At 14:17 2001-04-21 EDT, Charles wrote:

>This is very eurocentric!

As 90% of everything on Internet is USA-centric it is a good change :-)
(I am aware that much of the USA-centrism inherits from eurocentrism)

>Look at the Tarahumara indians of
>Mexico, for example. They live extremely fit and healthy lives on "new world
>foods".

I think it is possible to live healthy lives on a diet constructed of
food from completely new gene-constructed species, if someone *happened*
to manage to make it the right way. I think also it is possible to find
a lot of new world food that is valuable to eat. But they will not be
"paleo". The question is what non African foods can be counted in
actually. From a "paleo" perspective all of the world outside Africa
might be "new world". No one knows. What we can do is to collect information
and exchange and discuss on this list, then make up our minds ourselves
about what to eat and not to eat. No one else can do it for us.

A new comparative study of genes from Sweden, middle Europe and west Africa
suggests that most Europeeans inherit from a few hundred people that came
from Africa only 25000 years ago! Think of what that might mean! What did
those people thrive on? Was there anything with their metabolism that made
only them survive in that population bottleneck situation? Was there
some food that they did *not* eat?  Questions that needs answers for us
to be able to find out what is "paleo correct", together with questions
that we still do not know.

- Hans