Hilary,

 Bravo!



Robin

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-----Original Message-----

From:         Hilary McClure <[log in to unmask]>

Date:         Fri, 2 Apr 2010 15:41:47 

To: <[log in to unmask]>

Subject: Re: Butter and paleo



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