Sharon Giles wrote:

> Authors
>  Dehmelt H.
> Title
>  Re-adaptation hypothesis: explaining health benefits of caloric
> restriction
> Source
>  Medical Hypotheses. 62(4):620-624, 2004.
> Abstract
>  For the effectiveness of under-eating or caloric restriction a simple
> evolution-based re-adaptation hypothesis is offered. Our ancient
> ancestors,
> whose bodies we inherited, ate and weighed a good deal less in
> relation to
> their size than we do. Over hundred thousands of years their desire
> for food
> was checked by its scarcity and the effort it took to collect it daily
> from
> all over the countryside. Thereby they set the reference standard for
> living
> and eating normally and healthily, not we. We eat as much as we like. No
> creature has ever been adapted to that.


I guess it would be more accurate to say that we eat as much as we feel
like eating, with very little linkage between the amount of food
available and the effort to make it available.  How often do most of us
find ourselves in a situation where (a) we would willingly eat more, if
there were more to eat, but (b) there isn't?  Not often.

There is an old tradition -- I don't know its source -- according to
which the healthy way to eat is to leave the table when you're still
just a little bit hungry, or at least when you would willingly eat a bit
more.  Most of us don't really like to do this, and that's why we are
attracted to diets that promise that we can "eat as much as we want" of
something, even if it means little or none of something else.  That is,
we like to eat to complete satiety.  For those of us who feel that way,
it is an acceptable trade-off to be able to eat *some* foods to complete
satiety, while avoiding others altogether.   That's one reason for the
appeal of the paleo diet, and various lowcarb diets.

But if H. Demelt is right, eating to complete satiety on a daily basis
is probably not very paleo, regardless of how "impeccable" ones food
choices are.

Is Demelt right?

Todd Moody
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