1.  Granted.
2.  Whether or not there is debate over the issue of whether or not fiber
supplementation is "required", Metamucil, enemas, colemas, colonics, and
drug-induced "mucous" expulsion do not belong on this list, unless someone
can convincingly explain to me how they fall under the auspices of
paleolithic.  Furthermore, I find the whole debate over fiber
supplementation questionable at best.  There are examples of peoples eating
a meat diet with no ill effects, and I will tell you personally that I need
no fiber added to get the job done when I'm eating according to the rules.
 And this is after 32 years of ignorantly abusing the hell out of this
body.  In my experience and observations, the body adapts to fiber but it
doesn't necessarily need it.  If people want to go ahead and spend their
money and create an unnecessary dependency by taking all kinds of fiber
supplements, I guess that's their business.  But if we're going to discuss
it here, then I'd think that we would be looking for natural fiber
supplemetation from whole foods, rather than from unnaturally contentrated
refined products.
3.  I agree with this insofar as I have seen that removing the causative
factors has not caused my body to revert to normal size <g>.  I think that
the supposition that restoring the system to initial conditions will
restore the system to initial state should be qualified by the degree of
damage done during the period during which conditions were degraded.
 People who are not as damaged as I am respond to this type of diet by
reverting completely.  Others such as myself apparently cannot.

John Pavao
----------
On Wed, 10 Dec 1997, John C. Pavao wrote:

> Bringing
> non-paleo issues to this list only muddies the waters and gets discussion
> going in the wrong directions.  It confuses the new people, especially
the
> ones who haven't yet had a chance to read Neanderthin.

First, according to its charter this list is not about
NeanderThin; it is about paleolithic eating.  NeanderThin is just
one set of opinions about paleolithic eating.

Second, while Metamucil is not itself a paleo-food, it is an open
question whether some such fiber supplement should be part of a
paleolithic diet, as part of a medicinal regimen.  Dogs eat grass
for "medicinal" reasons in some circumstances; I see no reason to
suppose that ancient humans might not have made medicinal use of
things such as seed husks.

Third, there are some important and unresolved issues about
whether using a paleolithic diet is *sufficient* to restore
health that has been damaged perhaps by many years of dietary
abuse.  This is a *support* issue, and this is a support list.
Furthermore, there are some rather misleading statements in
NeanderThin itself about restoring health by restoring dietary
"initial conditions."  They are misleading because they imply
that chaos theory shows that restoring a system to initial
conditions will restore its initial state, but chaos theory shows
no such thing.  It is quite conceivable that a modern-day
paleolithic diet needs to be supported by additional measures.

Todd Moody
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