On Thu, 16 Oct 1997, John C. Pavao wrote:

> I think the point is (and maybe I'm wrong) that we should only be eating
> the foods we evolved on, because other foods contain proteins, etc., that
> are "alien" to the human body.

"Alien" is an emotion-laden term.  Strictly speaking, anything
that is not part of the body is alien to it, and that includes
all foods.  The point is simply that if a food requires cooking
to be edible, humans can only have been eating it since they have
been able to cook.  We don't know exactly how long that is, but
the key thing is that we have had less time to adapt to those
foods than to foods that don't require cooking.

The *hypothesis* therefore is that foods that require cooking are
more likely to cause an immune response and foods that don't
require cooking are less likely to do so.  The further hypothesis
is that some of these newer foods may cause an *autoimmune*
response, which is something else again.

In some cases we have documentation of specific immune and
autoimmune responses caused by specific foods, such as wheat and
dairy.  In other cases, we don't have this.  Ironically (to me)
the person currently doing most to promote the idea that some
foods can harm us, via the immune system, is Peter D'Adamo, with
his "blood type" diet.  Of course there is a large disagreement
between D'Adamo and the authors of NeanderThin on the matter of
whether some populations of humans have significantly adapted to
agricultural foods, and disadapted to the hunter-gatherer diet.
It seems to me that for anyone interested in this whole approach
to nutrition, this question is absolutely central.  And it ought
to be possible to settle it empirically.

I would love to see some real research done to test D'Adamo's
theories in a controlled way.  It would also be very interesting
to know the blood types of V. Stefansson and K. Andersen.  Is it
significant that the Eskimos, who came to North America before
the A blood type had penetrated into Asia, were/are all type O?

NeanderThin and the D'Adamo diet both are based on the premise
that foods can trigger immune and autoimmune responses, with
unfortunate health results.  D'Adamo suggests a specific
mechanism, the lectins, by which this might happen.  He also has
collected an impressive body of evidence that certain chronic
diseases are *not* randomly distributed across the blood groups.
This cries out for an explanation.  What he has not done yet --
to my satisfaction anyway -- is connect the ingestion of lectins
with any of these health problems, except in an a priori way.

Todd Moody
[log in to unmask]