> http://chetday.com/Ward/hb-interview1a.html
> Enjoy, and thanks again, Ward, for the incredible time and effort
> you've put into this fabulous series!

I wish to thank Ward too for these excellent articles. They are long, but
really worth taking the time.
I would have a few questions and comments on part 2:

 ** Do the percentages (50% animal food, etc) refer to weight, or calories?

 ** About the adaptation to cooked food, compared with the adaptation to
milk: it is assumed that, since it took on average 5000 years for certain
populations to be lactose tolerant in majority, it is possible that 125,000
years were enough for humans to adapt to cooked food. However, becoming
lactose tolerant is a relatively simple genetic change. All human babies
produce lactase, so continuing to produce that enzyme into adulthood is
not such a big deal (although it already takes several thousand years and
a lot of genetic pressure). Adapting to cooked meat or tubers is probably
more complex, since many new chemical species appear during cooking; FWIW,
there is no (or only very weak) taste-changes in heavily cooked foods (and
very processed foods). On the other hand, modern hunter-gatherers can be
considered as healthy, despite cooking half of their food. My guess is
that eating a reasonable amount of cooked, but otherwise unprocessed food
is acceptable, i.e. we are probably "almost" adapted to cooked food (like
"almost" all of the members of certain populations are now
lactose-tolerant). Certainly everyone should experiment, and
find the percentage or raw s/he is most comfortable with.

 ** About the possibility of a need for cooked food: is it
plausible/possible that humans have lost some ability to process some
natural toxins? Or to digest some raw foods efficiently? Is there any
evidence of a species which had initially a diet A, then changed for a
diet B, and became unable to thrive on the diet A? If I give a 50% bread
diet to mice for 1000 generations, will the 1001st generation need bread
to survive?

 ** About the adaptation to seafood: humans have been consuming seafood
for 20,000 years, which may be not enough for a complete adaptation, but
humans are much more adapted to fish than to dairy, possibly because fish
has a composition which is close to other animal foods. Does the argument
that some humans are allergic to seafood has any validity? It is known,
for instance, that many people are allergic to pollen. However, pollen
has certainly been present in human history for quite a long time; it
seems that people who are on a gluten and dairy-free diet see their
allergies disappear (suppressing an allergen lowers the threshold for
other allergens). I wonder if some long-time paleo-eaters are still
allergic to seafood.

 ** About animal fat: hunter-gatherers typically eat wild game, which is
low in saturated fat. On the other hand, they prefer the fattiest parts,
like bone marrow, but let's say that overall the percentage of saturated
fat is much lower than in domestice animals. Since for us (modern humans)
it is difficult to have a diet based on wild game, would it be better for
us to be moderate on farmed land animals, and have the "animal food" part
consisting mostly of fish, to get those beneficial EPAs? [one of the
reasons why Eskimos have low cholesterol is that they have a high intake
of EPAs].

Best wishes,

Jean-Louis
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