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So this is a question I've been harboring for the last year......

Can the body differentiate between paleo friendly insulin producing foods
vs. neolithic?  And is the effect of paleo insulin producing foods as
damaging?
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Hi Batsheva, 
I would say that the answer is, for the most part, yes. One study has shown
that gluten-free food reduces the appetite (among overweight women) by about
400 calories/day. An opioid blocking drug has been shown to have a similar
impact on normal subjects. We know that gluten grains contain 5 separate
opioid sequences, and opioid blocking drugs, or the removal of gluten from
the diet, seems to stop that appetite enhancing dynamic that arises directly
from grain cultivation/consumption. 

Similarly, we know that tryptophan, the precursor of the feel-good
neurotransmitter, serotonin, is insulin insensitive, so a surge of insulin
in response to highly glycemic foods (mostly neolithic and/or seasonal
foods)  will leave more tryptophan in the bloodstream, and thus, more to be
transported across the blood-brain-barrier. 

We also know that, while honey and other paleo sweets were available, the
cost was sufficient, and they were rare enough, to serve as an unusual or
occasional food that, while enjoyable, would not be a dietary staple. 

Unseasonable fruits and berries, such as we now see year-round in grocery
stores, are not congruent with most paleo diet perspectives. It might be
okay to eat bananas for a few weeks each year, but I don't think it is
really congruent with paleo eating to consume bananas, berries, or other
fruits all year long. The tilt of the earth decrees that most of earth's
inhabitants have had to adapt to seasonal variations in their food supply. 

I think that there is an amazing convergence of dynamics, including hormone
secretion, variances in hours of daylight, the changing seasons, and a host
of other factors that make us produce lots of insulin in the summer and fall
to store energy as body fat (just like many other mammals on the planet) so
we are better equipped to survive the lean winter ahead. But we gain weight
so slowly that, in terms of percentage of body weight, we would be unlikely
to gain too much weight through summer and fall, so it would inhibit our
survival through the winter. 

During winter, a number of hormonal and other factors including all of the
above, converge to make our stored fats more accessible (dietary ketosis)
and better equip us to survive the winter, when we will hunt the fats and
meats of other animals that have also stored fat  for the coming winter.
This intricate, elegant dance of our hormones, the sunlight, the seasons,
and available foods is magnificently orchestrated by our genes, which have
been honed by an equally amazing selection process that now leaves us
vulnerable to the very appetites and proclivities that we have been
developing since the first farmer sowed a few kernels of last year's wheat,
now speeded by the technology and rapid transportation systems that allow us
to sit under palm trees and nibble an arctic char,  while Inuit shoppers
pick up a basket of strawberries at their Safeway store in early January. 

I do go on. :-)
best wishes, 
Ron