jean-claude and all,

> there is only a learning process about
> what made the paleolithic peoples or hunter gatherers of yesterday
> healthier than their neolithic cousins

By the way it is by no means proven that paleolithic eating habits caused
paleolithic hunter-gatherers to be healthier than neolithic people. You
assume it is true, and I join you in that assumption, but it is only an
assumption. The evidence for it is not so strong as it may appear.

We have only the fossils of ancient people. Most of them are adult fossils.
Those adult fossils seem to show greater stature and lesser incidence of
disease in paleolithic vs neolithic. Ray and the rest of here accept the
hypothesis that diet is responsible for these differences in the fossil
records, but these changes in the fossil records can be explained also by
alternative hypotheses. For example:

1) It is quite possible that neolithic people, because of their organized
armies and superior weapons and established settlements and homes and farms
and other amenities, simply did not need to be as tall or as strong as
paleolithic people to survive. The physical demands on the neolithic person
were less than on the paleolithic person, and so the forces of natural
selection did not penalize the short and weak as much in the neolithic as in
the paleolithic. Natural selection combined with the reduction in physical
demands in the neolithic can therefore explain the negative change in the
average stature from paleolithic to neolithic.

2) Almost all fossil records, paleolithic or neolithic, are of adults.
Infant mortality rates probably decreased dramatically in the neolithic, for
reasons similar to those mentioned above for reduced demands on the physical
body. The reduced infant mortality rate would have allowed for many
sickness-prone children to grow into sickness-prone adults. These sickly
children would have died in infancy in paleolithic times and left no fossil
record, but in neolithic times they survived to become adult fossil records.
This reduction in the infant mortality rate can explain the apparent reduced
health of the average neolithic fossil vs the average paleolithic fossil.

These theories are quite plausible, in my opinion, and they can explain the
evidence of the fossil records upon which our much valued paleo-diet
hypothesis so heavily depends. But neither of these theories actually
support the idea that paleolithic nutrition is superior to neolithic
nutrition. In fact they explain the fossil records while tending to support
the theory that neolithic nutrition was superior to paleolithic.

Pardon the above blasphemy, but in general I think it is important that
people always keep an open mind and never assume anything. :)

-gts