On 9 May 2008, at 20:55, Ron Hoggan wrote:

> Most of us who read this list are devotees of nutritional therapies  
> and are
> supportive of pre-agricultural dietary practices. But how can Jim's  
> uncle
> assess a dietary therapy that sees such a wide range of opinion  
> expressed by
> such a homogenous group?

Hi Ron,

Sorry for the late reply, the list has run away with itself and I  
can't keep up.  (This is a good thing!)

I know what you mean.  I once had someone say to me that "paleo eating  
sounds a bit like the bible, you can interpret it any way you want".   
I know this was just one of his many ways of avoiding facing the issue  
(he's a bright guy, but he's heavily addicted to carbs), but he does  
have a point.

The problem as I see it, is that the (post-)neolithic/paleo split is  
almost equivalent to the eats-anything/tries-to-learn-about-food  
split.  That is, most people eating a neolithic diet don't care what  
they eat, most people eating a paleo diet do.  This means that not  
only does a neolithic eater have to go from eating bread to not eating  
bread, but they have to go from our advanced western mode of thinking  
("that look like food, me take off wrapper and eat, ugg ugg ugg") to  
the primitive hunter-gatherer mode ("I have consulted with my peers  
and elders as to the suitability of this item as a food, and the  
optimal way of preparing and cooking it").  Most people aren't  
prepared to regress so far into our past.

I dare to say that pretty much everyone on this list has a better diet  
than the average person today, so someone that starts paleo - whatever  
that is - will see improvements. The arguments here range from minor  
(are tomatoes paleo, I started that once) to major (how much starch  
from tubers is acceptable, which fats are good and bad) but ultimately  
they *don't matter* if all you want to do is improve your diet 90%.   
The remaining 10% forms bulk of the discussion here and is a symptom  
of the fact that, somewhere along the road, we forgot how to eat.  It  
must be really scary for someone to come here and see (but not  
realise) that actually, man "the wise" does not know how to feed  
himself, so it's understandable that they will run back to the easy  
government-approved cattle-feed they were eating before.

This is just the way I see it at least...

Ashley