On Tue, 1 Sep 1998, Amadeus Schmidt wrote:

> Weight loss on a paleo-diet comes from the better supply on fromerly
> lacking vitamins or minerals which were therefore controlling eating.

This claim makes the assumption that overweight people are that
way because they eat more than other people.  Despite numerous
attempts, this assumption has resisted empirical confirmation.

Furthermore, this implies that vitamin supplementation ought to
have an appetite suppressing effect.  I am not aware that it
does.  Personally I suspect we will find that certain kinds of
diets burn out the reward centers in the brain (i.e.,
dopaminergic system) in a manner similar to opiates.  I have
little more than suggestive factoids to base this on, but it is
what I suspect.  Kenneth Blum (a biochemist) has identified
something that he refers to as "reward deficiency syndrome," that
involves degraded dopamine neurotransmission.  There are hints
that refined carbohydrates could bring this about.

> My conclusions for paleo-food followers are:
>
> - no farmed meat (better none)

How is none different from "no" farmed meat?

> - as much as possible organic and unprocessed/unaltered plants
>
> I note that the much condemned grains (like most seeds)
> have _very_ good vitamin contents on almost everything
> - except vitamin A and C.
> Maybe _this_ is the reason why grain farmers did succeed on the past 10ky.

It's quite possible.  That is, it may be that
the vitamin contents of whole grains more than compensate for
their negative qualities.  As we have discussed before, in a
statistical sense, grain-based diets *succeeded*.  Even if the
people eating the grains were less healthy than their
hunter-gatherer predecessors, the grain-eaters soon and
overwhelmingly outnumbered the hunter-gatherers.

The point is that what makes a *population* successful in terms
of sheer numbers is not necessarily the same as what makes an
individual healthy.

Todd Moody
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