I find it very interesting.
   
  It seems to me the point is to find the best diet for yourself, and this will, primarily, be based upon your genes acting in relationship with your environment, which in turn depend upon your ancestors' genes and environments and so on... backwards in time.
   
  If you accept the concept of a paleolithic diet, you are essentially accepting the concept that at some point in time (in this case - during the paleolithic era) the human species - the human animal ate a diet that was optimally nutritious and that this optimal diet resulted in the "healthiest" of humans.  Did and could, theoretically, again - like now - with us.
   
  So you're sliding the time bar to "paleolithic" and, at least, starting from there (many of you finishing there.  I'm still experimenting).
   
  But why paleolithic?  Why not some other chunk of human time?
   
  Before we were human, we were primate - we share ancestors with other primates.  Why not stop the time bar at this point?  This is where the Vegans stop.  Their argument, that we have strayed from the primate way - away, they imply, from nature.
   
  But who wants to be a primate?  lol.  Not me.
   
  There are different theories, of course - but two prime theories of human evolution point to diet, or rather, a change in diet.  At some point humans became humans instead of those other primates.  One theory - protein from seafood - clams, mussels etc. - then fish and so forth.  The other theory - meat.  Somehow those animals that would become human found a way to get meat.  (There is also a cooking theory - allowing humans to get more protein from meat - scavenged or hunted).
   
  Whatever happened, something happened and it triggered a positive feedback - i.e. meat eating led to larger brains led to better hunting led to more meat eating.
   
  I think there are other points on the time scale we could look at.  Some of the healthiest people of all time have lived in the 20th and are living in the 21st Centuries.  Why?    Why not consider the Scandinavian diet pre WW1?  Some of the healthies people on the planet - at least as far as we know - would suggest a diet heavily reliant upon coldwater fish and dairy.
   
  One thing I think I know:  We are in a negative feedback loop right now as far as diet is concerned.  Somehow, we managed to efff it all up.   We efffed up the food.   We created bad food.  And maybe we had to eat more and more of it all the time, because it became worse and worse all the time.  
   
  And this study would seem to suggest that.
   
  Eat well.
   
  gale

steve <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
  Paleogal wrote:
>> I found this article interesting
>> 
> the average 15-pound wild monkey takes in
> 
>> 600 milligrams per day of vitamin C, 10 times more than the 60-milligram 
>> recommended daily allowance, or RDA, for humans who weigh on average 150 
>> pounds."
>>
>> "The monkey takes in 4,571 milligrams of calcium per day. The RDA for a 
>> human who weighs 10 times more is 800 milligrams. Of potassium, the monkey 
>> eats 6,419 milligrams; the human is expected to take in 1,600-2,000 
>> milligrams. Of magnesium, the monkey eats 1,323 milligrams; the human RDA 
>> is 350 milligrams."
>> For me this makes a case for ingesting supplements (vitamins, minerals, 
>> etc) along with a paleo diet since it seems that it would be impossible to 
>> get enough nutrition even buying just picked, locally, organic, and with 
>> variety.
>>
>> Steve
>> 
> LOL !!! Just be sure to swing through the trees when you're done eating. I 
> think those monkeys don't sit behind a computer or watch television. Their 
> nutritional requirements are probably a lot higher than ours with the type 
> of activity they indulge. Unless, of course, they're in a zoo...... Oliva 
>
>
> 
Regardless of activity level, there is still the question of optimum 
nutrition. Are you of the school of thought that the RDA equals Optimum 
Nutrition or that fruit and veggies developed over centuries can even 
allow us to reach optimum nutrition?

Personally, I consider myself a primate and have found in the material 
that I have read that hunter gather groups "graze" on a very large 
variety of plants as they travel daily. It was also found that hunter 
gathers don't spend many hours a day foraging for food but have a LOT of 
free time for play so the idea that primates like us need to be 
constantly "swinging through the trees" of even "running all over the 
savanna" doesn't wear well. Next, there is also the issue of size. The 
nutrition numbers above were for a 15 lb primate verses a 150 lb human 
so I would expect that "optimum" amounts would be easily north of what a 
wild primate is getting. Finally, the nutrition for example found in 
our fruit, even organic fruit, is only 10% of what is found in wild 
fruit so eating a completely organic diet using fruits and veggies 
developed by cross breading over the centuries is still going to be way 
below the nutrition levels of what our paleo ancestors were accustom to 
getting only 10,000 years ago.

So, I think there are important points to be derived from the article 
other than some "LOL". ;-)

Steve



       
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