Steve Sailer on the Paleo Diet

In addition to an iconic picture of Raquel Welch, Steve Sailer at VDare has posted an article on the paleo diet.  It’s mostly about whether the Paleolithic analogy is pertinent to modern times.  An excerpt to pique your interest:

A big reason there’s so much confusion on this topic is that we aren’t supposed to think about genetic differences between people based on their ancestry. So, a couple of decades ago Tooby and Cosmides came up with the idea that everybody’s ancestors 50,000 years ago were paleolithic hunter-gatherers, and thus we’ve all inherited the exact same human nature. But, of course, humans have continued to evolve over the last 50,00 years, often in radically different environments.

Thus, we see major differences based on ancestry: Italians and Jews suffer less from binge drinking than Scandinavians because their ancestors had alcohol many generations earlier. In the Olympics, high altitude-adapted Ethiopians make better distance runners than sprinters, while West Africans and their diaspora make better sprinters than distance runners.

That doesn’t mean that everything is racially determined, just that it will probably be worth your while to think about what your ancestors were like and what worked for them. If, say, you have a lot of alcoholics in your family tree or it’s a stereotype about your ethnicity, be careful with the booze. Probably none of your ancestors evolved successful adaptations for hitting the crack pipe without it hurting them much, so avoid cocaine altogether.

Read the rest.

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