Stefan said:
>Your message is confusing me a bit. Concerning my point: Please, don't
>count calories, Peter! Calories or sugar intake are not equivalent to
>weight gain. Instinctos really have watched that weight loss stopped
>when they ate more vegetable. No joke.

It still does not much sense to me and does not correspond with my own
observations. When you eat vegetables you are getting more fiber which
will tend to flush out the system. Furthermore, apart from having more
calories fruits will with their high sugar content for many people,
hypoglycemics especially, give a strong insulin response which will
cause the body to store the energy as fat. Fruits are so easily
overeaten, and I have seen many an overweight fruit-binger in my time.
The only defense I can find for your viewpoint is that fruits contain
more enzymes and that these will cause the body to loose weight. This
is a selling point often used by enzyme supplement vendors.
Regarding your comment about the uncleanness of pigs, when I was in
India some years ago, I was living in a small village for a while. The
out-house was a little open-air "shed" made from the leaves of a palm
tree and to relieve ourselves all we had to do was to squat on the
ground.  Pigs were always roaming around free, and I often would barely
have my paints back on before one of them would be in there eating my
feces like it were a take-out from a French delicatessen.

>I see a contradiction between instinct and tools: if you are using too
>sophisticated tools you are leaving instinctive nutrition. A knife
>could easily be too sophisticated because it wasn't available millions
>of years ago. But a stone certainly was aswell as a piece of wood. Be
>careful with our modern tools. They are a touch too much.

I cannot think of any natural foods except for deep sea fish that were
not available to our ancestors a couple of million years ago.  I
imagine that sharp flint stones were quite prevalent and could do the
job of most knives.

Ellie said:
>Also what natural foods contain glutathione I hear so much
>about on the radio. I don't know what glutathione is. It's supposed to
>be good for the eyes. Thanks,

I believe that gluthatione is natural antioxidant found in our body
that among other things protects the neurotransmitters in the brain
from free radical damage.

Pat said:
>Peter, I buy TVP from The Whole Earth Catalogue of Lumen Foods.I found
>this source in a vegetarian magazine. CSPI (Center for Science in the
>Public Interest, cited in senate hearings as experts) have applauded
>TVP as a healthy alternative to meat.

Here is this organization again.:-/  The fact that they are cited by
the senate as experts does not give them much credibility in my book.
Apart from containing  MSG a powerful neurotoxin, TVP is a very
synthetic & highly processed food - a hydrolyzed protein if my memory
serves me right.  How these people can applaud the consumption of such
potentially hazardous substances is beyond me.

>On page four of the Lumen booklet, they state
>that their products contain no MSG.  If you see a back-up advantage to
>this for the hiker-camper-shopper, the catalogue can be had at
>1-800-256-2253.

MSG is often hidden by the manufacturer and processed foods more often
than not contain it despite claims to the contrary.  This is especially
the case with baby foods which is plain criminal in my opinion. One of
the many disguises of MSG is "natural flavorings" or "spices."

>I have made my viewpoint that some animal protein is necessary to
>highest human health clear, I think(each in his own moccasins)--but I
>would venture to say that our shaggy coated forbears would have
>experienced many times when they would have clonked you in the head
>for a cupfull of prepared TVP, and not ruined their brain tissue
>because of it! (lazy, like me  :)

And they would have paid the price so many are paying today.

Denis said:
>A few selected historical/epidemiological  info on trichinosis :
>1) amongst animals it is found worldwide; amongst human beings
>principally in United States, Canada, Eastern Europe ...with parts of
>South America, Africa and southern Asia and Middle East as secondary
>source of infection.

Denis, thanks. Your piece on trichinosis was very informative.

Peter said:
>>It would seem to me that a couple of million years as omnivorous
>>primates would largely erase this history, and unless you subscribe
>>to The Aquatic Ape Theory, before 40.000 years ago I think that our
>>consumption of fish was quite limited.

Denis said:
>I think your view is anthropologically biaised, but we've already
>discussed this issue in a prior exchange. The evolutionary
>determinants of our "natural" diet do not originate only in the
>"hominid" stage of our prehistory. Our  evolution from protozoon all
>the way to fish, early mammals, monkeys...  was not a process of
>deletion, but on the contrary a process of accumulation of
>information. An accumulation which alllowed early human beings
>extreme  efficiency and flexibility in their copīng  with a variety
>of environments and diets.

Your arguments are very intriguing indeed but I still do not feel
competent to refute the classic anthropological take on evolution.

Peter said:
>>people, consumption of insects seems to have stayed with us as a
>>supplement to our diet throughout our development - except for maybe
>>in very marginal areas like the Australian Interior where I could
>>imagine insects and larvae might be the mainstay of the diet.

