On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:59:59 -0500, OmManiPadmeOmelet wrote in
<news:Omelet-0AA6A8.13595928072005@corp.supernews.com> on sci.med.nutrition

Which paleo-type diet? This one?

http://www.pcngcincinnati.org/2001/features.htm#1_9
Urology. 2001 Apr;57(4 Suppl 1):31-8.
2001_9    September 26, 2001
Donald S. Coffey: Similarities of Prostate and Breast Cancer: Evolution,
Diet, and Estrogen
[...]
Approximately 7 million years ago humans evolved from a common ape
ancestor, with our closest relative being the pigmy chimpanzee called the
bonobo. Like the other great apes, the bonobo eats primarily fruit and
vegetables and no meat. ... Even in humans, highly effective hunting was
not the major source of high meat caloric intake until later in human
development. When early hominoids such as "Lucy" came down from the trees 4
million years, ago and began to roam the savannas, they picked up the
ability to become hunter-gatherers.
     This hunting was still at the most primitive level until
approximately 12,000 years ago when the dog was brought into the human
hunting society, which tremendously increased the ability to catch animals,
owing to the dog's speed and olfactory abilities. The dogs chased and
corralled the game at bay for the human to subsequently kill, and the human
then shared the kill with the dog. ... This sharing of diet between human
and dog allowed the dog to be domesticated and trained to herd animals.
This major shift in food style occurred only about 10,000 years ago, when
humans became farmers and domesticated both plants and animals.
    The technology quickly evolved into a tighter focusing of human diets
from wild fresh vegetables and fruits to an eating pattern toward limited
plants that could be domesticated and grown in great quantities and stored,
like wheat, rice, barley, corn, potatoes, and other tubers. This resulted
in approximately 20 plant types rapidly replacing the high diversity of

season and were gathered from the wild. With large-scale domestication and
breeding of cattle came a high meat intake, and this was combined with
storage, curing, drying, and cooking as well as a propensity to use milk
and cheese from dairy processing. Cooking, burning, and smoking produce
high levels of heterocyclic molecules, many of which make adducts to DNA,
and are carcinogens. Since separating from the great apes and chimpanzees
approximately 7 million years ago, humans evolved into Homo sapiens sapiens
that are very similar to our present form in as little as 150,000 years.
However, we dramatically changed to a Western-style diet only in the very
recent past (ie, 15,000 years) ---at a pace much faster than we could
biologically evolve. This Western diet consists of high meat and fat; dairy
products; stored, processed, and cooked meats; and low fruit and fiber
intake, along with a more sedentary lifestyle.
[...]

COMMENT:

What say you read just 10 pages on the history of agriculture, and get
back to us.

There's not a thing you can buy in the grocery store that "is as it was
created by mother nature, unaltered."  Even the bottled springwater's
been filtered.

SBH