On Thursday, January 06, 2000 12:47 PM, Todd Moody wrote:

> On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Mary wrote:
>
> > Does this mean we should not eat macadamias, or just not the oil? I
don't
> > eat macadamia oil, anyway.
>
> I don't know the answer.  If the idea is to avoid all erucic
> acid, then don't eat them.  But I doubt that paleolithic people
> avoided all erucic acid.

Paleothic people had no knowledge of the potentially harmful effects of
erucic acid.  We do.  We can avoid it.

>Australian aborigines have been eating macadamias for a long time (That's
where they are from).  This is just more evidence that the fact that a food
is paleo doesn't entail that it is free of all things that one might find
problematic.

Correct.  We are "from" central Africa.  I believe that what was good for
our early ancestors is good for us.  Our later ancestors have taken us far
and wide.  Successive generations have adapted, to some degree, to the
conditions in which they found themselves; the properties that they
possesed, that allowed them to survive, have been transmitted to the current
generation .... us.  But, the last 8 generations or so, in North America,
have seen the mingling of many peoples whose post-African adaptations are
dissimilar.  I think that it's likely that our best diet is that of the
early Africans, tempered by the fact that most of us are now in a temperate
climate.  That is, eat only those foods that would have been available to
pre-Ice-Age Africans, but eat less fruit and more meat/fish/fowl.  Eat no
New-World food.  Eat lots of leaves.  Eat it mostly raw.

Norm. S.