* This is bad advice--too much of any food means too many calories. This is more so with fruit than with vegetables. Dr. Cordain advocates this because fruits and vegetables, like nuts, fill you up. But you get around the hunger problem by eating six small meals a day, so it isn't necessary to gorge on fruit].

** There are two kinds of fats:

1. Bad fats. These are the saturated fats (in dairy products and meat) and trans fats (oils processed for hardening, which makes them carcinogenic and nutritionally worthless)

2. Good fats. These are the unsaturated and monounsaturated fats that are found in nuts and wild ocean fish such as salmon and sardines.

*** This is bad advice. Eating handfuls of nuts will make you fat. Instead of "snacking on handfuls of nuts," eat just a few nuts. For example, add half a dozen almonds to a protein shake or sprinkle some walnut pieces on a salad. And don't eat any more nuts than that in a single day.

**** This is not only expensive and unnecessary, it's environmentally irresponsible. Restaurant menus have been forced to change from what they were less than a generation ago, simply because the fish they once offered are no longer available. Man has overfished the oceans and depleted it of fish that once numbered in the millions. Cordain advocates wild fish because farmed fish are likely to contain such toxins as PCBs and mercury. But wild fish also contain such toxins. Cordain advocates fish because of the current mania about Omega 3. But if you eat dark green leafy vegetables (try to eat in the brassica family), you will get all the omega 3 you need.

Don't do

Dr. Cordain also has a list of things not to do. Here, we frame them in "to do" language for clarity

* Cordain includes potatoes in this group, though potatoes are technically root vegetables. From the standpoint of fat loss, that error is inconsequential. But Cordain includes beans in this group, and that's flat-out wrong. In fact, a diet heavy on beans is quite conducive to fat loss (it can also be conducive to friend loss and job loss, if you don't use Gas-X or equivalent). Dr. Cordain notes says beans are poorly absorbed and may compromise the immune function. Cordain pooh-poohs all of these foods for one simple reason: folks in the Paleolithic era did not eat them.

** Nobody knows the capacity of our kidneys. You have two of them, and you can live on one of them. How much salt is too much salt for the kidneys, then? We just don't know. Cordain's advice here is cautionary, not prescriptive. If you find you look bloated, experience frequent thirst, or have other signs of excess salt intake, then cut back on salt and increase your water intake.

***  There's a lot of controversy about milk. The main argument for drinking it is it's a "great source of calcium." As Cordain observes, this isn't true. Only a maximum 35% of of the calcium in milk is bioavailable, depending on your ability to digest milk. A better way to get calcium is to eat dark green leafy vegetables, specifically the brassicas such as kale (very rich in calcium).