In a few words:

"NFL" stands for "Nature's First Law". See

        http://don.io-online.com/~nature/

What has been criticized about the book and its authors:

1) Expressing outdated vegetarian dogmas, like that our natural diet is fruit.
There has been an interesting debate about this on the list, towards end of Nov
1996-december 1996, based on Ward Nicholson's interview
(http://chetday.com/Ward/hb-interview1a.html)
according to which humans have always eaten meat, and the consumption of meat
was about 50% for the paleolithic Homo Sapiens.

See http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/raw-food.html

for the list archives.

2) Lack of respect of other diets, lack of moderation, slogans like "Cooked Food
is Poison", etc.

3) Perhaps due to the overwhelming evidence, coming from Paleontology, that
humans are adapted to eating meat, one of the co-authors of NFL, namely David
Wolfe, has written an article "Science or science?" on this list against
evolution. That article (copyrighted by David Wolfe) appears to have been
plagiarized from Johnson's book "Darwin On Trial". See Ward Nicholson's postings
on 97/10/12 where it is clearly proven that almost all paragraphs of David's
article have been copied word by word, or with minor changes (like replacing
"liver or kidney" with "heart or lung" ;-)).

4)  It appears (cf Peter Brandt's post on 2/5/98) that at least part of the NFL
book has been closely plagiarized from "Raw Food Eating", an out of print book
by the Iranian author Arshavir Ter Hovannessian written almost 40 years
ago.

---------------------------
About Paleo:

This refers to "Paleolithic Diet". There are two Paleo lists on Maelstrom, the
"Paleofood" (paleo eating SUPPORT list) and the "Paleodiet" (paleo eating
RESEARCH) lists.

People here got interested in the Paleo diet for several reasons:
 *One of the most important questions is to understand what our "natural" diet
is. A reasonable definition would be: the diet we are genetically adapted to,
i.e. the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors and of current hunter-gatherer
societies.
 *One of the main trends of raw food in France and in Germany is "instinctive
nutrition", which is also based on ideas about genetic adaptation.
Unfortunately, some common beliefs appear to be wrong or oversimplified.

Paleo is a diet where (cooked) meat is an important component, whereas
instinctos eat raw meat (and fish and eggs), and are usually much more moderate
on meat.

---------------------------

I haven't expressed my opinion about the NFL stuff. What I think (and has been
expressed many times by people like Tom Billings on the list) is:

1) Eating raw is important, but won't save the world, and won't guarantee
perfect health.

2) It is not important to be 100% raw. People not eating 100% raw are not
inferior. The diet should serve you, not the reverse.

3) A healthy diet doesn't guarantee mental health. On the contrary, extreme
diets attract extreme people, and encourage fanaticism [Note: I am not saying
that everyone on an extreme diet is unbalanced].

4) There is no perfect diet; one should respect other people's choices.

5) Most people need *some* animal food for optimal health [note: dairy is an
animal food]. Veganism can work fine for a few months or a few years, but
long-term healthy vegans are extremely rare.

6) One shouldn't base a vegetarian regimen on false ideas about evolution. There
are certainly good reasons for being a vegetarian (like moral reasons), and
there is no need to spread wrong ideas like "humans are natural frugivores".

7) Vegetarian diets can work fine if they are based on concentrated foods (like
sprouts for raw veg diets), and include some animal foods (like dairy and/or
eggs).
------------------------------------------------------

Best wishes,

Jean-Louis
[log in to unmask]