Kirt wrote:
 >If you find nutritional faith in one instance of your healthy-looking
 >friend dying, what do you say when paleo folks, even raw ones, do not get
 >the desired results?

I'm not going to modify my personal diet without having sufficient
knowledge about at least one of these people. First of all I would like to
know what kind of effects they were expecting. I think that even the most
optimal personal diet don't eliminate the risk of getting e.g. cancer,
heart failure and eczema in a modern society. Then I would like to know
details about their diets, physiology, and living environments. The fact
that a person calls his or her diet "paleo", and I myself use the same
label on my own diet, doesn't necessarily mean that our diets are
identical. Maybe we both eat apples, but he or she gets them from a
producer using pesticides, and I get them from my neighbors' apple tree.

 >Dying in your sleep? Fasting to death?

I don't fast, have never done it, and will probably never do it. So,
fasting to death, will unlikely occur. Dying in health in my sleep because
of age, sounds good, but I don't think it will happen. I'll probably die in
cancer, and I'm not joking. I hope this cancer is not food related.

 >A fear of a "terrible ending" might
 >provide motivation to incur some sort of self-sacrifice in terms of diet
 >and/or lifestyle, but mightn't you admit that your friend had a high-
 >quality life, albeit shorter than you would have liked?
 >Cheers,

Yes, I am afraid for certain endings. One of my acquaintances was an
energetic happy women in her 50's. She suffered a stroke, and now she acts
like a zombie. One of my former teachers is dying in diabetes. This
motivates me to find factors that cause these conditions. I belive one of
these factors is diet. So, I'm looking for the optimal diet for my body.
I'm not trying to save the world. I'm trying to save myself. This optimal
diet hopefully lowers the risks for some diseases, like heart-attack,
stroke, diabetes, and cancer. Lowering a risk isn't the same as eliminating
it. Further, this optimal diet maybe isn't my current diet. And, I may
never find it.

My friend never was afraid because he wasn't aware of the connection
between diet and health. I think that this unawareness made his life much
easier and more social than my current life. Hopefully in the future I'll
find friends here who are paleo.

You talk about self-sacrifice. Maybe you're right. I'm a careful person.
Since childhood I've been avoiding all kinds of drugs, like tea, coffee,
cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. At the end of senior high school I
tried beer, vine and certain other drinks in different amounts, together
with my friends, just to know what it feels like, but I didn't like it. A
year ago I learned about refined carbohydrates and their effects, and I
immediately stopped consuming products that contained them. I had been a
junky without knowing it. A long time I had cravings, but they disappeared,
and all I feel now is disgust. I eliminated dairy and my health improved.
Then I started avoiding seeds and my health improved even more. As I said,
currently I'm only eating animal parts, vegetables and fruits. But, I'm
thinking of introducing flax seeds, and certain other seeds to my diet. I
haven't felt bad in any social context, with respect to diet, even when
everybody else have been under the influence of alcohol, or drinking coffee
and eating cakes while I'm eating fruit. Most people accept it as long as I
don't make a big deal of it. Some are curious. Very few are sarcastic.

Usually I'm rational about my diet, but sometimes I feel like being
emotional. That's why I told the story about my friend who got a heart-
attack.

I'm very much interested in your own diet Kirt, and the philosophy behind
it.

/Fredrik