At 00:33 1997-12-29 -0500, Dick Dawson wrote:

>Tomato, potato, green pepper and eggplant are nightshade family;
>possible sources of problems for arthritic people.  Since they can
>all be eaten raw I suspect they're about as paleofoodish as most any
>other veg.  Tomato and potato were native to Americas only but I
>think were known to early settlers (Indians) in paleolithic
>conditions.
>

I think *paleolitic diet* could not interpreted like that.
If native americans started to eat something new 20000-30000 years ago
it was because they did not immediately die of it. They could not
know anything more about autoimmunity and other problems than later
agricultrists (and we know probably only little more).
Our metabolism is _much_ older than that, and changes very slowly.

I made a posting about this some time ago wich I send once more here:


In a post to the PALEODIET list 1997-11-11 Andrew Millard wrote:
  "mtDNA and nuclear DNA evidence shows that there has been a recent
  (100-200ka ago) population bottleneck follwed by rapid expansion,
  which explains the lack of genetic diversity amongst modern humans"
and later followed with:
  "When in the past should we look for this palaeolithic diet which is the
  common inheritance of all humans?  It must be before the population
  dispersal which allowed regionally varying diets to arise.  We cannot then
  look at Upper Palaeolithic diets, as they are certainly after the
  dispersal.  Accepting the genetic evidence for a bottleneck mentioned
  above leads us acceptance an Out Of Africa II scenario rather than a
  Multiregional Evolution scenario for the origin of modern humans, and thus
  to place the dispersal event of interest at c.120-100ka.  Therefore it is
  amongst archaic Homo sapiens and possibly late Homo erectus *in Africa*
  that we should seek this diet, and probably in some smaller (but as yet
  undefined) part of Africa."

I find this extremely important, and it raises a lot of questions on how to
determine what food is suited for humans and what is not.
My guess is that meat is about the same in most places of the world, so if
we eat reindeer or springbook it is the same, and even elephant, gerbil,
kangaroo or whatever. Same with birds and reptils (and insects?).
But we know nothing about early mans contact with seafood. (People sailed
more than 80 km over open sea to New Guinea-Australia at lest 50 - 70 kya,
but thats not my part of the world)
And when it comes to the flora the real problem arises.
Most fruit and vegetables we eat today are highly gene manipulated (the
traditional type of gene manipulation - breeding). Some species, like corn,
have no original ancestor left. Some may have inedible ancestors.
And most of them originate in places far from Africa, and so are not likely
to have been part of early human diet.
Take a banana for example. It is not very like other fruits, and it grows
on herbs rather than on trees or bushes. Its origin is southeast Asia.
It is at least as new to humans in general as weat. Can it be included in
our dear paleodiet just because it is a fruit, or because the stick and stone
concept can be applied to it?
(Shouldn´t it be: Naked, _in_Africa_ with just a stick and a stone?)
Other fruits may be more like African ones, but maybe not enough.
And what about cabbage that stems from european seashores? Beeing a european
myself, my ancestors may have eaten it some 30 kya,or perhaps only for a few
thousand years.
Is our digestive system restricted only to species it has encountered enough
in the past, or does it handle food in a more generalized way. Flexibility
is what humans are specialized in in other aspects of life so why not when
it comes to food as well?
Could we perhaps rely on testing with the instinct eaters? If a food is
capable to give the apatite and the stop clear enough, it ought to be
"known" by the human organism, or???
And then the other side of the coin; what species that we need to eat, are
off our table. Leaves, stalks and roots that are not to be found at the
grocers. Species that were present in our ancestors environment for maybe
millions of years?

Well I´m going on with my interpretion of paleodiet, prepared to adjust
if I get enough evidence. But there is nothing such as the safe side as
far as I can understand.

- Hans