Interesting article and discussion. I agree with the statement that a lot of the benefits people are seeing from the "paleo" diet are due to cutting out all the processed garbage. The comment somebody made about the flexibility of the human diet reminded me of a book that some of you might be interested in..."The Jungle Effect" by Daphne Miller. The author is a family practice physician who noticed that one of her patients who went to stay with family in the jungle somewhere in South America lost weight and felt a lot better while there than she had at home. She then researched the diets in different parts of the world that are "cold spots" for certain health problems (diabetes, depression, colon cancer, heart disease etc.) and wrote this book. It's amazing how different the diets are from one another--Iceland, for example, has a diet with very few fruits and vegetables (lots of fish) while people in the Copper Canyons (Mexico) eat lots of corn tortillas, beans and vegetables and not much meat. (As an aside, the Copper Canyon people in this book are the same tribe that inspired the book "Born to Run"). Goes to show that there are many different diets that can be healthy, and some of them do include a fair amount of grains and/or dairy.