No doubt there is some room for disagreement as to what constitutes "paleo."
Sure, the body fat and protein compositions of the animals we have available to
us now probably differ from those our paleolithic forbears ate.  I'm not sure
how much that matters, but I can see that the difference is there.  (I've seen
no one mention the possiblity that modern meat animals might be BETTER
nutritional sources than the those available to cavemen due to their increased
fat content). But, by and large, what we should be eating is not that difficult
to figure out:  meat, bugs (if you can stomach the thought), fruit, vegetables,
nuts, seeds.  Where we truly differ, I believe, is first in exactly how to sort
out the relative importance of each of these food sources.  And secondly, in how
and to what degree we can cheat.

First cheating.  There should not be much disagreement about what constitutes a
non-paleo diet.  The only room for major disagreement lies in whether, and to
what degree, we can cheat with these foods.  I am in the camp that says that
cheating, period, is bad for you.  I think that Ray -- Haagen Daaz and all --
would agree with me.  He has his ice cream despite the fact that he knows it is
not in the best interests of his health.  Cordain says you can have grains
occassionally.  I think this is a bad idea.

Second, someone said that if Ray's right, which kind of fat should we be eating?
It's necessary, of course, to call upon scientific studies to determine the
answers to our dietary questions.  But we must keep in mind that if Ray's right
-- that obesity is an immune system response to foreign proteins in non-paleo
foods -- there ought to be a serious questioning of the results of ANY dietary
study, "peer reviewed" or "mass market."   The common understanding of the
calorie and fat-content calculus cause of obesity vs. Ray's revolutionary idea
of the cause of obesity are irreconcilable, and if one believes Ray, much
science must be thrown out the door or at least looked at with a very skeptical
eye.

Understand that I'm not calling for us to be unscientific here.  Just to be
cognizant of the fact that the the overwhelming majority of diet science out
there has a major flaw in the very grounding of it's analysis.  I'd love to see
unbiased study of the health effects of a pemmican only diet on a good cross
section of people.   This would give us more science to add to the stories we
have of folks like Stefannson who were able to thrive on a purely meat and fat
based diet.

So my point.  This science is exactly what I had expected of Cordain.  And why I
was so disappointed to see that he apparently has not read Ray, or else chose to
ignore his revolutionary concept of the cause of obesity and other ills.

Jim Swayze