On Wed, 2 Sep 1998, Robert A. McGlohon, Jr. wrote:

>         With this view, in choosing the foods to include in my diet, I look
> first to (1) whether that food is nutritionally beneficial; and (2)
> whether there are any adverse nutritional effects associated with the
> consumption of that food.  Often times, of course, those questions are
> being my ability to answer intelligently, and so I fall back on:  Was
> this conceivably a part of the ancient hunter-gather diet upon which my
> species evolved.

This sounds right (assuming that you meant "beyond" where you
wrote "being").  The point where it gets interesting, however, is
when you consider a food that has some documented benefits but is
not a paleo food.  It's even more interesting when the food in
question has not been clearly shown to have adverse nutritional
effects.

The classic example is soy.  Soybeans are clearly *not* a
paleolithic food.  Nevertheless, some fairly clear nutritional
benefits have been documented, such as improved blood lipids and
anti-cancer properties.  Negative effects are much conjectured,
but to my knowledge none have been demonstrated in any very
convincing way yet.  Thus it becomes a question of weighing the
known benefits against the mostly unknown risks.  The paleo
philosophy is to play it safe.

Todd Moody
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