On Fri, 22 May 2009 14:01:30 -0400, [log in to unmask] wrote:

>You know, I can't even remember all that.  I know I was one of the first
>subscribers to the list.  Was I a co-owner too?  I know that I'm a
>co-owner of the PALEODIET list, which was created for more technical
>discussions.  That list has been dormant for years, and in fact never had
>much message traffic.
>
>In any case, I was one of the first people posting here, and I've been
>continuously subscribed.  And you're certainly correct that I became
>interested in paleo after reading, and doing, Barry Sears's "Zone" diet.
>That diet is paleo-inspired but of course does not try to emulate actual
>paleo nutrition.

Maybe I was thinking of PALEODIET--at any rate, my point was that you were
one of the early influences on this forum.

>I've come under heavy criticism at times, yes.  This was largely due to
>the evolution of my own thinking here.  As you wrote, the initial
>membership here were inspired by Ray Audette's Neanderthin, 2nd edition.

Yeah, at the time, NeanderThin was the holy grail here. Now, ironically, Ray
comes under attack here and at other Paleo-oriented forums quite a bit. Ray
was a layman who never pretended to be a scientist or a perfectionist, so it
didn't bother me when I spotted some errors in my first reading of his book.
The most important aspect of Paleo dieting is the fundamental model of
biological discordance that Audette, Boyd Eaton and Cordain recognized
intuitively, as well as rationally. All else is secondary. 

>The appearance of Cordain's book was a turning point.  For one thing, his
>book was more successful than Audette's book ever was.  Consequently, many
>people associate the term "paleo diet" with Cordain, and tend to think of
>it in that way.  Audette's version is largely forgotten.

Yes. Like I said, those who continue to do the field work on a daily basis
will predominate. Those who write a book or two will fade. This happened to
Stefannson and others before Audette, though Stefannson has been revived a
bit by the Weston Price people, Audette and others.

>Ray Audette was much inspired by V. Stefansson, and favored a very
>low-carb, high-fat approach, with an emphasis on animal fats and pemmican.

Yes, I've always eaten more fats and organs than Cordain and Eaton
recommended and I've long wanted to move further in that direction. I'm now
finally getting to it. Wish I had started earlier, as the results have been
very positive. Making pasture-fed meats/fats/organs the mainstay of my diet
seems to work best for me. 

I've also found that cutting out nightshades produced much more of a benefit
for me than I expected. Not long after I did that, Dr. Cordain started
reporting that nightshades like tomatoes and potatoes contribute to
autoimmune disease and leaky gut syndrome via saponins.

> The third edition of his book backed away from that just a bit, as I
>recall.

Yes, Cordain and others helped Ray correct some of his amateur mistakes.
Still, it's amazing how much Ray got right without a background in science.

>Loren Cordain, as we all know, favors a moderate carb, moderate-fat
>version of paleo.  In fact, Cordain's diet is closer to the Zone, in terms
>of macronutrient proportions.

Yeah, I never fully bought into Cordain's emphasis on lean meats (maybe it
helped that I read NeanderThin before The Paleo Diet). I do agree that wild
animals have much less fat than animals raised on grains and manufactured
feeds  (anyone who's eaten a wild or near-wild animal, such as deer, moose,
bison, etc., knows this) and I can't dismiss the possibility that the fats
of commercial meats may have some unhealthy aspects, but I doubt they're as
bad as Dr. Cordain suggests and I think he'll eventually modify his views on
that as more science is generated (he has already stated that there are
healthy types of saturated fats, but no one gives him credit for that).  

>The problem is, our theories about actual paleo diets are grossly
>underdetermined by the evidence.  

Yes, and I think that Cordain is gradually discovering that nightshades
should not have been included in the Paleo mix--though so far he's only
recommending that people with clinical autoimmune diseases avoid them.

> That's why we must so often resort to
>inferences like, "Surely paleo people didn't walk by apple trees without
>taking some" and so on.  Or we use our imagination to reconstruct how they
>used fire, or why they didn't.  

I don't know why LIVING hunter gatherers tend to get ignored in these
debates. They are the best evidence we have because they provide far more
data than paleoanthropology does and we can watch how they do things live
instead of just speculating about how things might have been done. Often
times, they give us insights into how Stone Agers likely did things and how
they fared. Of course, we'll never know everything about the original hunter
gatherers, but we have already gained some amazing insights.

>I continue to read most of what is posted here.  But I have given up
>trying to figure out what the "actual" paleo diet was.  I'm content to try
>to follow a generally paleo-inspired diet, and I haven't been very good at
>that.  I've backslid to SAD any number of times.  In fact, at the moment
>I'm back to a virtually zero-carb approach, but I allow myself some dairy
>fats, in the form of butter and goat cheese.  Is it paleo?  No. I'm hoping
>it's about as good as whatever paleo actually is/was.
>
>Todd Moody

You and the other dairy eaters are of course free to continue eating dairy
products, and I value your input, but I have noticed over the years that
those who eat dairy tend to have less astounding results than those who go
fully Paleo, including one of my own close relatives. I haven't noticed
anyone who did much better in the long run after switching from Paleo to
Paleo+Dairy, but I have seen multiple examples of people who removed dairy
from diets like the Primal diet or Bear Stanley's diet and found that they
did better in the long run.