Geoffrey Purcell wrote:
> I've read Kurt Harris' site  and it is pretty misleading, IMO. For
> one thing, legalistically speaking, he shouldn't even be using the
> word "paleo", since his advice isn't really palaeo at all, just
> more of the usual cooked,low-carb dogma a la Atkins. I seem to
> recall that his view was that if a person experienced no immediate
> allergic reaction to dairy , that they should go for it. He forgot
> to mention certain statistics such as that most of the world are
> lactose-intolerant to varying degrees; in other words, there are
> always going to be some people who may not immediately incur
> clearly observable problems from dairy/butter in the short-term,
> but who eventually get health-problems years later, as a result of
> consuming it.

Geoff, this doesn't seem entirely fair. Here are a few points, from 
browsing his blog:

1. Contrary to your comment above, Harris says to avoid, or even 
better eliminate both milk and cheese, precisely because of lactose 
and casein. He specifically does mention lactose intolerance as 
widespread, and mentions immunologic problems related to casein.

2. He promotes using butter and heavy cream as a good way to get 
adequate levels of saturated fats, in palatable form, with only slight 
traces of either lactose or casein, to help people get off of sugar 
and flour--people not as hardcore as some of us on this list who might 
just eat raw suet.

3. Rather than being misleading, he admits up front that he is not 
after "paleo food re-enactment," but is aiming for paleo metabolism.

4. He advocates elimination of all grains, and especially gluten 
grains, all legumes, HFCS and other refined carbohydrates, vegetable 
oils (except coconut), and advocates sharp reductions in PUFA, and 
especially n-6.

This all seems adequately paleo to me, as well as his recommendation 
to get sun or supplement with D3, and to do interval and resistance 
training. I think most people on this list would have a great majority 
of views in common with him. Even you, except for the butterfat and 
cooking. As far as your comment about "cooked, low-carb dogma," I'm 
quite comfortable including cooked meat and carbohydrate restriction 
within the spectrum of paleo. Though I am saving for future reference 
the links you posted a while back about the health effects of dietary 
AGEs, as well the new links you recently posted. Of course, even if 
dietary AGEs are damaging to health, as they appear to be, that 
doesn't mean they're not paleo. Just because something is bad for you 
doesn't mean it's not paleo. Running around with spears, hunting big 
animals, for example. That can get you killed! Maybe we never fully 
adapted towards neutralizing the effects AGEs and HCAs in cooked meat 
because they're not so deadly that, in the context of an otherwise 
healthy diet, they stop us from passing on our genes or contributing 
to group survival.

Hilary