Peter:
>Aajonus has led a very obscure existence until now, so it is very
>natural that not many have heard of him. I am sure you agree that
>obscurity does not necessarily disqualify anybody just like recognition
>does not guarantee knowledge and integrity. I disagree with Aajonus on
>other points than just the issue of parasites yet as long as my good
>impressions of him outweigh the bad, I will remain open to try
>implementing a self-tailored version of his program, and I think it is
>important to remember which Aajonus also concedes that not one shoe
>fits all.
>I forgot to mention that John Finnegan, N.D. author of "The Facts About
>Facts" also is supportive of Aajonus program.

Deborah:
I understand and respect your thought process and search.  Sincere best
wishes.  I surmise that Sally Fallon and Mary Enig would also support
Aajonus' program (witness their article, which follows this post, copied
from today's Paleodiet digest).

Peter:
>I had the book for over a year before I could see beyond its
>limitations, and having just read the book now for the third time I am
>finally beginning to warm up to it. What helped me was meeting him in
>person and if you are interested, he will be giving a talk in South
>Pasadena at the Grassroots Natural Foodstore 1119 Fair Oaks Avenue,
>July 24th at 7 p.m. For directions call the store at 818-799-0156.

Deborah:
Thank you; you are very thorough and helpful in your referrals.  I always
appreciate that.  If Zephyr and/or I can arrange to be in LA on that
evening, we'll go; I don't think we'll make a special trip down for only
that purpose.

Bye,
D.
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Reply-To:    Paleolithic Diet Symposium List,
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Date:    Fri, 23 May 1997 13:29:09 -0400
From:    Dean Esmay <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Message from Mary Enig PhD and Sally Fallon

Dear Dean and Fellow Paleodiet Colleagues

We have been lurkers so far but now throw our hat into the ring with the
following article on the cave man diet. It will appear in the Summer 1997
edition of the Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation Health Journal. We
particularly wish to counter the notion that the paleolithic diet was low
in saturated fat.

We also recommend that paleodieters become familiar with the work of
Weston
Price who studied many isolated cultures in the thirties. His pioneering
work Nutrition and Physical Degeneration can be obtained from the Price
Pottenger Nutrition Foundation by calling (619) 574-7763. You may also
wish to order back journals that dealt with the African and Eskimo diets. Or,
visit our web site at http://members.aol.com/ppnf.

Another book that will be of interest is Handbook of Indigenous Fermented
=46ood by Keith Steinkraus, published by Marcel Dekker.

Sincerely yours,
Sally Fallon MA and Mary G Enig PhD, authors of Nourishing Traditions:
The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet
Dictocrats
ProMotion Publishers (800) 231-1776

The Cave Man Diet
Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD

Low-fat diets, claim the pundits of medical orthodoxy, have been
associated with good health and longevity throughout the globe and
since the dawn of time. The research of Weston Price proves otherwise.
=46rom the Eskimo of Alaska to the hardy Alpiner, from Gaelic villager to
African tribesman, Price discovered that all healthy indigenous people
had a plentiful source of animal fat in the diet. Such Neolithic groups
could still be found when Price embarked on his eventful travels back in
the 1930s. But no one, of course, not even the indefatigable Dr. Price,
could visit our Paleolithic forbearers, the so-called cave men. The lack
of direct evidence about our hunter-gather ancestors--who by definition
neither cultivated crops nor domesticated farm animals--allows
limitless conjecture about the content of their diets. The low fat school
claims that the cave man ate lean meat, supplemented by copious
amounts of plant foods in the form of sprouts, roots, fruits, berries and
leaves; dissenting investigators assert that the cave man imbibed
animal fat first and foremost, along with the meat to which it was
attached, and very little in the way of foods from the vegetable
kingdom.  Both schools of thought are in agreement that the cave man
diet was otherwise Spartan, lacking foodstuffs that were either salty or
sweet.

