On Wed, 29 May 2002, Ken Stuart wrote:

> Anyway, there is the D'Adamo claim that herding of animals and milk
> consumption thereof, started significantly earlier than agriculture, and
> that there are some people who have a physiological adaptation to milk,
> depending on who their ancestors were (or where).

According to D'Adamo, the tolerance for milk is carried by the B
blood type, which came later than the A type, which is supposedly
more tolerant of certain grains.  One things is clear: If
D'Adamo's theories are even approximately true, the whole
paleodiet premise has to be reevaluated.

> In addition, there is the fact that grains and legumes are simply
> undigestible (without technological processing), and have no similarity
> to anything that was normally eaten by paleo man.

Immature grains and legumes (some of them, anyway) are edible
raw.  What we don't know is how long they were eaten before they
were finally cultivated.

> However, there is the fact that livestock milk is similar to a food that
> all human's are designed to consume (namely mother's milk), and also
> that livestock milk is produced by the same tissues that themselves are
> entirely paleo food, namely the carcass of the livestock animal itself.
> It just seems odd to me that it would be perfectly okay to consume
> mother's milk and perfectly okay to consume goat, but not okay to
> consume goat's milk.

It's a good point.

> If there are problems in consuming livestock milk, then it would make
> sense to me that they are quantitatively less severe than those from
> consuming grains and legumes.    And, in fact, the variation in
> tolerance to those problems would seem to be at least anecdotal evidence
> in favor of D'Adamo's theory.

Well, D'Adamo's theory is based on specific reactions to specific
foods.  For example, although type A people generally don't do
well with dairy foods, he claims that farmer cheese and
mozzarella are okay (i.e., don't cause agglutination).  They can
handle some, but definitely not all, legumes.

> In my own experience (admittedly only one data point), I found no change
> whatsoever when I eliminated dairy for several months.    This in
> contrast to the widespread and significant changes I experienced when I
> reduced my carbohydrate consumption and when I reduced my non-paleo food
> consumption.

My experience has been that reducing carbohydrate consumption is
the only thing that makes a discernible difference.

Todd Moody
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