How is drinking milk a "non-paleo" idea? Because humans didn't drink cow (or goat, or ewe) milk in the paleolithic era? People didn't consume canola oil, either -- does that mean Loren Cordain would be told to go to another forum if he tried to post some excerpts from his book here? (He advocates consuming canola oil.)

There are several points here:

1. Loren Cordain and Ray Audette don't own the word "paleo." Just because Cordain says to trim the fat off of meats, or to limit your intake of eggs, doesn't mean that the opposite views are non-paleo. So the fact that Cordain and Audette don't advocate consuming dairy does not mean that dairy-consumption is a non-paleo idea.

2. Similarly, just because adult humans didn't drink cows milk in the paleolithic era doesn't mean that dairy-consumption is a non-paleo idea. A lot of paleo dieters take fish oil capsules, for example, even though such capsules were not available in the paleolithic era. I already mentioned canola oil. Similarly, seedless bananas were not available in the paleolithic era. Just about every fruit and vegetable currently available to us was not available in the same form during the paleolithic era. That doesn't mean all modern fruits and vegetables should be barred from discussion on this forum.

3. So if the paleo diet is not about what Cordain and Audette say, and it's not about consuming only foods that were available during the paleolithic era, what is it about? I'll give you my own answer: The essence of the paleo diet is that we should consume foods that our bodies are well adapted to consuming. Twinkies were not generally available to our ancestors during the time that our bodies were being shaped by evolution, so it's no surprise that our bodies are not well adapted to eating twinkies. Animal meats (including organs, glands, and marrow), on the other hand, were eaten by our ancestors during the time that our bodies were being shaped by evolution, and we consequently do well with them. There's no magic date that marks the cut-off between what we're adapted to eat and what we aren't adapted to eat, however. Pretty much everything our ancestors consumed during the paleolithic era is -- or, rather, would be (since most of it is currently unavailable) -- quite nutritious for us to consume. Certain foods that were not available during the paleolithic era, like the modern banana and many other modern fruits, may nonetheless be healthful for us to consume because they share enough properties with the foods commonly available in our evolutionary past. Other foods not available during the paleolithic era, like the Twinkie, do not share many properties with the foods commonly available in our evolutionary past and should be avoided.

4. So the paleo-relevant question here is: Is milk more like a modern banana, or is it more like a Twinkie? Do its nutritional properties resemble what our ancestors ate while our bodies were being shaped by evolution such that it is a healthful food for us? Or not? You can't get the answer simply by checking a timeline to see when humans started consuming it. Doing so would rule out not only milk, but modern bananas and a zillion other foods that many paleo-dieters consume (including Cordain's canola oil). For one thing, the nutritional profile of milk may make it healthy for us even if it wasn't consumed more than 10,000 years ago (like modern bananas). For another thing, while evolution often takes at least 50,000 years to make any substantial changes in mammals, that is not always the case. Sometimes changes can come much quicker, and 10,000 years may in fact be enough time for us to have adapted to drinking raw milk. (See the article posted back on like page three or four of this thread.) If the paleo diet is about eating foods we're well adapted to eat, and if it turns out that we (at least some of us) have adaptations that make milk a healthful food for us, then (like the modern banana) it should be considered paleo-friendly.

5. Now the question of whether we (at least some of us) actually are well adapted to consuming dairy such that milk is a healthful food seems to be an open question. That is the question being discussed in this thread, and is a question that is perfectly suitable for this forum. (IMO.) I think kneebrace and others have provided a lot of good information on that issue, and it's a shame that they are being chased away. The issue is quite relevant to the underlying idea supporting paleo nutrition.