Dr. Walter L Voegtlin argues for the high fat model in his book the Stone
Age Diet, published in 1975. Humans are carnivorous animals he asserts,
and the Stone Age diet was that of a carnivore--chiefly fats and protein,
with only small amounts of carbohydrates. He notes that like the
carnivorous dog, man has canine teeth, ridged molars and incisors in
both jaws. His jaw is designed for crushing and tearing, and moves in
vertical motions.  Mastication of his food is unnecessary and he does not
ruminate. His stomach holds two quarts, empties in three hours, rests
between meals, lacks bacteria and protozoa, secretes large quantities
of hydrochloric acid and does not digest cellulose. His digestive tract is
short relative to body length, his cecum is nonfunctional and his
appendix vestigial. His rectum is small, contains putrefactive bacterial
flora and does not contribute to the digestive process. The volume of
feces is small; digestive efficiency borders on 100%; his gall bladder is
active and well developed. Both the dog and man feed intermittently and
can survive without a stomach or colon. The herbivorous sheep, by
contrast, lacks canines, has flat molars and incisors only in the lower
jaw. His jaw is designed for grinding and rotary movments.  Mastication
and rumination are vital functions. His stomach holds eight and one-half
gallons, contains bacteria and protozoa, never empties and has but
weak production of hydrochloric acid. His colon and cecum are long and
capacious; the cecum performs a vital function; the bacterial flora of his
rectum is fermentative rather than putrefactive; feces are voluminous;
gall bladder function is weak or absent; and total digestive efficiency is
50% or less. The sheep feeds continuously. He cannot live without his
stomach or colon. His entire digestive tract is about five times longer,
as a ratio of body length, than that of man and his dog.

Voegtlin argues that gross differences in the anatomy of man and the
herbiverous animals make him unable to successfully adapt to a diet
based on plant foods, particularly carbohydrate-rich grains, as well as to
a diet in which milk products, rich in lactose, predominate; and that the
whole range of modern diseases stems from his abandonment of the
food choices of his primitive ancestors, based largely on meat and rich in
fat. He notes that, with the exception of vitamins C and K, all essential
nutrients can be derived from animal foods, and that the cave man diet
was certainly much richer in vitamins and minerals than our own.
Modern devitalized plant foods--such as sugar and white flour--only
hasten our decline.

A decade later, in 1988, Dr. Boyd Eaton published the Paleolithic
Prescription in which he argues that the cave man diet was low in fat,
particularly saturated fat, low in salt and rich in dietary fiber from
plant foods. His Paleolithic prescription for optimum health is, in fact, very
much akin to the so-called prudent diet of the American Heart
Association.  The typical Paleolithic macronutrient profile, he asserts,
contained 33% of total energy from protein, principally but not entirely
animal protein, 46% from carbohydrates and a mere 21% from fat.
Journalist Joe Friel translates these suppositions about Paleolithic
eating habits into the following dietary recommendations: Select the
leanest cuts of meat (wild game, if possible), trim away all visible fat
from meat, include fish and fowl, eat low- or non-fat dairy products and
include moderate amounts of monounsaturated fat in the diet in the
form of oils and spreads of almonds, avocado, hazelnut, macadamia nut,
olive and walnut. He lumps natural saturated fats in with newfangled
hydrogenated oils as fats to be avoided. The cave man, it seems, thriving
on a diet of lean venison along with roots, shoots and fruits, was
altogether politically correct in his low-fat dietary habits,

Or was he? In a recently published collection of essays, Ice Age Hunters
of the Rocky Mountains, we learn that the hunter-gatherers of the North
American continent ate the following animals: mammoth, camel, sloth,
bison, mountain sheep, small mammals including beaver, pronghorn
antelope, elk, mule deer, horse, llama and large members of the dog
family. Mammoth, sloth, mountain sheep, bison and beaver are fatty
animals in the modern sense in that they have a thick layer of
subcutaneous fat, as do the many species of bear and wild pig whose
remains have been found at Paleolithic sites throughout the world. The
bison and camel have humps composed largely of tallow.

Furthermore, if the dietary patterns of present day African
hunter-gathers can serve as a guide, the Paleolithic hunter preferred
the fatty portions of the carcass including organs, brains, tongue, feet
and marrow.  Archeological remains indicate that whereas meat from
game carcasses was often left uneaten, the long bones were carried
back into camps and chopped onto pieces so that the marrow could be
extracted. Organ meats were eaten immediately--and often raw--but
muscle meat was preserved by drying, or by mixing it with tallow to
make pemmican. Some investigators believe that the cave man's
preference for the fatty portions of his kill led to profligate
practices--wastefully killing of mammoths simply to extract their fatty
tongues, for example--and that selective hunting of the fattier animals
was a prime factor leading to the extinction of large mammals such as
mammoths, sloths and rhinoceros.

