Okay, sure, but there's colloquial definitions which in a culinary context mean "industrially-synthesized compound meant to mimic the culinary properties of a commonly consumed chemical", here trying to mimic sugar.
Xylitol may exist in nature and be produced by our bodies, but per this article foods with it added contain 1000x the amount we would ordinarily produce.
Perhaps a better rule of thumb would be "for a given chemical, keep your exposure/consumption within an order of magnitude of what would have been typical for a human pre-1850".
That sounds great if you think that humans had access to perfect diets in 1849.
I suggest to you that is not reasonable.
"For a given chemical, avoid doses known to have a high probability of harm" is, I think, what you actually want. Then we can talk about known vs suspected and what qualifies as high probability -- impact on years of life expectancy is probably a good initial measure.
There is no Golden Age in the past. There may be a Golden Age in the future, but it's not at all certain.
I think you misread me a bit there. I'm not saying that human diets in 1849 were perfect, by any means.
> "For a given chemical, avoid doses known to have a high probability of harm"
is exactly what I do not want. I don't want to assume everything is safe until it's shown otherwise, after I've eaten it for a decade.
I want to assume things are poison, unless they are shown to be safe. Things eaten in quantity in 1849 generally meet that criteria, minus a few things we now know to be more dangerous than thought back then.
When introducing some new compound meant to replace something in the diet like sugar, it seems much more reasonable to assume that its use may have side effects, until satisfactorily proven otherwise.
They didn't, but food was much less processed then. Of course, a lot of it was also spoiled/rotten, possibly contaminated, diseased, etc.
From the standpoint of the diet that human evolution is adapted to, you have to look back to hunter/gatherer diets. Meat, fruits and vegetables, and frequent periods of near-starvation. I've sometimes wondered what a diet of one or two big meals of meat per week, with the occasional handful of nuts and berries on other days would be like.
>I've sometimes wondered what a diet of one or two big meals of meat per week, with the occasional handful of nuts and berries on other days would be like.
Assuming your general health and all, if you were careful in your nutrient profile, there's no reason you couldn't try it for, say, a week and and see how you felt.
