thing, but rather it is quantities that are important, and
this is where things like the glycemic index come into play.  Thus, there can
be situations where eating a teaspoon of sugar is better than eating no sugar
at all, because otherwise one's insulin would be too low.

2) The other diet method is to say that it is unlikely that in the near future
we will know enough about physiology to know what we need to eat, and therefore
we need some other way of determining what is best to eat.   The only other
possibility that seems rational is to eat only those foods which could have
been eaten before the advent of technology.    The theory here is that
technology creates food items which the body has not adapted to, and thus
creates illnesses and imbalances even when the food seems in the short run to
be edible.

This second method is called the "Paleo Diet" and is the main subject of this
list (which should be obvious, but it didn't seem that way in reading this
thread).

Thus, in the Paleo Diet, sugar is to be avoided, but sugar cane and dates are
acceptable - assuming that both are edible raw (I know very little about those
particular plants, although I know that sugar cane is eaten frequently in Asia
in what appears to be a raw state).

PS  One can assume that Paleo humans did figure out that if they ate a meal
consisting entirely of ripe fruits like dates or bananas, they would experience
a "sugar rush", and that 2-3 hours later, everyone would be asleep rather than
going on that previously agreed upon wild boar hunt...


--
Cheers,

Ken
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