On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Phosphor wrote:

> >The key question becomes whether we include or exclude >foods individually
> or according to "kind."

> yes and no. we exclude grains and legumes according to kind.

Why?

> we, as
> individuals, would then have to experiment with different fruits, vegetables
> and nuts to see our individual tolerance of them.

This, of course, applies to animal foods as well.

> I'm not surprised that i
> can't eat sweet potato, coconut or brazil nuts, since none of my ancestors
> ate them. Perhaps you would rather eat things that make you sick than accept
> this simple correlation.

Presumably none of my ancestors ate these foods either, but none
of them make me sick, so there's no correlation to deny.

> speaking of vegetables, why eat them?

Do I need a special justification?

> paleo man ate
> no modern vegetables, few of which are recognizably similar to their remote
> ancestors.

It's obvious that paleo man didn't eat modern vegetables, but
it's far from obvious that these are not "recognizably similar,"
whatever that means, to their remote ancestors.  And there's no
reason at all to suppose that paleo people didn't eat vegetables
at all.

How similar do modern vegetables have to be, to be edible?  Does
the same principle apply to animal foods?  Is a flank steak
recognizably similar to a piece of meat from some unspecified
savanna ruminant?  Modern hunter-gatherers eat a wide variety of
vegetables.  What reason is there to suppose that paleolithic
hunter-gatherers didn't?

Todd Moody
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