Gregg Carter wrote:
> Enough of the trite trashing of Cordain.  He is a first-rate scientist who
> publishes in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

Publishing in peer-reviewed journals is nice, but is no guarantee of
good ideas, and might be overrated. After all, the AHA's low-fat regimen
and the USDA food pyramid both come from that type of source. Before
everyone lines up with nails for Andrew's coffin it is worth noting that
Cordain admitted, on this list on March 19th (posted by Don Wiss) that
it is not known whether a high saturated fat diet promotes
atherosclerosis. Why didn't he mention that in his book? Here are a
couple of quotes from a great new website by Uffe Ravnskov
(www.thincs.org) that mention Cordain:

Uffe Ravnskov:
More thoughts about the hunter-gatherer diet, based on the paper by
Cordain et al, sent to me by Stephen (attached). The aim of the paper is
to explain that although our ancestors ate much meat they did not get
cardiovascular disease, as expected (?). To cite Cordain: “…increasing
meat consumption in Western diets is frequently associated with
increased risk for CVD mortality”. As far as I know there is little
evidence if any that meat causes atherosclerosis or CHD (Jerome may
perhaps correct me). The two references that Cordain uses to back up his
allegation are at least invalid. One of them, by Hu et al (Am J Clin
Nutr 1999;70:1001-8) effectively disproved that read meat is associated
with CHD (RR 1.09; 0.91-1.30), although Hu try to say otherwise by
making ratios of  red meat and chickens and other statistical humbug.
The other is a 25-years follow-up of Seven Countries. Anyone who has
read how Seven Countries was structured and has studied the data in
depth cannot take that project seriously (See my book for details).

Stephen Byrnes:
The Cordain Camp support the Lipid Hypothesis 100% so they are not
exactly allies. Cordain mistakenly thinks that the fats in wild game
animals was primarily made up of MUFAs and PUFAs and very little SFAs.
While its true that the muscle meats of wild game animals are
non-marbled, it is not true that this was the only part of the animal
that was eaten. He is also wrong in saying that the fatty acid profiles
of wild ruminant animals can be affected by their diets; only the
monogastric animals show this. The omega-3/6 ratio in ruminant animals
stays pretty constant, no matter what they eat.
If you check out Cordain's book THE PALEO diet, you will quickly see all
of the politically correct gobbeldygook about saturated fats and
cholesterol clogging arteries and causing heart disease. Since Cordain
cannot divorce himself from this view, he MUST come up with an
explanation to rationalize the reality that hunter/gatherer peoples ate
lots of animals foods, but
suffered from little heart disease. His explanation, though, is off the
mark. While Cordain is certainly correct about our ancestors being
meat-eaters, he is wrong about the quantity and type of fat they ate on
a daily basis.