I said:

I despair of ever making sense of it all, I really do.

Jim Swayze said:

I don't mean for this to come across as calloused or lacking in sympathy,
but why waste your time worrying about it?  It's not nearly as difficult as
you seem to be making it out to be.  Especially with the proliferation of
information post-Internet, you can probably find a dietary opinion
somewhere that shows conclusively that a human diet based on tin cans,
week-old lettuce and gasoline is the way to true health.

So how do you sort through it all?  Stick to simple, basic paleo
principles.  To me, that principle is: What did paleo man eat?  A corollary
of that is what was the fat composition, saturated vs. unsaturated, of what
he ate?

***I don't get this attitude at all. It's pretty simple for me: (a) I'm
trying to figure out what to eat that's good for me. (b) every expert I read
contradicts every other expert I read, and says that eating what the other
experts said to eat is bad for me and will cause unpleasant problems. (c) I
don't want to eat what's bad for me and can't make sense of any of it or
choose to what to eat. How can that possibly be "wasting my time worrying
about it?" I'm not "worrying," I'm trying to "figure out what to do." You've
obviously made choices - good for you, but what are they based on? Some
expert probably thinks what you eat is awful and will kill you. How do you
filter that out?

Let me also say this.  I don't know if you have any of this in you, but I
believe that there's a lot of wishful thinking going on about what is and
what isn't paleo.  Desires can muddy the water too a little, since it's
human nature to want to have our cake and eat it too, to tinker with ideal
situations.  . . .  There's plenty of room for
disagreement about the answer to that question without having to agonize
over the latest addition to the mile high stack of misguided dietary advice
out there.

***It has nothing to do with desires. when I feel like eating something like
chocolate or coffee I do, just in minimal amounts. I'm also not "agonizing,"
I'm trying to use my brain to figure out what course to follow. At this
point in my reading (a few months of info), I'm not at the point where I can
say "this is the answer! I've figured out what I want to do!" so I've asked
more knowledgeable people on the list for help. If you are an open-minded
person it can often be hard to choose a course, esp. in an area where
everything everyone says contradicts everything everyone else says.

If you think such questions as mine are a waste of time, please just delete
it. If people can't ask questions I don't know what this list is for.