Professor of Anthropology, Nathaniel Dominy speaks on diet page 2

[Moochy]

Strange how much you seem to like Harris then...

lol...I think Kurt Harris is a sharper mind than Cordains; I am willing to forgive him lol

[Lewis]

lol...I think Kurt Harris is a sharper mind than Cordains; I am willing to forgive him lol

Well, although he's swung around like a weathercock, whatever he's currently saying he says with a great deal of self-confidence. I suppose some might take that for "sharpness". And there's often scorn for those who disagree with him in some way, and a fondness for those online paleo-battles that rather mar the movement. He's like a rather angry weathercock.

I can't recall Professor Cordain ever getting embroiled in online rows.

What Cordain has done is leave a body of serious and sustained research covering something like a quarter of a century now.

Now I think paleo tends to be "oversold" (I don't mean that necessarily in an economic sense). In truth the diet isn't that different to a number of others. (Just as an example look at the lists of foods allowed and not allowed in the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which goes back over half a century now. Not identical but not a mile away either.) Neither is the approach unique -- Taubes mentions a physician taking himself off down the city museum and asking what prehistoric man ate way back (round about 1910, IIRC). Stefansson was even more interested in the remote past and was a trained anthropologist to boot. And Dr. Eades probably knows more about the anthropological and prehistoric evidence than almost anyone in paleo -- he's been going to conferences on forensic anthropology and that kind of thing for years.

I think both the importance and the uniqueness of the diet are oversold. Nevertheless, when all's said it done it probably just about edges out most other approaches and, as I say, represents something like 25 years of sustained research. That must amount to thousands of hours of work. In detail there's a lot there. He's added concerns about vitamin D; there's a long-standing interest in essential fatty acids; he's been involved in studies looking at macro-nutrient ratios:

Estimated macronutrient and fatty acid intakes fro... [Br J Nutr. 2010] - PubMed - NCBI

... and the list goes on.

Would I eat exactly as he says? Not necessarily. I think, for example, someone with diabetes would be well advised to give an ear to the low carb people, too, and would not want to eat at the macronutrient ratio given in the paper above. But I certainly prefer him to the angry bloggers.

[Lewis]

BTW, since I mention Dr. Eades -- he has some interesting posts on static isotope analysis buried away somewhere. What those wouldseem to show -- even if other evidence didn't -- is that the bulk of the protein in the diets of early man (and some of his immediate hominid precursors) came from animal sources. In fact I used to work in archaeology (although that was some time ago and one can't keep up with everything) and last I knew that was also true of the Neolithic for northern Europe (for the material that had then been looked at). No way to tell from isotope analysis whether this meant mostly meat or mostly dairy, but they sure as heck don't seem to have been gorging on grain. Maybe, like sensible fellows, they were using what they did have mostly for beer. LOL.

Rather puts a spoke in Crazy McDougall's wheel, doesn't it?

But then he's not about trying to know the truth about the past, but about pushing a vegetarian agenda. And we already know this.

I haven't seen the video. But then time's limited, isn't it? If I had more time to spend on this I'd probably find it better spent catching up on what, for example, Chris Stringer has to say than listening to someone McDougall has dredged up for ideological not scientific reasons. Enough said.

[Moochy]

I think this the article you mentioned Lewis. In any case, this and the prior two articles that go with it are an interesting read. (The other two are linked early in the third article)