Bones of the bear predominate in many European sites. Archeologist
Myra Shakley reports on an important Neanderthal site in Hungary
where 90 percent of the remains were those of bear. Whole carcasses
were brought to the site--not just portions as was the case for other
animals--and the manner in which the carcasses were cut up suggests
that the skins were removed.  Obviously the pelts were used to protect
the hunter-gather from the severe climate. The skins would also have
provided a rich source of fat that could be used for preserving other
foods. Altars containing bear skulls found in caves in the Swiss Alps, and
dated back as far as 75,000 years, indicated that the bear was
worshiped as a sacred animal.

Present-day hunter-gathers, as well as those of the ancient past,
possess greater dietary wisdom than the majority of our modern Ph.D.s.
They understood that a diet of lean meat, lacking in fat, was the surest
route to weakness, disease and death. Steffanson, who studied the
Eskimos and Indians of the far north, reports that when lean caribou
was the only meat available, anxiety set in. These natives knew that a
month or more on such meat, without the addition of marine animals or
fatty fish, would make them sick and prone to disease. The ancient
tribes of the Americans West would not eat female bison in the Spring
because nursing and pregnant bison cows burned off their fat reserves
during the winter months. In fact, most bison hunts occurred in the late
Summer and Fall when the bison were naturally fattened on the ripe
grain of prairie grasses. Anthropologist Leon Abrams reports that the
Aborigine will throw away a kangaroo he has killed if he discovers that
its carcass does not contain sufficient fat. Members of Randolph
Marcy=EDs 1856 expedition to Wyoming grew weak and sick consuming a
politically correct low-fat regime of six pounds of lean horse and mule
meat per day; Dr. Wolfgang Lutz reports that a very efficient way of
eliminating jailed political prisoners in South and Central America is to
feed them a diet composed exclusively of lean meat. They soon develop
severe diarrhoea and succumb. The explanation is that fats contain
nutrients like vitamin A that the body needs to utilize the amino acids
and minerals in flesh foods; without fat in the diet, the body rapidly
uses
up its own stores of fat soluble vitamins. When these vital nutrients are
depleted, the human organism can no longer fight off disease.

Was the cave man diet simply rich in unsaturated fats, but low in
saturated fats? Antelope and caribou fat is over 50% saturated--about
the same as beef--and mountain sheepfat would be the similar. Buffalo
fat is 56% saturated--more saturated than beef! All ruminant animals
contain lots of saturated fat because the protozoa in their capacious
guts do an efficient job of saturating the oils found in plant
foods--whether these oils come from dried hay or green grass, from
feedlot corn or the ripe grains of prairie grasses. (Of course naturally
fed meat is richer in vitamins and minerals.)  The bison were hunted in
the late Summer and Fall when their fat stores would have been highest.
Grazing animals spend several months eating the carbohydrate-rich
seeds of wild grasses, which begin to ripen as early as the month of
May--grain fattening in feedlots merely mimics this natural process.


Camel fat, from the kind of animal the Neanderthals apparently hunted
to extinction, is a whooping 63% saturated! Wild boar is about 41%
saturated, exactly the same as lard from a domestic pig. Kidney
fat--which modern man avoids but which the cave man would have
eaten--is highly saturated. Buffalo kidney is 58% saturated, antelope
kidney fat is 65% saturated, elk kidney is 62% saturated and mountain
goat kidney fat is 66 % saturated. Caribou marrow has a preponderance
of monounsaturated fat, and a small amount of polyunsaturated, but
still contains more than 27% saturated fat. Figures for elephant tongue
are unavailable but beef tongue is 45% saturated. Bears, which yield
48% of their kilocalories as fat, have a preponderance of
monounsaturated fat, the same kind found in olives, almonds and other
nuts.

Seafood in coastal regions would also have provided fat for primitive
man, particularly the valuable omega-3 fatty acids; insects, grubs and
worms are a source of additional fat in all regions except the arctic.

So the high-fat proponents are the most likely winners of great
Paleolithic fat debate; but they are probably wrong in their assertions
that plant foods, particularly grains, are new to the human diet. Remains
of plant foods at Paleolithic sites include seeds, berries, roots, leaves
and bulbs. Sunflower seeds, prickly pear seeds, amaranth seeds and
limber pine seeds have been found at Rocky Mountain sites. Various
types of nuts were consumed by primitives in the Americas and on the
European continent. The amount of plant food in the cave man diet
varied according to the climate and locality. Obviously plant foods were
minimal in the diets of those in arctic climates, but played a large role
in
tropical regions. Nuts, of course, provided additional fat. The pecan,
consumed in large quantities by the Indians of the Southeast, contains
85% of calories as fat. In tropical regions, palm nuts and coconuts
provide large quantities of saturated fats.

