fowarded message from:
Todd C. Moody, PhD
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http://www.sju.edu/~tmoody/

Hello.  It seems I posted a message before this list was fully
operational.  Here it is again, plus some further thoughts at the
end.

I'm here.  Indeed, I'm trying to decide whether to try this paleodiet
thing.  As a Zoner, I'm halfway there, but the question in my mind is
whether the paleodiet has significant advantages over the Zone diet.

I can certainly understand the basic premises of the paleodiet, but I have
to wonder whether some of the restrictions are really necessary.  For
example, Ray Audette says that peanuts and cashews are not readily
digestible in their raw state.  But I don't seem to have any trouble
digesting either one.  It's hard for me to believe that hunter/gatherers
*didn't* eat them.  Haven't peanuts been a staple in parts of Africa for
centuries?

I have another interest in this diet.  I have a son who is mildly
autistic.  A year and a half ago, we had his blood tested, and they found
greatly elevated levels of antibodies to gluten, and slightly elevated
casein antibodies.  So we put him on a gluten-free/casein-free diet, which
indeed helped him.  After four or five months of strict observance, we
experimented a bit and found that he seemed able to tolerate dairy pretty
well, but not gluten.  So he gets dairy stuff now, but in limited amounts.

But I'm wondering now if autism isn't another of those "diseases of
civilization" not seen in hunter/gatherer societies.  In particular I'm
wondering if there might not be other offending proteins in the diet.  I
have read that peanuts and peanut oil are problematic for autistic people,
because of the particular configuration of long-chain fatty acids, but I
don't have any scientific citations on that.

Putting my son (six years old) on a paleodiet would be fantastically
difficult, but if I thought it would really make a difference, I'd try it.
Just adjusting protein/carbo ratios has been helpful, however.

Well, this message is rambling.  At any rate, I'm here.

Todd Moody
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====================

Addendum:  The "is/ought" premise of the paleodiet:  If
hunter/gatherers don't (or didn't) eat it, then we shouldn't eat
it.

This strikes me as a reasonable *hypothesis*, but perhaps it
needs to be tested on a case-by-case basis.  That is, before
"fruits" are classified "forbidden" we should have relatively
specific reasons for the classification, in addition to the
generic is/ought premise.  Does this make sense?

TM