On Mon, 27 Mar 2000 14:01:51 -0500, Todd Moody <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Amadeus Schmidt wrote:
>
>> But since we evolved without vitamin pills, how can we assume that
>> we need them *now*? Through unprecedented high stresses on our systems
>> like from radioactivity, chemicals, smoking.
>
>Yes, that is one possible sort of answer.  Another may be that we
>are trying for levels of health and vitality that are higher than
>what was "needed" for our bare survival.
Humans or humanoids in the wildlife probably need the very best
level of health and vitality. Otherwise they would be eaten by predators or
outperformed by fitter contemporaries -
as happened to the several human predecessor branches like australopethines
homo erectus, neanderthals... .
If there was any ability that would have beeen hindered or diminished
by lack of a food essential, then only the best suited
beeings would survive at last.

Well, if the environment changes because a beeing explores new habitats
then it may be not exactely the case. As it happened with humans
they (we) moved from fruit and woods to exploring a savannah and virtually
every habitat of the world. Then in addition aquiring the ability
to hunt and kill bigger animals with weapons, like a predator does.
Primates, ideally adapted to living in the woods had to adopt a different
kind of nutrition and living.
Vitamin C and the B's show, that the metabolism had not enough time
(or reason) to change to a predators metabolism in the given time
- like it was with cats.

>Again, there may be a gap between the minimum amount of a
>nutrient that we need for survival and the amount that we can
>make good use of for optimum health.  For the latter, it may be
>very difficult to get to that level without supplementation, but
>that doesn't imply that we "needed" that much.

Living a live not exactely in the adapted nutrition profiles
- like it may have been as early as 1 mio years ago -
is certainly what we experience, living in the production world of today.
Supplementation may help to provide what is missing then.
With enough supplementation we even could live from synthetical
amino acids, fats and some sugar.
Having to supplement - I take it as a hint, that something still
isn't the way as our real adaption demands.

>Consider vitamin E.  As you say, it is very hard to get, say, 400
>IU of vitamin E from paleo foods.  Does this mean that we don't
>need that much?
Vitamin E's good sources in nature are seeds.
100 grams of almonds (or hazel) provide the *double* of one
day's recommendation. We would eat much more (abt. 350grams) of them
per day to satisfy the hunger for protein and energy.

Is it that the recommendations are too high?
Or is it that the present nutrition styles are too weak to provide it?

>..  We are exposed to other
>pro-oxidants in the form of pollutants.  As a result, we are more
>at risk for oxidative damage than our paleo predecessor were, and
>can make use of more antioxidants than they had access to.
Health risks which are fighed with antioxidants are probably
today more essential than before (except exposure to sun rays).

This may be a good field for supplementation. With Vitamin E, C, Selen.
Or eat more of the natural providers of this.

regards

Amadeus