Fredrik:
 > Could you please provide me with a detailed case history of one or several
 > of these people you're talking about?

Detailed case history? Probably not as detailed as you would like. The
archives of this list and the rawfood list (also hosted by the same
university as this list including easily searchable archives) have had
discussions of two of the most infamous cases: Nicole Burger's cancer death,
Guy-Claude Burger's continued mental imbalance (other's have a different
take on his mental condition), Zephyr/Ano's battle with trich (supposedly
from eating raw mongoose--a scavenger). There's also Manis' battle with a
staph infection. Aajonus Vonderplanitz's raw diet (including dairy) has some
startling stories of failures. Bernarr is all raw (if I understand him
correctly) and seems to eat animal foods on and off again (though, again,
it's hard to say) and you can judge for yourself his health status. Further,
many posters to this list still struggle with various ailments (though there
is very often relief, sometimes very dramatic). My own wife had two
miscarriages while nearly all raw (one time during high fruit/Thailand;
another time during very balanced animal/plant diet/New Zealand. jean-claude
has posted about himself and children some health problems, as well as many
successes with an all-raw diet.

Most of the above have been discussed many times and I have no wish to
rehash them. But if you care to research them as fully as possible (though
not likely as detailed as you would prefer) you can spend some time in the
archives mentioned above. Also, some of this stuff is reported at
beyondveg.com (There would also find a brief bio of myself--nothing all that
dramatic I'm afraid.)

I guess that the most important information on this paleo nutrition frontier
will come when we have several generations of paleo (raw/cooked/both) and
see if there is dramaticly robust health and fitness among these paleo great
grandkids, so to speak. If even there are several unbroken generations of
paleo folks. In the mean time, historical and anthropological data, data on
recent hunter-gatherers, modern bio-chem data, sharing in lists like this,
and, of course, most importantly, how one responds individually to diet
change--this is what we have to make our decisions on. And depending how you
look at all this info, you have a lot of decisions. :/

One commonality to all fringe diets appears as an idealism/superiority (and
various conspiracy theories but that's another topic). Whether vegetarian,
vegan, raw-vegan, frutarian, breatharian, instincto, raw including animal
foods, raw/cooked paleo, cooked paleo, macrobiotics, etc etc while some of
these regimes are more fringe than others, the idealism shines through in
each. Perhaps the idealism is useful in a motivational sense. Perhaps humans
just like to believe in something in a pretty weird world. Perhaps a lot of
things. And much of the data mentioned above is conflicting in important
ways, so one is pretty much left to cherry-pick the information they want,
to support what they'd like to believe.

Of course, there is nothing evil about any of this, but it can be, let's
say," not very useful" at times when the ideal just has too many holes in
it, especially when there are serious pitfalls (frutarianism is the most
striking example, but Bernarr is another). Even that wouldn't matter except
that people are often duped by the idealism and stop thinking when they
start to believe so much (and at times even place their children in danger).

Now, this is not as easily seen in paleo folks as it might be seen in raw
vegan (or even instincto), but the undercurrent is there.

All of which is a way too long-winded response your post about fearing
ill-health or death as you grow older. Of course this can be a very rational
fear, and perhaps motivational, but, as you say, there's more to health than
nutrition.

I hope paleo can buy me more years of healthy life, and I feel great doing
it, but it is more "the best I can figure out for myself" than a "I don't
want to die of cancer" thing. As it probably is for you too. Life is cool.
;)

Perhaps, the idealism here boils down to the noble savage stuff, or a
"naturalism ideology". All the regimes mentioned above argue that they are
the "natural diet" of humans--and paleo (cooked or raw) is certainly more
supported than breatharianism ;)--but I think many times the assumption can
become 1] nature is perfect, so 2] if I eat the perfect natural diet 3] I
can have perfect health. Now this sounds a bit much when it's said flat out,
but it seems to me that that's exactly the sort of thing I was after in my
more idealistic days. The trouble is that nature is anything but perfect. It
just _works_ is all. We supposedly have more than half our DNA as jibberish
apparently along for a free ride. 90% of the animals which ever existed on
Earth are extinct. Fossil fuels appear as natures junkpile (more of an end
product than anything that gets cycled naturally). All this _works_, but it
is nothing close to a perfect system. The vector which natural selection
approaches may be a kind of perfection but it can never get there because
the environment keeps changing. And besides, natural selection doesn't "care
about" an individual organism's pain or happiness--both are just
manipulations toward certain ends--but in reproductive success.

Cheers,
Kirt