Kirt Nieft writes:

>None of which means a soda can be useful, of course, but I agree with Dean
>that this whole thread is over the top and reminds me of so very many
>similar conversations on the raw lists. Ward mentioned the lack of
>fananticism on this list, but I haven't been seeing it that way at all. It
>seems like more of the same in idealistic dieting.

I am afraid I was wrong and would have to agree at this point. And I also
have to agree with Dean's wry comment that this discussion over "2 oz. of
coca-cola" has blown up into something pretty ridiculous (perhaps due in
part to my fanning the flames with the "absolutism" vs. "flexibility"
thread). It just goes to show, as Caroline said yesterday:

>What we eat relates very fundamentally (or "viscerally" I should
>say!) to what we believe. Food and faith interconnect very powefully in
>the >human psyche.  I find this interesting to our discussion.

You know, in my humorous moments I sometimes think that simply by virtue of
subscribing and participating on a listgroup like this, we are almost all
self-defined fanatics. :-) That's exaggerating, of course, but when I lurk
and read some of the other diet groups (not to exclude this one, actually),
it almost seems sad that people will revolve a good part of the emotional
investment they put into their life around promoting and defending their
beliefs over a subject such as food. And it sure looks as if we Paleodiet
folks are no more immune to this than the rest of the fundamentalist
dieters out there. Of course, maybe all this attention on food is normal
for everyone in one way or another, and just the result of our mammalian
biology having been programmed through evolution to spend a large part of
its day seeking and ingesting food, and is only natural.

On the other hand, when we are trying to discuss (on this list, at least)
the scientific, practical, health, and behavioral aspects of Paleodiet on a
more rational level, it gets very old. And frustrating, because when the
discussions begin to get too fanatical, balanced judgment of this sort
seems to go out the window but f-a-s-t, and I lose interest in the
discussions as anything much more than an exercise in observing the social
dynamics of how people play off each other's emotional posturing. So if one
wants to try to get a more reliable gauge, you then have to start
handicapping what you think of people's capacity for self-deception (I
don't think anyone is immune, including most of all yours truly),
perceptual abilities, and emotional balance to try to get at how accurate
what they are saying is or is not. Not that it is possible or even
desirable to factor out all emotional content, but the point at which it
begins to seriously skew our responses on a list like this seems all too
easily exceeded.

>I hope that when Part 3 of Ward's H&B interview is finally available on
>the web >that he will post the url so listers here can take a look at his
>musings on the >pratfalls practitioners of idealist diets fall victim too.
>What usually happens >is that the extremists fight his conclusions tooth
>and nail or dismiss it on a
>triviality.

Well, that's what one gets when they point out unpopular things people
would rather not see. Mud in the face. While I will post the URL if and
when the interviews are ready (things are still going very slowly due to
other things ahead of it in the priority queue; and by the way, assuming I
go through with this, I have decided to put up my own series of web pages
rather than mail out the interview separately to people), I really doubt it
will have much of an impact except with people who are already on the edge
themselves. The reaction from the Natural Hygiene camp to the interview has
taught me that. And I know all too well from getting stuck all the time
myself (after all, that's how I learned about many of the things that went
into the interview) how rare it is for people to truly see stuff like this
about themselves even when we (think we) want to.

I must say, though, that the social dynamics of this listgroup are
beginning to become just as interesting as the actual content of the
discussions themselves. :^)

--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]>