1. Granted. 2. Whether or not there is debate over the issue of whether or not fiber supplementation is "required", Metamucil, enemas, colemas, colonics, and drug-induced "mucous" expulsion do not belong on this list, unless someone can convincingly explain to me how they fall under the auspices of paleolithic. Furthermore, I find the whole debate over fiber supplementation questionable at best. There are examples of peoples eating a meat diet with no ill effects, and I will tell you personally that I need no fiber added to get the job done when I'm eating according to the rules. And this is after 32 years of ignorantly abusing the hell out of this body. In my experience and observations, the body adapts to fiber but it doesn't necessarily need it. If people want to go ahead and spend their money and create an unnecessary dependency by taking all kinds of fiber supplements, I guess that's their business. But if we're going to discuss it here, then I'd think that we would be looking for natural fiber supplemetation from whole foods, rather than from unnaturally contentrated refined products. 3. I agree with this insofar as I have seen that removing the causative factors has not caused my body to revert to normal size <g>. I think that the supposition that restoring the system to initial conditions will restore the system to initial state should be qualified by the degree of damage done during the period during which conditions were degraded. People who are not as damaged as I am respond to this type of diet by reverting completely. Others such as myself apparently cannot. John Pavao ---------- On Wed, 10 Dec 1997, John C. Pavao wrote: > Bringing > non-paleo issues to this list only muddies the waters and gets discussion > going in the wrong directions. It confuses the new people, especially the > ones who haven't yet had a chance to read Neanderthin. First, according to its charter this list is not about NeanderThin; it is about paleolithic eating. NeanderThin is just one set of opinions about paleolithic eating. Second, while Metamucil is not itself a paleo-food, it is an open question whether some such fiber supplement should be part of a paleolithic diet, as part of a medicinal regimen. Dogs eat grass for "medicinal" reasons in some circumstances; I see no reason to suppose that ancient humans might not have made medicinal use of things such as seed husks. Third, there are some important and unresolved issues about whether using a paleolithic diet is *sufficient* to restore health that has been damaged perhaps by many years of dietary abuse. This is a *support* issue, and this is a support list. Furthermore, there are some rather misleading statements in NeanderThin itself about restoring health by restoring dietary "initial conditions." They are misleading because they imply that chaos theory shows that restoring a system to initial conditions will restore its initial state, but chaos theory shows no such thing. It is quite conceivable that a modern-day paleolithic diet needs to be supported by additional measures. Todd Moody [log in to unmask]