Re: Peanuts

RH: My teacher blamed the fish diet for their stunted stature and their unusual body shape but she admitted it was conjecture on her part. Because her parents were Icelandic, I took this information as being fairly authoritative. I also thought she was stunningly beautiful and yearned to be older.   

Based on images of Icelandic horses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_horse, they don't look a lot smaller than other ancient breeds of horses, like the Celtic horses they descend from (which Highland ponies also descend from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_pony) and Mongolian horses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_horse http://www.thelongridersguild.com/images/Mongol%20wooden%20saddle.jpg. Plus, islands are known to promote insular dwarfism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_dwarfism. So far it's looking like your teacher was right that her hypothesis was just conjecture.

[Ron] That's interesting. According to the geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer, in his book titled British Origins, the Irish have maintained a _relatively_ homogenous genetic makeup with a significant component of Viking genes. 

I followed Oppenheimer's work for several years, because it was interestingly contrarian and he was one of the few geneticists to do work on Celtic peoples, and I thought his hypothesis that Celts actually came to Europe via North Central/East Siberia and are related to  was intriguing. Unfortunately, much of his work has since been debunked and he has basically fallen off the radar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_the_British_Isles. Because of my familiarity with the failure of his genetic analysis, I learned that genetics is a much less certain science than popularly believed. Since then, on the genetics/ancestry/anthropology front, I've been mainly following John Hawks' work and the rather controversial Evo and Proud blog. I don't always agree with them, but they do produce some thought-provoking stuff.

[Ron] If you ate gluten foods for a long time, it may have predisposed you to developing dairy allergies that you might not otherwise have developed through increasing your production of zonulin. 

Yes, I'm aware of that possibility. I've never had strong classic dairy allergy symptoms, though I did test IgE and IgG positive for all dairy products tested, especially the whey fraction (which incidentally is highly touted as a superfood these days on many LC and Paleo websites) on an ELISA test, which is supposed to suggest both allergy and intolerance. Of course, Elisa tests are highly controversial and it didn't correlate well to the foods I do worst and best on, though there was some correlation and the results were high overall, which did match the apparent hypersensitivity of my immune system. However, the recommended elimination diet from the ELISA test did nothing for me, whereas my own trial and error, informed by the raw Paleo template, has worked rather splendidly for me (still have a bit further to go to reach "normal" health, though).

[Ron] Nonetheless, I don't usually avoid posting somewhere just because someone disagrees with me. If I did that, I'd have to leave my wife. She hardly ever agrees with me. :-)

Ah, good. That is indeed the Ron I remember from my more active days here, so perhaps I misunderstood something or maybe your name was confused with someone else's.

[Ron] Those very small distinctions and adjustments to diet could lead to huge changes in life expectancy and improved quality of life for these individuals. So my position is that if we can determine our inclinations, and eat accordingly,  then we can have better lives. 

Yes, and I've always been somewhat open to experimentation and lately I've been even more open to it and have been focusing more on how I individually react to foods, rather than whether foods fit popular notions of what's "Paleo" (especially as disagreement on what is "Paleo" increases).