On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Phosphor wrote:
> i think two separate, though related issues, shoud be clarified.
> 1. what is paleo eating
> 2. what is healthy eating
>
> when the debates mingle the two, confusion reigns. if we establish general
> agreement on the first, it becomes a basis for exploring the second.
> so in discussing the possible health benefits of flax [issue 2] we should
> not somehow make an elementary error of fact that they were somehow part of
> paleo diet [issue 1].
I agree with this, with the caveat that we have to deal with a
fairly high degree of uncertainty about both issues.
Furthermore, we have the problem not only of trying to
reconstruct the particulars of paleolithic diets, but also of
trying to understand which particulars matter.
In my own imagination, I tend to think of paleo diets in terms of
trajectories, rather than fixed guidelines. For example, I am
reasonably confident that the last common ancestor of hominids
and chimps probably ate much as modern chimps do: Lots of
vegetation, fruits, berries, insects, and a small amount of
actual meat. After that, I suspect the diet changed in the
direction of more and more animal-source food. Parallel to that,
I think hominids and then humans relentlessly sought ways to find
edible things and to make things edible. This latter process,
making things edible, appears to be a distinctively human or
hominid characteristic, but I suspect our fate depended on it.
In terms of health, one of the questions that we don't ask, and
can't really answer, is whether all populations of paleo people
were equally healthy. We tend to assume that they were, but we
really have no idea. Suppose, for example, we were to compare
the health of the traditional Inuit, the Samburu, the Australian
aborigines, the Kitavans, and so on. Would we expect to find no
significant differences in health? I have no idea, but it
certainly would be useful to know something about it before
taking any of their diets as one to emulate.
Todd Moody
[log in to unmask]
PS Those interested in the Inuit might enjoy the Inuit film "The
Fast Runner."
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