Phosphor wrote:
>
> further:
> "The human dietary staple for more than 2 million years was lean game meat
> supplemented by fresh fruits and vegetables"
> there it is. primitve man must have thrown way all the marrow, depot fat,
> etc etc  since he ate only lean meat. you agree with him? [Cordain, that is]

That's one of the things that is so annoying about Cordain's book, the
way he keeps repeating over and over all through it: "lean meats, fresh
fruits, and vegetables", which leaves fat out of the picture, while at
the same time he does recommend consuming a fair amount of fat (actually
more than the average American diet, see pg. 27-28). Another thing that
really bothers me is his characterization of other low-carb diets. We
all know he's talking about Atkins, and I think he badly misrepresents
Atkins's more recent dietary recommendations. It's as if he was using
Atkins's book from the early seventies. It seems unprofessional, and
maybe disingenuous.

He flatly states that saturated fats are bad. Didn't many people alive
today have their genetics molded by ice-ages, living off of large
northern prey (including extinct ones such as mastodons and cave bears)
with large depots of saturated fat? He says to eat skinless chicken
breast. Wouldn't our ancestors have eaten whole wild duck, which is way
more fatty than farmed chicken. Maybe 60 to 70 percent of calories come
from fat, 36 percent of that is saturated, and 70 percent of that is the
supposedly extra-evil palmitic. I have to part company with him on some
of the fat recommendations. I'd like to thank him, though, for stating
so clearly the benefits of high protein intake, and I'm increasing my
protein consumption.

Hilary
Danville, Vermont