On Thu, 12 Sep 2002, Jim Swayze wrote:

> Todd > Rennet-fermented cheese would have been available to paleolithic
> people to an extent that simple whole milk would not have been.
>
> Know what bugs me about this argument, though?  Hypothetical availability
> ain't the same thing as regular consumption.  It hasn't been shown to my
> satisfation that our ancestors regularly consumed dairy in any form.

It's an issue not just with this argument but across the board,
just as Wally pointed out.  To what extent has it been shown that
our ancestors regularly consumed chicken? Walnuts? Huckleberries?
Rutabagas? Dill weed? and so on.  For that matter, what counts as
"regular consumption"?  Daily?  Weekly?  Monthly?  It's no good
lumping a bunch of different foods together as "meat" and saying
they ate *that* regularly, because different meats have different
properties.  I think the same is true of "dairy," which is not a
food but a class of foods.

In the end, we have to make guesses based on what paleolithic
people plausibly *could* have eaten regularly, which is the basis
of the "sharp stick" rule.  Given that limitation, I don't see
any honest way to deny that rennet-fermented cheese could have
been eaten regularly.  It was there, in the stomachs of young
mammals.  I just can't see any reason to believe that hunters
didn't kill, say, young goats.  And having killed them, I can't
see any reason to believe that they wouldn't avail themselves of
the rich source of fat in their stomachs.  So, given the premise
that they were killing and eating these animals on a regular
basis in the first place, there just doesn't seem to be any
reason to deny that cheese, in this form, was regularly available
to them.

What is the justification for considering, say, fish roe to be
automatically paleo, but to regard stomach cheese as a
questionable item?  Whole milk, on the other hand, seems
questionable precisely because of the availability problem.  The
mistake, as I see it, lies in generalizing the unavailability of
milk to all forms of dairy.

Todd Moody
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