Alan,

> Perhaps Loren's diet is
> working for him not only because he is genetically
> different from Tom and Paul (and others), but it certainly
> appears that he is being very careful about eating a
> large variety of foods and is doing lots of other
> healthful practices (fasting, sunshine, etc.).

This is fine, but when he states the way things happen in an absolute
way,
for example how on his program hunger diminshes and you get by on less
and
less food, he seems to extrapolate this to a universal result. Many
people
have reported the opposite, that they start to feel they are starving.

As far as the other practices (exercise, sunshine), aren't they just
obvious
irregardless of the diet?  So here is a possible scenario - someone
like
Loren is doing well on a raw-vegan diet because they have a certain
constitutional makeup and are doing all these other wonderful things
as
well, then, because they don't follow a rigid dogma, decide to
experiment
and feel even better with a few fertile raw eggs. How does that sound?

> I don't know about the rest of you, but my goal is to
> find 1st) optimal health, and 2nd) longevity.  It's not
> to be raw, nor is it to be a caveman.

Same with me. Given others failures, even though I feel a need to be
more
cleaned out, a raw-vegan program I think is a risky proposition for me
at
best. Even 1 week of it puts me into starvation mode (yet, I'm ready
to
agree some of that is due to poor absorption and plaques in the
intestines
since I've seen intestinal cleansing pull some of this material out).

> I say that because I always keep the Hunza's of northern
> Pakistan as my "sanity" check.  These people were able
> to live very long lives (120 - 140 years were not uncommon)
> in extremely good health (often claimed to be the world's
> healthiest people), with a complete absence of nutritional
> degenerative diseases.  Of all the diets/lifestyles I've run
> acrossed, Loren's is about as close to the Hunza's as I've
> seen.  I'm not saying that this can't be improved upon,
> but I don't think anyone's diet has been shown to be even
> close to the Hunza's yet in terms of health and longevity.
>

We can use any number of the flesh-eating cultures Weston Price
studied
as points of reference too. There is definite dispute over the Hunza's
reputed longevity, also. I can't see the Hunzas diet being way better
than, for example, the Loenschental Swiss, since they also were
essentially  free of chronic disease. It should also be noted that the
Hunzas were not 100% vegetarian (no native cultures were/are).

> If Loren has hit upon something good, I'd like to hear
> about it, and it looks like there are people on this
> list that perhaps have an interest in trying to make him
> go away.  It makes me wonder why.

I personally don't mind if Loren stays around at all. I wish Wes
Peterson
was still on the list. But at the same time I can understand where Tom
is
coming from, having tried everything to make vegan-fruitarianism work
for
himself and failing, and not wanting someone else to go through what
he
has.

Paul