Todd writes:

>My own inclination is to try to start out as minimalistically as
>possible, to establish a baseline of response to the "pure"
>paleodiet.  Then, with the help of this list, try to investigate
>the possible objections to "suspect" foods.  It would be useful
>to accumulate a Forbidden Fruits index, with commentary on what
>is problematic about each entry, when such information is
>available.
>
>Consider wine.  Ray Audette says to avoid it, because of the
>well-known deleterious effects on the liver, etc.  He also
>asserts that wine triggers cravings for other forbidden carbos.
>But it is also known that moderate ingestion of wine has a
>beneficial effect on insulin sensitivity and HDL levels.  And
>moderate use of wine is not known to have any bad effects on the
>liver.  I suspect that the cravings will vary greatly among
>individuals.  Still, it is also a fact that the residual yeast
>proteins in wine trigger an immune system response in some
>people: migraines.  The offender appears to be the amino acid
>tyramine.

Maybe I am missing something, but wine seems just the sort of thing
where--if one is playing the odds and probabilities--that "not acting" due
to evolutionary considerations would be a more prudent course of action
than relying on today's constantly changing and confusing research. I think
most who have looked into genetic adaptation where evolution is concerned
(Boyd Eaton's research and Cavalli-Sforza's among others comes to mind)
would say as a general principle that anything the human species was not
already ingesting by approx. 40,000 years ago is something we simply would
not have had enough time to become fully adapted to. If today's research on
wine is like any other research, I would wager we will stand to see several
reversals and about-faces for many years to come. To me this is the big
problem with much case-by-case research that is still in a state of flux:
You never know whether to really rely on it or not because of all the
about-faces and reversals, so what good does it do and what certainty does
it really give us until long after we have a need to act?

On the other hand, the evolutionary picture on wine is already clear enough
to make a decision. Alcoholic beverages in the form of wine from treading
on grapes were invented only around approx. 2,500 B.C. in the Middle East.
[p.100 Scarre, Chris (ed.) 1993 "Smithsonian Times of the Ancient World."
New York: Dorling Kindersley] It may be that sugary saps were obtained by
cutting the apex of sprouts of some plants for immediate consumption
hundreds of thousands of years ago, but it would not have been until
Neolithic times [circa 10,000 years ago] that alcholic beverages themselves
would have been produced in any but the most minute quantities. [(Forni,
Gaetano (1975) "The Origin of Grape Wine: A Problem of
Historical-Ecological Anthropology." In: Arnott, Margaret (ed.) Gastronomy:
The Anthropology of Food and Food Habits. Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co.]

>But anyone who avoids wine because the tyramine triggers
>migraines must also avoid many supposedly safe paleodiet foods,
>such as citrus fruits, tomatoes, and avocados.  So, while wine
>needs to be off-limits for some people, precisely because of the
>sort of autoimmune effects that the paleodiet is calculated to
>avoid, it seems that for others this isn't an issue and the stuff
>can actually be beneficial, even though hunter/gatherers couldn't
>get any.  Is there any other specific reason to classify wine as
>a Forbidden Fruit?

Not to be too facetious here, but how about the fact alcohol kills brain
cells when ingested in any amount? :-) (Or am I perhaps wrong about
that--has that perhaps been shown invalid now by recent research?) Again,
not that I am at all against looking into all the biological pathways and
metabolic minutiae, especially in extenuating circumstances like migraines
from tyramine, but the whole point of following Paleolithic reasoning is
that so often it can cut through all the conflicting data like above.

In the case of migraines from tyramine, we are talking about a fraction of
the population with specific abnormalities here, not the average/normal
person, no? These people obviously have special needs and considerations
and metabolic anomalies that would have to be dealt with individually. To
me that would be a separate question than what are safe foods for the
majority of "normal" individuals who have halfway normal metabolism.

However, it should be mentioned here that that all may be a moot point
where citrus, tomatoes, avocaodes are concerned. At least in the case of
tomatoes and avocadoes, these are not themselves Paleolithic-safe foods, I
don't believe. Someone will correct this if wrong no doubt, or fill in the
exact dates, but I believe these were not foods for but any but an
exceedingly minute fraction of the human population until quite recent
times. And the kind of citrus bred today is a far cry from what may have
been available in evolutionary times. (Again, I hope someone will fill in
the dates and paleontological data here.)

To me, another problem with much disease/diet research of today is it only
looks at isolated pieces of the puzzle picture. You never know if you have
the whole story or not. The wine consideration reminds one of the aspirin
hullabaloo. Research shows it helps blood from clotting which can lower the
heart attack rate. This is what everybody narrowly focuses on and what is
trumpeted in the media. But the same studies that show the blood-thinning
effect also show that in those taking aspirin the hemorrhagic stroke rate
doubles, gastric and duodenal ulcers are doubled, and that the overall
death rate (from all causes) was the same in those taking aspirin as those
not. Why is it we do not hear about these effects? I can't help but suspect
the ballyhoo about wine may be obscuring a similar overall picture lost in
the thicket of media publicity on selected advantages people would prefer
to focus on.

To me, the most interesting question about wine and alcohol is, why would
we want to drink it in the first place--aside from what I guess we could
call a cultural/social pleasure principle--if it obviously was never a part
of the human diet until just yesterday in evolutionary time (2,500 years
ago.)? Once we become aware of this, where do the rationales and motivation
to continue drinking it then come from? It seems we are taking two
different approaches to the question here of whether to eat something--one
that looks at something, like wine, on a
"why-not-ingest-it-unless-specific-research-shows-a-problem" vs. the
"guilty-until-proven-innocent-approach-based-on-the-unlikelihood-of-our-evolutio
nary-adaptation-to-it" approach.

I guess what I am questioning here is, I'm not sure I understand tempting
fate here when wine is such a recent food in evolution--why not just play
it safe instead of looking for reasons to drink it? It seems like it would
be much harder to go wrong that way.

--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]> Wichita, KS