Fredrik: > Could you please provide me with a detailed case history of one or several > of these people you're talking about? Detailed case history? Probably not as detailed as you would like. The archives of this list and the rawfood list (also hosted by the same university as this list including easily searchable archives) have had discussions of two of the most infamous cases: Nicole Burger's cancer death, Guy-Claude Burger's continued mental imbalance (other's have a different take on his mental condition), Zephyr/Ano's battle with trich (supposedly from eating raw mongoose--a scavenger). There's also Manis' battle with a staph infection. Aajonus Vonderplanitz's raw diet (including dairy) has some startling stories of failures. Bernarr is all raw (if I understand him correctly) and seems to eat animal foods on and off again (though, again, it's hard to say) and you can judge for yourself his health status. Further, many posters to this list still struggle with various ailments (though there is very often relief, sometimes very dramatic). My own wife had two miscarriages while nearly all raw (one time during high fruit/Thailand; another time during very balanced animal/plant diet/New Zealand. jean-claude has posted about himself and children some health problems, as well as many successes with an all-raw diet. Most of the above have been discussed many times and I have no wish to rehash them. But if you care to research them as fully as possible (though not likely as detailed as you would prefer) you can spend some time in the archives mentioned above. Also, some of this stuff is reported at beyondveg.com (There would also find a brief bio of myself--nothing all that dramatic I'm afraid.) I guess that the most important information on this paleo nutrition frontier will come when we have several generations of paleo (raw/cooked/both) and see if there is dramaticly robust health and fitness among these paleo great grandkids, so to speak. If even there are several unbroken generations of paleo folks. In the mean time, historical and anthropological data, data on recent hunter-gatherers, modern bio-chem data, sharing in lists like this, and, of course, most importantly, how one responds individually to diet change--this is what we have to make our decisions on. And depending how you look at all this info, you have a lot of decisions. :/ One commonality to all fringe diets appears as an idealism/superiority (and various conspiracy theories but that's another topic). Whether vegetarian, vegan, raw-vegan, frutarian, breatharian, instincto, raw including animal foods, raw/cooked paleo, cooked paleo, macrobiotics, etc etc while some of these regimes are more fringe than others, the idealism shines through in each. Perhaps the idealism is useful in a motivational sense. Perhaps humans just like to believe in something in a pretty weird world. Perhaps a lot of things. And much of the data mentioned above is conflicting in important ways, so one is pretty much left to cherry-pick the information they want, to support what they'd like to believe. Of course, there is nothing evil about any of this, but it can be, let's say," not very useful" at times when the ideal just has too many holes in it, especially when there are serious pitfalls (frutarianism is the most striking example, but Bernarr is another). Even that wouldn't matter except that people are often duped by the idealism and stop thinking when they start to believe so much (and at times even place their children in danger). Now, this is not as easily seen in paleo folks as it might be seen in raw vegan (or even instincto), but the undercurrent is there. All of which is a way too long-winded response your post about fearing ill-health or death as you grow older. Of course this can be a very rational fear, and perhaps motivational, but, as you say, there's more to health than nutrition. I hope paleo can buy me more years of healthy life, and I feel great doing it, but it is more "the best I can figure out for myself" than a "I don't want to die of cancer" thing. As it probably is for you too. Life is cool. ;) Perhaps, the idealism here boils down to the noble savage stuff, or a "naturalism ideology". All the regimes mentioned above argue that they are the "natural diet" of humans--and paleo (cooked or raw) is certainly more supported than breatharianism ;)--but I think many times the assumption can become 1] nature is perfect, so 2] if I eat the perfect natural diet 3] I can have perfect health. Now this sounds a bit much when it's said flat out, but it seems to me that that's exactly the sort of thing I was after in my more idealistic days. The trouble is that nature is anything but perfect. It just _works_ is all. We supposedly have more than half our DNA as jibberish apparently along for a free ride. 90% of the animals which ever existed on Earth are extinct. Fossil fuels appear as natures junkpile (more of an end product than anything that gets cycled naturally). All this _works_, but it is nothing close to a perfect system. The vector which natural selection approaches may be a kind of perfection but it can never get there because the environment keeps changing. And besides, natural selection doesn't "care about" an individual organism's pain or happiness--both are just manipulations toward certain ends--but in reproductive success. Cheers, Kirt