I sent this short reply and thought others might be interested.
Todd Moody
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Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes by the age of 34, Ray
Audette relates in NeanderThin he began reading about the
probable causes and concluded they, along with allergies,
colitis, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, lupus, many
cancers and cardiovascular diseases, as well as obesity
were associated with civilization. Cut out our
overpopulated, over-poluted, over-weight civilization, he
reasoned, and you'll do away with these devastating
diseases.
This is a caricature of Audette's reasoning. He certainly does
not urge us to "cut out civilization," whatever that would mean.
In fact, he points out that it is only the infrastructure
achieved by civilization that makes the NeanderThin program
feasible in this age.
More importantly, you neglect to mention the theoretical basis
(culled from his research) for his ideas. First is the notion,
common to other low-carbohydrate diets, that excessive
consumption of carbohydrates elevates insulin levels, which in
turn causes many problems, including obesity, high cholesterol,
and water retention leading to hypertension. Where the
NeanderThin plan differs from other low-carb diets is his theory
that our lack of adaptation to agricultural diets goes beyond
just their carbohydrate excess. His view is that the activation
of our immune systems by bombardment with proteins from foods to
which we have not had evolutionary time to adapt is the other
cause of health problems. This is an important idea, well worth
thinking carefully about.
Audette is really more of a supermarket hunter-gatherer. His
diet eliminates technology-dependent foods such as grains, beans,
potatoes, dairy products and sugars.
Yes, for the reasons sketched above.
I might be convinced by someone who heads for the
wilderness and lives only on wild animals and plants. But
to consume animals and plants which have undergone
tremendous genetic changes over the generations that they
have been domesticated, and which are pumped full of
chemicals, pesticides, hormones, synthetic feeds and
increasingly bio-engineered, then to call that a caveman
diet is a delusion.
I think that Audette concedes that the use of wild animal and
plant foods would be ideal, but he also wants to offer options to
those for whom this is simply not feasible. It is possible now
to buy foods that are relatively free of additives and
pollutants, even if such foods are more expensive.
The basic premise is also false: the "diseases of
civilization" are associated primarily with Western
civilization: Asians, for example, who eat less meat are
less prone to these diseases.
Indeed? Some of the highest cancer rates in the world are in
China. Heart disease rates among *urban* Chinese are comparable
to our own.
Animal fat is not the nutrition equivalent of fats
derived from plants. Audette's arguments that humans are
innately meat eaters is contradicted by human dentition
and the human digestive system, which are not those of
carnivores.
I'm not sure what "innately" means in this context. Audetted
does not rely only on arguments from physiology but also on
evidence from paleoanthropology as to what paleolithic people did
in fact eat. And he does not claim that humans were or are
exclusively carnivorous, but only that we have been omnivorous
for a long time, deriving a substantial portion of our food from
animal sources. If you know of evidence that contradicts that,
I'd like to know about it.
His argument that the principle cause of animal
extinction is the plow not the slaughterhouse (because
farmland denies wildlife habitat is ludicrous: what do
domestic animals eat (it takes 7 pounds of grain to
produce one pound of beef) and where do they roam?
Well, how much grain do you have to eat to get the protein that
is available in that pound of beef? And why is it preferable to eat
all that grain if it is causing major health problems? And for
that matter, where does Audette recommend feeding grain to
cattle?
His choice of Neanderthals as a model is unfortunate.
Neanderthals were probably not direct ancestors of ours,
but a specialized adaptation to Ice Age Europe who died
out - an evolutionary dead cul de sac.
He doesn't really use Neanderthals as a model, but I agree that
the title "Neanderthin," though catchy, is perhaps unfortunate.
Still, there is much more to this little book than you have given
your readers reason to suspect. Audette includes a fine
bibliography of scientific and popular writings on the subject of
paleolithic nutrition and its theoretical underpinnings. That
bibliography alone is worth the price of the book. His reasoning
is considerably more sophisticated than you have represented it
to be in this review.
Todd Moody
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