From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon May 05 2003 - 14:14:27 MDT
Harvey Newstrom falsely charged in another thread:
> People reading this stuff [about paleodiet theory] (rightly in this
> narrow case) classify us as religious cultists who use circular logic
> and pseudoscience to prove our believes to others as if they were
> established scientific fact.
Paleodiet theory is a scientific theory that attempts to explain empirical
facts, no different from any other scientific theory. It is not a religion.
It is not a cult.
If you want to see circular logic, Harvey, then look to those who rely only
on nutrition science to explain the facts.
For example here is a fact that few dispute:
FACT: Fruits and vegetables are healthy components of the human diet.
Ask a nutritionist to explain this fact and you will get an answer like
this:
"Fruits and vegetables are healthy because they contain lots of important
vitamins, minerals and other nutrients important to good health."
But is that a good explanation of the fact? No. It is a tautology, an
elucidation of the same fact in greater detail. It does not explain *why*
the fact is true. The next question to the nutritionist would be, "Okay,
fine, but how do you explain the fact that said nutrients found in
fruits/veggies are important to good health?" And the nutritionist will once
again offer a tautology. He will describe in even greater detail the
mechanisms by which said nutrients work in the human metabolism to support
good health, as if this were an answer to the question. But we already knew
that substances found in fruits/veggies are good for us, even if we didn't
know the exact mechanisms by which they work.
Paleodiet theory answers the question with a true explanation. The paleodiet
theorist explains: "Fruits and vegetables are good for human health because
they contain substances, some discovered and probably also some as yet
undiscovered, to which the human genome became adapted over millions of
years of evolution. Our friends the nutritionists can supply us with a
description of the known biological mechanisms of some of those adaptations,
and those descriptions are certainly very useful, but that is all they can
do. They cannot in the end tell us *why* these plant substances are good for
human health."
Simply stated, for paleodiet theorists there is a good reason why certain
foods are nutritious, whereas for nutrition scientists it's "turtles all the
way down."
-gts
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