Denis said:
>Again :  amongst our direct (early) simian ancestors, we have many
>insects specialists... We should not restrict your dietary views to
>the knowledge of the diet of extant or non-extant human groups. What
>we need is a much broader perspective which can encompass everything
>which has been eaten by all our ancestors.  This is not to say that we
>should eat as a matter of priority those things which  our  ancestors,
>as a whole, ate the most. This is just to say that our instincts are
>more at ease with fish than with meat.

More at ease with fish than with the foods we adapted to through
several million of years of evolution?
It does not sound right and seems like you are turning evolution on its
head. Yet, your arguments are very compelling and I am not sure what to
think.

>Carnivorous mammals being  amongst the latest species having developed
>on earth, and none of our pre-hominid ancestors having been a predator
>of these carnivorous mammals, I would not rely too much on my instinct
>for carnivorous animals. This is of course a personal view.

Excellent point.

>IMO the savannah:grassland period is, from a dietary point of view not
>as relevant as the  extended  period spent in the tropical forest.
>When applied to food and diet questions, it constitutes IMO a gross
>misrepresentation of the question of human adaptedness... In the
>grasslands/drylands (as opposed to the lush forests) we would have,
>over hundreds of thousand invented/improved cooking, made up the first
>tools, the fist weapons...and learned the rudiments of agricultura and
>domestication for the future onset of our civilizations (agriculture,
>animal selection and domestication ...) No wonder all the
>anthropologists are putting an emphasis  on that period of time ...But
>is there any relevance for the natural diet of mankind ? I don' think
>so. On the question of foods, everything had been decided before.

A diet consisting mainly of seafood & insects I am sure is as good as
any diet the African plains could provide.  Yet, it flies against the
basic tenets of evolution - that the foods we adapt to along the way
are the foods that best equip us for survival. If you take a monkey
that has evolved eating a diet consisting exclusively of fruits and
then put it on a high insect diet instead, I am not sure how well it
will do even though its ancestors were insect eaters.

Karl said:
>Mr. Burger experimented with raw milk but it led to inflammations.

For how long - with how many people and with goat's milk as well?

Peter said:
>> these foods taste delicious and give no taste stops that some
>>natural intelligence in the animal would say, " hey this stuff might
>>taste really good but it does not really satisfy my nutritional
>>needs.

Karl said:
>IMHO in a natural environment there is no difference between
>instinctive attraction and healthiness of a product. So in
>the wild there was no need for a 'watchdog' mechanism and
>so none evolved.

That makes a lot of sense. What is a little confusing is that with a
processed or un-natural food until a tolerance has been built up, the
taste will sometimes not be very good, while with "instincto" foods the
taste will be good initially until the point of tolerance. I wonder why
it is that some processed foods taste good immediately while others
only when a tolerance to them has been reached? Is it the level of
"toxicity" that determines this or are there other factors involved?

>BTW: I did get awkwardly thin when I ate only fruits.

I think you would have gotten even thinner had you eaten vegetables
exclusively ( no nuts, seeds or avocados).

>Thanks! And regarding Oranges: Why have they only been around for
>a very short time. I thought that wild forms of citrus fruit
>were available in the ancient woods. Aren't Pomelos, for example,
>rather wild fruits?

I believe all original citrus fruits were very sour and uneatable until
man starting cultivating them. The pomelo is the original grapefruit
from India.

Karl said:
>IMHO tolerance will not appear with wild animals and perfectly natural
>food. Not even during times of scarceness an animal will not over-eat.
>It has to follow the lead of its instinct or it will die very soon. So
>it will eat exactly as much from the remaining food as is good for
>his body

That is what I have been led to believe as well. Yet, we humans
supposedly have the thrifty gene which allows us when foods are
abundant to overeat & store the extra energy as fat and then burn it
off in leaner times. Many animals follow the same principle when
putting on weight for the Winter.

Pat said:
>---but cannot yet discard my reading and study in this area,
>considering the many cultures which thrive on cooked wholegrain rice
>and much quickly cooked veg., plus small quantities of meat.

I am not sure if thriving is the right word but they surely have
avoided many of the white man's degenerative diseases.

>There are many examples of the contrary--eskimos eating largely raw
>meat, for instance. It is simpler to make religious decisions when
>only one preacher has been heard.

Or as Maslow put it: "If the only tool you have is a hammer, every
problem looks like a nail."

(I am not sure who) said:
>>It intrigues me then, why humans have such extraordinary ability to
>>secrete aplha-amylase, the starch digesting enzyme, present in both
>>saliva and pancreatic secretions.  We have so much, that some
>>biochemists call it alph-amylase overkill.

I have often wondered the same.

