Dear Everyone,

I very impressed with Loren's memory!  My memory is not up to giving you a
reference, but I know I have read in a reputable source that some
Australian Aboriginal groups (AA) would eat for breakfast whatever was left
over from the dinner the night before.  This might include some vegetable
foods as well as animal foods. But often there was nothing left over!

This same source said that the dinner was the main meal of the day and
represented the large 'prizes' from the day's hunting and gathering.

They tended to do the gathering and hunting during the early morning or
late afternoon when the temperatures were less hot. During these
expeditions they would nibble on what ever they could see and would always
be on the lookout for sugarbag (honey) and would eat this on the spot.

So in terms of frequency, we can see a nibbling and gorging pattern in one day.

In the Loren's last posting, he wrote

'Because of its high sugar content (dried fruit and honey) and fat content,
this
so-called "paleo meal" could produce the very same hyperinsulinemic and
dyslipidemic profile characteristic of western "civilized", high fat,
high carb meals.'

It is incorrect to assume that sugary foods will produce high glucose and
insulin responses. Fruits tend to have low glycaemic index values (1).
Wolever (2) showed that in current diets, the higher the sugar content, the
LOWER the overall glyaemic index (GI) of the diet.  This is because most of
the sugary foods we eat have lower GIs than modern starchy foods.

Of course, the paleo starchy foods had a low GI but so too did their sugary
foods.  The GI of sugarbag (native honey) is only 43 on a scale where
glucose = 100 (1).  When we measured the GI of Australian commercial honey,
we got a value of only 58 while Jenkins got a value of 87 for Canadian
honey (1).  I suspect the Canadian honey may have been 'glucose enriched'.

My guess is that paleo diets generated a relatively low demand for insulin
and that high insulin responses in modern diets do indeed produce a greater
predisposition to body fat accummulation.  We have unpublished evidence to
support this and there is some published work that supports it in humans
(3) and animals.

Best wishes  Jennie


References

(1) Foster-Powell K, Brand Miller J.  International tables of glycemic
index.  Am J Clin Nutr, 1995, 62 : 871S-93S.


(2) Wolever TMS, Nguyen P, Chiasson J,  Hunt JA, Josse RG, Palmason C,
Rodger NW, Ross SA, Ryan EA, Tan MH. Determinants of diet glycemic index
calculated retrospectively from diet records of 342 individuals with
non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.  Am J Clin Nutr, 1994, 59 : 1265-9.

(3) Slabber M, Barnard HC, Kuyl JM, Dannhauser A, Schall R.  Effects of a
low-insulin-response, energy-restircted diet on weight loss and plasma
insulin concentration in hyper insulinemic obese females.  Am J Clin Nutr,
1994, 60 : 48-53.









Jennie Brand Miller  PhD
Associate Professor in Human Nutrition
Department of Biochemistry  G08
University of Sydney
NSW 2006  Australia
Phone: (61 2) 9351 3759
Fax: (61 2) 9351 6022