Present day hunter-gatherers employ special preparation methods for
carbohydrate-rich foods. Acorns, for example, are soaked in water and
lye to remove tannins; tubers are buried in the ground, pounded or
cooked in hearth ashes; seeds are soaked, pounded and allowed to
ferment in various ways. It is safe to assume that the ancient
hunter-gatherers employed similar techniques to neutralize the many
enzyme inhibitors, irritants and mineral blocking substances found in
tubers and seeds. In fact, a large portion of the primitive woman=EDs day
was spent in just such preparations--pounding, soaking, sieving, souring
and putting the finishing touches on various types of root and seed
foods. The men, on the other hand, divided their time between
dangerous hunting forays, in which physical stamina and strength was
at a premium, and periods of idleness when they would work on their
weapons and gossip.

So the comparison of the human digestive tract with that of the dog,
while interesting, does not tell the whole story. Man can benefit from
the many nutrients in plant foods as long as he takes care in their
preparation. Primitive plant preparation methods--pounding, soaking,
and fermenting--imitate the time-consuming processes that take place
in the sheeps digestive tract, beginning with his flat grinding molars
and ending with the fermentative bacteria in his lower bowel. The
Paleolithic hunter-gatherer had the good sense not only to eat the
fattier portions of meat, but to prepare his plant foods correctly.
Modern man, particularly the modern professor of nutrition, does not.

Dogs, apparently, were the first animal to be domesticated by man--or,
as the current theory holds, the dogs adopted man and went to work for
him. A man with five or six dogs can track down and kill the largest of
wild animals. Dogs made hunting less dangerous, and allowed our
intrepid cave man to stand back and kill his prey with something he
threw--an arrow or light spear--rather than with a lance that he
physically had to thrust in. Almost certainly, the advent of the dog at
mans side hastened the extinction of the large fatty animals that had
given the cave man his physical prowess and resistance to disease. But
the dog would also have helped the hunter move into his Neolithic phase,
by rounding up wild sheep, cattle and goats and helping to keep them in
flocks, so that their fatty meat and milk would be available throughout
the year. Such milk was much richer than milk from todays Holsteins
which have been bred to produce low-fat milk The neo-agriculturist
would have been ruled by his tastebuds, rather than modern advertising,
and consumed his milk products whole.

Assuming that mans tastebuds are not superfluous, but natures way of
guiding him to the food he needs, let us examine the notion that the
cave man diet satisfied only the bitter, sour or pungent portion of his
tasting apparatus, and not the salty or sweet. A number of studies
report that honey, far from being a rare delicacy, contributed a
substantial portion of the calories in many primitive diets. The Hazda of
Tanzania, the Mbuti pygmies of the Congo, the Veddas or Wild Men of Sri
Lanka, the Guayaka Indians of Paraguay, the Bushmen of South Africa
and the Aborigines of Australia, all put a high value on honey and
consumed it in large amounts. East coast American Indians consumed
plentiful portions of maple syrup, and used it in the production of
pemmican. Wild fruits and berries are incredibly sweet at the peak of
ripeness, and can be preserved in various ways for consumption
throughout the year. Fermented foods of the Eskimo are described as
tasting as sweet as candy. Primitive man did not consume refined
sweeteners, as we do, but neither did he neglect his sweet tooth.

It is hard to imagine that he would have neglected his taste for salt. It
occurs naturally in meat and blood and, as animals seek out natural salt
licks, so our sensible cave man would have done the same. The
manufacture of salt can be accomplished simply by filling a hollowed out
log with sea water and letting the brine evaporate. The evidence of
place names in England indicates that salt was the earliest commodity to
be traded from the seacoast, or from salt pits, to other areas. In
extremely remote locations, such as the Himalayas or the interior of
Africa, the ashes of sodium-rich marsh grasses are added to food. It is
reported that the members of the Yanomami tribe in the Amazon basin
do not take in any added salt. In an apparant adoptive measure, they
also excrete almost no salt in the urine.

Milk is salty because mammals need salt for the production of
hydrochloric acid and for the development of the brain and nervous
system. Without dietary salt, the human mind does not fully develop and
man must live, not by his wits like the ingenious cave man from the
dawn of time, but as a brute, even if he happens to be born in this
modern age.