Amadeus:
>Moreover the build-up time for the brain is in early childhood and if
>the fatty-acids that make up big part of the brain don't get used up
>only the supply in early childhood should be of importance.
>I too had problems to imagine a 1 year old eating lots of Zebra-Brain.

Perhaps your imagination is too modified by culture. Young chimps beg for
brain from freshly killed animals. An obscure Clara Davis study found that
raw brains are prefered over all other foods by weaning one-year-olds.

I have sampled raw cow brains myself and can report that they are indeed a
wonderful food, with a delightful "baby-food" texture as well as lovely
flavor.

Your revulsion of brains as food is not shared by chimps or hunter-gatherers.

>As a control we could check how much of th
>ese fatty-acids you mentioned
>are in the mother's milk. This is the paleolithic supply of nutrition
>in early childhood.

Exactly. Human breast milk is chockful of EPA and DHEA--to the point that
formula manufacturers are now trying to supplement their products with a
stable form of each. The wonder is that most breastfeeding mothers have
little EPA and DHEA in theirs diets--arguing that the mothers are able to
form these fatty acids by some other mechanism than simply eating wild
game, pastured beef (and organs), or fatty fish. But you can bet there are
even fewer breastfeeding mothers pigging out on purslane than there are
those eating the above-mentioned animal food sources.

The question is: how much better off a breastfeeding mother (and the
suckling infant) would be to supply the completely formed fatty acids in
their diet instead of forcing their system to manufacture it from unknown
sources.

Beyond all that, Amadeus, your arguments fall flat because you have not
(that you have mentioned) experimented yourself with important animal
foods, like raw fat and organs from wild or naturally-raised animals. Thus
you end up with circular logic--trying to prove what you already _think_,
not what you might _know_ by personally comparing a paleo-diet high in
animal foods with your "intellectualized" version containing few animal
foods.

There was a fascinating thread on the raw-food list a while back about a
European raw vegan toddler (with many health problems) who prefered the
snail (shell and all) to the lettuce it was found on. It is easily found in
thearchives of that list if you dare.

Cheers,
Kirt

Secola  /\  Nieft
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