I agree in principal with Sarah's comments & suspect, as Sarah
mentioned, that most of our differences perhaps lie in the semantics of
the argument.   Clearly our ancestors were opportunistic and relied upon
a wide variety of species (both plant and animal) to sustain themselves.
   The point to be made here is that the archaelogical data supports the
clinical, biochemical and genetic data indicating that the human dietary
experience with cereal grain consumption is quite recent and that our
present day physiologies have not completely adapted to consumption of
this ubiquitous food.
        As a discussion group, we have not even touched upon the role cereal
grains have in inducing autoimmune disease (except for a few discussions
upon celiac disease).  There is substantial evidence (both
epidemiological, and clinical) showing the role cereal grains may play
in the aetiology of  such diverse autoimmune diseases as MS, Insulin
dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM), rheumatoid arthritis, sjogrens
syndrome, dermatitis herpetiformis, and IgA nephropathy.   Although this
proposal may at first seem preposterous, there is strong data to suggest
that cereal grains may be involved in all of these diseases through a
process of molecular mimicry whereby certain amino acid sequences within
specific poly peptides of the gramineae family are homologous to a
variety of amino acid sequences in mammalian tissue.   These homologous
amino acid sequences can ultimately confuse our immune systems so that
it becomes difficult to recognize "self" from "non-self".   When this
happens, T-cells among other immune system components, launch an
autoimmune attack upon  a body tissue with AA sequences similar to that
of the the dietary antigen.    It seems that grass seeds (gramineae)
have evolved these proteins with similarity to mammalian tissue to
protect themselves from predation by mammals, vertebrates and even
insects.    This evolutionary strategy of molecular mimicry to deter
predation or to exploit another organism has apparently been with us for
hundred's of millions of years and is a quite common evolutionary
strategy for viruses and bacteria.    It has only been realized since
about the mid 80's (Oldstone MBA.  Molecular mimicry and autoimmune
disease. Cell 1987;50:819-20) that viruses and bacteria are quite likely
to be involved in autoimmune diseases through the process of molecular
mimicry, and with a little bit of luck, our group will hopefully publish
a review paper in the next 6 months or so compiling the evidence (and it
is extensive) implicating cereal grains in the autoimmune process.    As
Dean mentioned, without the evolutionary template and without the
evidence provided us by the anthropological community showing that
cereal grains were not part of the human dietary experience, the idea
that cereal grains had anything to do with autoimmune disease would
probably had never occurred to us.     This new electronic medium has
allowed instant cross fertilization of disciplines which probably would
have rarely occurred as recently as 5 yrs ago.

                                Cordially,


                                Loren