>I think it is important with any diet regime to not become so rigidly
compliant with the rules of the diet, that one relinquishes one's best
thinking about what is healthy and what is not, including thinking well
about
one's individual needs which may differ from the perscription of the diet.
The diet should serve you, not you serve the diet.

I agree.  That is why I used the word "principle", although it was
misspelled.  However, since the "rules" of this particular diet aim to keep
out foods that the body isn't evolved to handle, they might be a bit more
important than with the average diet.

>I don't believe it is a philosophical discussion at all.  It is, rather, a
basic, common-sense discussion of health and nutrition.  It is my opinion
that
it's probably not a great idea to include alcohol and drugs in one's diet
plan. Do you disagree?

Do I disagree?  Honestly, I do not agree or disagree.  Alcohol is not
allowed on Neanderthin because it is a product that is not thought to have
been readily available "back then".  This is a topic that is debated, and
I'm not going to get in the middle of that right now.  As far as "drugs", I
think maybe I see the issue here.  I'm guessing that you think "drugs" are
morally wrong.  I wasn't talking about "drugs", but I probably have a
different definition of "drugs" than you do.  In my mind, a drug is a
pharmaceutical chemical made by a company or a refined product made from a
natural substance to be used for either health care or intoxication
purposes.  I feel fairly strongly about both of these.  I do not use
either.  As far as natural, as in "available back then" options, I do not
feel that there is anything wrong with the occasional use of these,
although my opportunity to do so has been legislated out of existence both
by my government who knows what's best for me and my company which has
decided to side with all of the doomsayers.  So I do not use any of these
options either.  Therein lies the beginning of this thread, "what are the
legal, Neanderthin-allowed options?

I think it has little to do with "basic, common-sense" and everything to do
government intrusion in the private affairs of citizens and mass-hysteria
brought on by irresponsible media, fed by "studies" and lobbying funded by
sources who stood/stand to profit by outlawing those products that they
disagree with.  Translation:  I never saw a "burnout" who started as a
Rhoads (sp?) scholar.  Give an unintelligent person a bunch of drugs and
it's not too hard to prove that drugs make a person stupid.  It's easy to
prove anything you want to if you do it the right way...  And if you owned
a huge paper-producing corporation some while back, you lobbied the hell
out of the US government to make sure that hemp was made illegal because it
was much cheaper than wood paper and would have put you out of business.

>So what?  Does that mean that it is a healthy practice, just because these
groups do it?  I'm sure they do lots of things that we'd be horrified to
know
about. We don't live in their environment, and they don't live in ours. We
may
know some things that they don't - there is that possibility!

I doubt that the occasional recreational use of natural, unrefined
intoxicants is an unhealthy practice.  As far as what our ancient ancestors
did and didn't do, the fact remains that for the most part they were far
more healthy than we and they probably didn't have the "let's save us from
ourselves" moral dilemna on this issue.

I'd really like to go into this further, but things are very busy today...

take care,
John Pavao