> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paleolithic Eating Support List 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of ginny wilken
> Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 9:09 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Cooking Fats - was Re: Christmas Pudding
> 
> 
> > ... Do you view olive oil or dairy butter as Paleo?
> >
> >
> 
> Not really either, any more than I do red wine. However, 
> olives are a  
> fruit, and a bit easier to get oil from than most seeds. Raw butter  
> is awfully close to raw meat fat, and for this reason I justify  
> including it in my diet. I could be purist Paleo if I wanted, but I  
> don't see my compromises as interfering with my health, and 
> they make  
> eating much more enjoyable. I use olive oil on salad and very  
> occasionally to cook something. But I don't cook much, and I use  
> butter or meat fat - chicken, pork, beef, lamb - to cook also. I eat  
> all the fat on my meat, and crave the fatty parts, for instance, of  

So, given that you eat some foods you regard as not Paleo, it sounds like
your opposition to canola is based less on it not being Paleo than on the
other factors you mentioned, correct? Again, I'm not defending canola--just
seeking to understand the various viewpoints on it (I agree that there are
many questions about canola oil and I tried to avoid it completely for quite
a while before compromising a bit because the options when sharing meals
with others or eating out are often quite limited). 

> beef heart - the coronary fat deposits - and kidney suet. I feel a  
> lot better since putting raw dairy in my diet - I get kefir cultured  
> on colostrum, raw cheese, cream and butter. There are some pretty  
> indisputably good factors in here; whether or not they are 
> ever truly  
> appropriate for humans is debatable. Prehistorically, no, but  
> biologically, perhaps. Do not some of the meat-eating cultures, like  
> the Masai, drink the milk as well as the blood of their animals?
> 
> 

Which indisputably good factors are you referring to, and from which of
those foods?

> 
> > I assume you're joking about the orchards. Paleolithic peoples in
> > Eurasia
> >
> > and Africa would have found species of wild flax, which are 
> flowering 
> > herbs, in fields. Wild flax can develop into a bush up to 3 
> feet tall.
> 
> Yes, but enough to make an industry of collecting and extracting the  
> oil? 

Industry? No. There were no industries, or farms for that matter, in
Paleolithic times (some horticulture of wild plants, yes). But, again, olive
oil and coconut oil are also produced by industry, though I agree that you
can get smaller-industry, less processed forms of these. Even raw butter
doesn't plop out of a cow that way--it's processed from cream. Sure, I've
never heard of Paleolithic people squeezing oil out of seeds (beyond small
amounts that might have been squeezed out during pounding into meal), but
I've never heard of them squeezing auroch udders and then churning the milk
into butter either. It sounds like your opposition to processing is partial
rather than absolute. It appears to be one of your key factors re: cooking
fats--ie., some processing and industrial mass production is OK (as in
store-bought olive and coconut oil and churned butter), but less is better.
This appears to match well with the traditional diets concept of Weston
Price et al. It's certainly an improvement over hydrogenated soy and corn
oils. We agree on much, but it's interesting to flesh out the differences. I
know I'm learning from it. [Sidebar: I wish the leading traditional diet
advocates and Paleo diet advocates could find a way to get along, as there
is more in common between those two general views than there is between them
and the SAD. They started out on friendly terms in the Paleodiet forum, but
quickly diverged into opposing camps as soon as the differences became
clear.]

Perhaps you can help me with something: I haven't found an explanation of
the basic theory or idea that underpins the traditional diets view in my
readings of articles expounding it. There is much info on observations of
people doing better on traditional neolithic diets than on the SAD, but
little on the mechanism(s) behind this. I can think of an explanation that
would support it if true: that there has been sufficient time for humans to
biologically adapt to agrarian foods, but not to the most heavily processed
foods of the industrial era. This view sees evolution as occurring faster
than advocates of Paleolithic nutrition tend to see it. There is some
evidence to support a faster-evolution view so it is not totally out of the
question. However, there is also plenty of evidence indicating that humans
have not completely adapted to even minimally processed agrarian foods. The
widespread existence of celiac disease and gluten intolerance is one of the
more telling examples. People with gluten intolerance have digestive systems
that are just that--intolerant of gluten. They are not hybridized-wheat
intolerant or processed-wheat intolerant. They are gluten intolerant. They
cannot eat any grain that contains gluten without experiencing negative
effects, not even the most ancient existing wheat grains, such as emmer,
einkorn, and spelt.

Then there are the puzzles, such as the Masai of Africa who have not
developed lactose tolerance yet consume large amounts of cow's milk as a
staple food "without apparent symptoms" of lactose intolerance. [Jackson RT,
Latham MC. Lactose malabsorption among Masai children of East Africa. Am J
Clin Nutr. 1979 Apr;32(4):779-82.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/32/4/779] The Masai would seem to
confound both the Paleo diet view and the fast-evolution explanation for
supporting traditional agrarian/pastoral diets.

> Ray's key of whether something could be eaten raw 
> doesn't, in my  
> mind, excuse consuming quantities far in excess of what would have  
> been practical for H/G's. And there definitely are lectins in flax  
> which cause reactions in the sensitive, just as in legumes and  
> grains. I do prefer to get Omega 3's already converted by the prey  
> animal to usable molecules.
> 

Can you direct me to a reference that provides evidence of the negative
health effects of flax lectins? As I understand it, there are lectins in
most foods, both plant and animal. Todd Moody has pointed this out in the
past. D.V. Poleszynski identified over 1,000 foods "found to contain lectins
with biological impact. [The various biological effects] depend on, amongst
other factors, the number of binders - those with only one [binder], for
example, cannot agglutinate cells. Biological effects from experiments
carried out on humans and 14 different types of animals are known (12).
Lectins in barley, wheat, potato, rice, rye, tomatoes, and a number of
legumes can agglutinate erythrocytes in humans of all blood types."
[Thorkild's Lectin Page, http://plab.ku.dk/tcbh/lectin-links99.htm]

Cordain and Audette unfortunately fail to mention in their writings that
lectins are found in most foods and that they may have beneficial uses (such
as in the treatment of cancer) as well as harmful effects (much like
pharmaceuticals), but then again most writings on the subject ignore this.
Where lectins are supposed to be problematic is where they are in sufficient
concentration and where the human digestive system has allegedly not yet
adapted to those particular lectins. There is much written about the
problems of lectins in grains and legumes. I have searched for similar
information on any problems with the lectins in nuts, seeds or other foods,
but haven't found anything significant. It would be nice if there were a
list of foods showing the types and quantities of lectins they contain so we
could compare and contrast. There were apparently efforts made in this
direction in the past, but they were discontinued (I'll bet for lack of
funding).