>I've heard there may be no more than 100 instincto's in the U.S., if I
>remember correctly--But there are perhaps a billion healthy Asian's
>whose diet includes a great % of calories from wholegrain cooked rice.

Healthy compared to the average American yes, but I am sure below par
for most participants of this list.

Pat said:
>If --if--the mother, infant, and child mortality was, say,
>35%--quite possibly much higher--and then accident and disease felled
>30% more by age 35, then the rest lived to 70, why you could then say,
>pauvre paleolithics, they lived only 35 years!!

Good observation. Statistics are so easily misused or misread.

>But the potential, ah, the potential has been addressed today, 100
>years is being happily achieved (read the Delaney sisters) and with
>genetic manipulation, 150 will surely be the potential in the next
>century.

Who are the Delaney sisters?

>Those who say, phooey, who wants to live
>that old, are dismissing the effect of enlightened eating, abundant
>excercise, postive goals and joy of time for the mind to truly explore
>the wonders--if we can stop the onslaught against health being waged
>against us now by solons and industry.

Living life fully is like watching a good movie - you never want it to
end.

>Wouldn't it be a shame to be robbed of the joy of reaching our full
>potential because of susceptability to the lure of advertising to
>overconsume? (perhaps the most fatal of all diseases we have to deal
>with).We will never reach our potential unless either leadership or
>citizens, one or both, make a concerted effort to practice
>reductionism, and cool this feeding frenzy of buying and pursuit of
>material things. Somehow I don't see this happening, do you?, before
>great damage to our potential and also that of this once lovely planet
>we inhabit.

Your voice is rare breath of fresh air in the endless orgy of
overconsumption that is destroying our beautiful planet. If change is
going to happen it has to here in Babylon - the belly of the beast - as
the rest of the world is desperately trying to emulate the American Way
of Life. Will it happen in time? I try to memain positive and say I
believe so.

Christopher said:
>Recently a team of us went on a raw food diet for 10 days.

Christopher, welcome to raw-food! I second Tom's advice for you to take
it easy and not rush into it.

>The UNcook book by Elizabeth Baker (1996), Light Eating for
>Survival (1977), and the very interesting Unfired Food by George J.
>Drews (1909).

That last book sounds interesting. Do not tell me it is out of print.
:-)Maybe you would like to share some of the book with us?

>By the way, does anyone know if vegetarian food enzyme supplements
>(with cooked meals) are good for you?  I don't know if my enzymes
>(Rainbow light) is the Aspergillus stuff (what is aspergillus? and how
>do they make the enzymes?) or not.

Rainbow Light is one of my favorite supplement companies and is trusted
by many in the raw food community. Raw vegetables contrary to common
belief do not contain many enzymes, and if you are having any digestive
problems enzymes might be of some help.

Marcus said:
>I just joined the list. I'm currently changing my diet to a natural
>raw food based one. I'm about at 50% raw currently and doing pretty
>well. (I'm really new to this--it's about 2 weeks since I started)

Marcus, welcome on board! I think you are wise by easing into it like
you are doing.

>I've been using a product called the Ultimate Meal by the Ultimate
>Life company. It consists of quinoa, algae, flax seed, and on an on.
>It's Vegan and Kosher. One thing that bothers me is that it's
>supplemented with things like ester-C, CQ10, and Gingko. I want to get
>as much nutrition from food itself as I can.

I have met the owner of the company, and he says that it is an all raw
product. I like that it contains a high amount of horsetail which is a
good source of silica but I have a problem with the very bland taste. I
believe it is one of the best products of its kind.

Tom said:
>Abstract: The beneficial effect of a 1-yr vegetarian diet in RA has
>recently been demonstrated in a clinical trial. We have analysed stool
>samples of the 53 RA patients by using direct stool sample gas-liquid
>chromatography of bacterial cellular fatty acids.

Thanks Tom! It would be interesting to get the two diets in the study
better defined and to know exactly what positive changes the vegetarian
diet brought about in the flora.

Sheila said:
>No, I'm not interested in it however I'm wondering if it has brown
>rice powder in it. Many of them do and unnecessarily so.

Sheila, welcome to the list. Gary Null's "Green Stuff" green powder
blend contains raw brown rice if that makes it any difference to you.
To order call 212-799-1246.

>>At 07:13 PM 4/27/97 +0200, you wrote:
>I would suggest reading Elaine Gottschall's book, Breaking the Vicious
>cycle, Intestinal Health through diet. She states that the complex
>carbs acc to research are the main culprits in intestinal disorders
>and she has an excellent explanation.

I have added the book to my list. I have also joined your intest-health
list - maybe someone on your list have answers to my questions to Tom.

Best, Peter
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