[log in to unmask] wrote:

>Because they prefer to die of cancer, which is responsible 30% of all
>deaths in Okinawa (compared to 25% in the US).  But you're right, they
>do live longer than those in other wheat-eating, industrialized
>nations.  Other confounding factors are genetics and exercise levels.
>
>


Overall cancer rates in Okinawa are much less than in the US.  The fact
that cancer is responsible for a higher percentage of deaths in Okinawa
is a reflection of the fact that they are dying of non-cancer causes at
an even lower rate.  A further confounding factor that you didn't
mention may be calories.  The Okinawans just eat less than most other
people.

>I am saying that we run best on animal-derived foods, that humans can
>survive their entire lives -- and be very healthy doing it -- with
>nothing but the right game and clean water.  Everything else is a
>dietary adjunct and inessential.  Would we pop the occasional wild
>grass seed in our mouths?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.
>
>

So, your position is that everything that isn't meat is inessential.
And therefore...risky?  Undesirable?  Is it your view that the best diet
for humans is exclusively animal-derived?  I don't deny that grains
would have been an adjunct paleo food.  So would nuts and berries and
many other plant foods that available only seasonally.  What I'm trying
to get at is your construal of "paleo."  Is it...avoid adjunct foods?


>Todd > This would be a tedious and pointless exercise unless the seeds
>were seen as pretty valuable and worth the work.  Why would they think
>such a thing?
>
>You miss my point. You said earlier that the cultivation of grains
>didn't make sense if people weren't already eating them.  True, people
>were eating them.  A very tiny minority "invented" farming.  It later
>swept the world because it was seen as such a good idea.  So it doesn't
>follow that "people were eating them," in the sense that the entire
>world was.
>
>

Why would *anyone*, minority or not, undertake the labor-intensive
cultivation of something that they regarded as only marginally edible?

Todd Moody
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