In consideration of a couple very simple aspects...
In considering one aspect -
The percentage of plant foods edible to humans vs. the percentage of animals foods
The data would strongly support - 
Homo sapien is a carnivore
In consideration of a second - 
Humans, unlike other animals, doesn't make its own Vitamin C
The data would strongly support - 
Homo sapien is a vegetarian (as the animal rights people argue)
One may want to agree that - Homo sapian is an omnivore.
And perhaps accept a theory that being an omnivore gives us a competitive advantage in nature.
In consideration now of what we're currently learning about adaptation, evolution, genetics.
One might even accept that some of us are more omnivorous than others of us.  (And an interesting point of conversation earlier about whether or not it is "possible" to have adapted to eating dairy).
We have:  what is/was/should be a "paleolithic diet" - as you mentioned earlier.  (an active discussion on this group)
And then:  Is paleolithic a "healthier" diet than some other configuration?  See question above...  (also an active discussion - especially of links of articles supporting "paleo" diet... see question above....)
And what is the variation?:  Individual genetics configured by and in diversity with and to all of the above.  (sharing of what works/doesn't work - individual results may vary!)
Can I ask this?:  What is the state of the art.  What is basically known to each of these questions.  Are there any things that everybody agrees upon?
What's the foundation of our science (as I see it) belief (as others see it)?  
I'm fairly new to all of this.  I see a lot of disagreement.  But I know there's a bedrock of knowledge there that everyone shares and finds reasonable at this moment in time.  
Thanks,
gale



----- Original Message ----
From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 9:10:43 PM
Subject: Re: Stone-age diet may lower risk of heart disease

Geoff wrote:

> Well, there is a good reason why plants would have been less likely to
> have
> been eaten, given that there was no agriculture, so there would have been
> no
> mass-cultivated fruit-trees etc., plus in many areas of the world,
> hominids
> would have been unable to find certain fruits at frequent times(eg:-
> winter,
> near the glaciers/deserts etc.), since fruits generally appear seasonally.
> And
> since meats are more nutrient-dense than plants, it makes sense for
> hunter-
> gatherers to depend mainly on meats, as a result.

To an extent, I agree. In some paleolithic environments, plant foods of
any sort would have been scarce.  In other environments, they would have
been more plentiful. I think it's important to stress the diversity of
actual paleolithic settings, across the millenia and around the globe. 
And I do not dispute the premise that in all paleolithic environments,
paleolithic people depended *mainly* on meats. But I also believe that
they, like their modern hunter-gatherer counterparts, were adept at
exploiting all the edible plants around them.  And when cooking became
part of their way of life, a quarter of a million years or so ago, the
result was a large expansion of the available plant foods.

> The point re tubers was that they were not a nutrient-rich food, as
> evidenced
> by the number of African countries suffering from malnutrition who depend
> on
> it to a large extent. I certainly don't deny that tubers or roots or
> whatever
> would ahve been eaten as emergency-rations or temporary famine-relief etc.

The malnutrition is not caused by eating tubers, but by *not* eating
meats. I'm not suggesting that paleolithic people ever consumed tubers or
any plant foods to the near exclusion of meats.  But the use of meats as a
primary food simply doesn't entail that plant foods in general, and tubers
in particular, were relegated to emergency or famine foods.  It's a false
dilemma.

> Also, the definition of a Palaeolithic diet is not simply any food that
> was
> consumed during  the Palaeolithic. That's obvious - after all the
> Palaeolithic
> actually started c.2.5/2.6 million years ago, according to official
> designation,
> which was a time  well before hominids went in exclusively for meat when
> hominids still ate huge amounts of plants. Since no genuine palaeolithic
> diet
> I've ever heard of is mainly vegetarian in character(the various
> definitions
> always suggest a paleolithic diet of  anywhere between 65% to 100% animal-
> food, one can't obviously say absolutely everything eaten in that era was
> what we should eat.

That's a good point.  The truth is, the term "paleolithic diet" is
inherently vague.  The 65-100% animal food range is very wide.  There's
simply no good reason to believe that every actual diet that falls into
that range is a diet worth emulating. But once we decide that some are
worth emulating and some aren't we step outside the strictly paleo
framework and use some other principles.  I'm okay with that, but it's not
really paleo anymore.


> Re cooking:- The trouble with cooking is that it can lower antinutrients
> making
> foods, otherwise inedible edible, but, at the same time, it lowers
> nutrient-
> levels of substances such as vitamins, as well as lowering
> bioavailability re
> introducing AGEs(advanced glycation endproducts) and similiar toxic
> substances such as HCAs( Heterocyclic amines) etc. etc., eg:-
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_endproduct
>
> However, that's beside the point.The actual  definition of a nature-based
> Palaeolithic Diet is a diet which doesn't use technology or where foods
> are only
> eaten which are edible raw, which is the interpretation that  Ray Audette
> and
> many others have  made:-

That may be Ray's definition, but the fact is that cooking is paleolithic,
so as definitions go, it fails to fit the reality.  And the idea that the
paleolithic diet doesn't use technology is utter rubbish.  Technology
begins with stone tools for crushing, grinding, butchering, killing,
sticks for digging, and so on.  The case can be made that what
distinguishes humans, and pre-human hominids, from all other species on
the planet, is the sheer technology-dependence of their food supply, a
dependence that has steadily increased for 2.5 million years or so.  Tools
are technology.  Tools distinguish us from other predators.  Without
tools, we would either be extinct or we would have followed the
evolutionary path of other predators: hyper-acute senses, great speed,
fangs, claws, etc.  We took a different path, the technology path. 
Eventually that included cooking, in the middle of the Paleolithic.  The
exclusion of cooking as part of the definition of what counts as paleo is
arbitrary and without any empirical or theoretical justification.

There is no pre-technology paleodiet.  There was a pre-cooking paleodiet,
as well as a paleodiet that used cooking.  One might prefer one to the
other, but it's no good to claim that one is paleo and the other isn't. 
They're both paleolithic, on any reasonable construal of what the term
means.

> "My definition of nature," he says, "is the absence of technology… I eat
> only
> those foods that would be available to me if I were naked of all
> technology
> save that of a convenient sharp stick or stone." The trouble  with this
> term,
> while very accurate in describing what is commonly accepted as a
> palaeolithic
> diet,  is that it logically forbids the use of cooking, as cooking is , of
> course, a
> highly technological process.  In other words, once you introduce fire,
> you are
> dealing with an unnatural diet which is not free of technology.

No, the trouble with Audette's definition is that it is just wrong.
Definitions need to conform to the realities denoted by the terms being
defined.  The term "paleolithic" simply isn't restricted in the way
Audette says it is.  One can, of course, coin some other term, and many do
use the term "raw paleo" to make it clear what they mean.

Todd Moody
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