Don and Rachel Matesz wrote:

> People who eat like a rabbits,  multiply like rabbits (profusely),
> people who eat like lions, multiply like lions (sparingly).  The
> !kung women average only four live births per reproductive lifetime;

and also wrote:

> I suggest looking into something called Natural Family Planning

Richard Keene countered with:

> The high productivity rates are due to people choosing to have lots
> of children, not the diet.

Hey, why hasn't anyone mentioned the role that breastfeeding (or the
lack thereof) has played?  What about the decline in breastfeeding
(not only in this century, but in previous centuries as well) and its
impact on fertility and family size?  Besides diet, what about the
average length of time that a !kung woman breastfeeds each child, and
its effect on child spacing?  Not only do they engage in what
Westerners refer to as "extended" breastfeeding, but they also don't
limit its frequency as so-called "civilized" people do.  What about
breastfeeding as "birth control" - has anyone heard of LAM (the
Lactational Amenorrhea Method)?  Have you read _The Politics of
Breastfeeding_ by Gabrielle Palmer, _Milk, Money, and Madness_ by
Naomi Baumslag, Dia L. Michels, and Richard Jolly, or _Breastfeeding:
Biocultural Perspectives (Foundations of Human Behavior)_, edited by
Patricia Stuart-MacAdam and Katherine A. Dettwyler?

There's more to this than either diet or "choosing" to have more
children...

--
Deanna