On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 21:46, Ed Budge wrote:

>Hi all--
>
>Loren Cordain, et al.  Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health
>implications for the 21st century.  American Journal of Clinical
>Nutrition.  Vol. 81, No. 2, 341-354, February, 2005.
>
>See abstract at:
>
>http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/81/2/241
>
>--Ed

Loren has put the article up on his website:

http://www.thepaleodiet.com/articles.htm

The article is well worth printing out and reading through thorougly.

It's more a comprehensive review article than a new study. Loren & Co manage to weave 172
references into an article that is accessible to non-specialists (with a current medical dictionary to
hand).  The article goes through Loren's main message: three quarters of the current US diet
comprises foods generally unavailable to preagricultural hominins. He brings up-to-date his
earlier work on

** the developing disease profile,

** sugars (sensible stuff on honey here),

** refined vegetable oils (see his website for his recent comments on flax oil and canola oil),

** salt (his references point to a lower level of salt use in the Paleolithic than I had expected),

** sodium:potassium ratio (a new one on me)

** fat in meat (this is very thorough, but I am still not fully convinced all the evidence is in on (a)
the saturated fat content or (b) the omega-3 content of Paleolithic diets. His article seems to
assume that H-Gs ate all the meat in a carcase and not that the people might have picked out
what they preferred and left the rest),

** fatty acid composition (useful for omega-3s, but no discussion of fish, though they are listed in
his tables)

** macronutrient composition (this includes his comments on the low-carb diets),

** Glycemic load (it's not clear if this work allows for the unbalanced, opportunistic diet of
nomadic H-Gs who might eat nothing one day only to gorge themselves on meat the next few
days and fruit for a few days later)

** acid-base balance (Loren's been pursuing this one for a while, though I'm not aware of anyone
else who does so with the same passion.  The biochemistry is beyond me, but the argument is
convincing),

It will be easy to criticize aspects of the article from the level of personal anecdote or armchair
speculation, but Loren has set the bar high by relying thoughout on peer-reviewed literature, so
let's confine our criticisms to those we can substantiate with peer-reviewed references ourselves.

Keith