Bodhi:

I've never been a fan of aquatic ape theory. Taphonomic analysis can find tiny scratch marks on 2.6 million year old bones, but it can't find unequivocal evidence that shellfish were smashed open with rocks?  Color me skeptical.

As far as nightshades, they're out there as an allergen…but they're not one of the Big Eight.  Everything else is small potatoes (ha, ha) by comparison to them.  And I'm not sure they're a true allergy…just a chemical reaction to the solanine.  What reaction do you get?

Chris, tracker:

Lactose intolerance is lactose intolerance, and it doesn't matter if it's raw or pasteurized.  Casein allergy is the usual true milk allergy (very few people have whey issues AFAIK) and it may be that anti-inflammatory antibodies in raw milk get denatured in pasteurization.  There also may be an A1 vs. A2 beta casein issue…but this is all sort of guesswork on my part, as I'm not an expert on dairy chemistry.  You might ask your raw milk source what kind of cow it is, and whether they know if it's A1 or A2.

What sort of symptoms do you get from pasteurized vs. raw milk?  Allergic, or digestive issues?

Emily:

Mutations happen all the time, and most are bad: there are a lot more ways to screw up development and survival than to enhance it.  Now that medical technology lets everyone survive, humans are accumulating deleterious mutations at an amazing rate.

I actually looked around for research on red meat allergies, and apparently it's almost completely unknown except in Australia, where being bitten by a certain type of tick carries a non-zero risk of triggering an allergy red meat.  And even then it's extremely rare.  Pork or chicken is far more common...and even those allergies are insignificant compared to the Big Eight.

Is this person allergic to other things?  Because there are a lot of people with leaky, damaged guts (typically starting with undiagnosed celiac) who become allergic to all sorts of stuff as a result of that.

JS

Bodhi:

Sounds like a Type III allergy: it is theorized that canker sores are an autoimmune reaction, though no one has yet figured them out completely. (They're more prevalent in celiacs.) Interesting that you only get them from peppers and tomatoes, not potatoes, which means it probably has nothing to do with solanine. (Which is a glycoalkaloid, anyway, not a protein).

JS

Ravi:

Dairy is a very cultural thing AFAIK, and one of the obvious adaptations that some ethnic groups have made to a Neolithic (and possibly Late Paleolithic) diet.

As I point out above, butterfat is a good food for everyone...it's the casein and lactose that some have issues with.  (Thus fermented dairy products like yogurt, in which bacteria predigest much of the lactose.)  I myself drink half-and-half from time to time, frequently cook with butter, and sometimes consume full-fat yogurt.  However, I minimize my intake of lactose due to its likely contribution to AGEs (it's just as unstable in vivo as fructose).

Have you looked into the A1 vs. A2 beta casein issue?  Apparently A2 is the ancestral variety and A1 is a more recent mutation.

Chuckster:

Which vegetables and fruits are you eating to get you to 50g?  I don't count potatoes, beans, or grains (including pseudo-grains like quinoa) as vegetables...although it's a culinary term and not precisely defined, the usual definition is "An edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed.  This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant."  

Perhaps you're eating a boatload of asparagus, broccoli, and brussels sprouts?  But given that (for example) one spear of asparagus has exactly four calories, I can't see eating enough of it every day to get you to 50g of protein.

Bananas have the opposite problem: there's about one gram of protein in a banana, and 40 bananas would result in 4800 calories/day, which doesn't seem realistic.  So now you've piqued my curiosity.

JS

Cornelius:

I wasn't going to say it, but since you brought it up...yes, there are a lot of people who absolutely swear to allergies they don't have.  Type I hypersensitivity is very straightforward and easily testable.  And you're correct: being allergic to glucose is like being allergic to water.

It might be possible to be allergic to molasses or brown sugar, since those contain other plant compounds...but I have a hard time imagining how anyone can be allergic to white sugar.  Like I said in the article, allergies are to proteins.  (Fructose malabsorption is real...but that's not an allergy, and most of those people think fruits are just fine for them, so I'm calling 'sugar allergy' a form of orthorexia.)

As far as Native Americans and dairy: I'm sure you're right, and that was one study from one area.  I'd be interested to know who.  But AFAIK there is no history of animal husbandry in America previous to the arrival of Europeans, so I'm not sure how tolerance would have been selected for.  In the case of Eastern tribes, I'd suspect race mixing after colonization (a meaningful number of whites ran away from the rigid, autocratic Puritan colonies and 'went native'), but there wasn't much of that by the time Europeans got to the Great Plains.  I'll file it under "things I don't know the answer to".

JS

Marisa:

Very interesting!  Are you sensitive to corn syrup/HFCS?  Beet sugar?  Dextrose?  Invert sugar?  And how long after ingestion does it take for these symptoms to manifest?  Is there any physical component, or is it purely emotional?

JS

Brandon:

Welcome! Angelo spoke very kindly of this place in his podcast, and I'm glad you find it informative.

It's possible to have allergies to some fruits: kiwis, pineapples, peaches, and blueberries all have a little bit of protein in them (as opposed to cherries, lemons, limes, and mangoes, which have essentially none).  But it's rare in the grand scheme of things: the Big Eight are responsible for over 90% of allergies in the world.

What are his reactions like? (I'm wondering if it might be a reaction to something sprayed on the fruit and not the fruit itself.) Are these foods he ate often, or just occasionally? Is he manifesting allergies to anything else, or just fruit? Does he have IBS or any other digestive problems?

JS