At 09:47 AM 9/3/98 -0400, you wrote:
>On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, Wade Reeser wrote:
>
>> A purely animal flesh diet provides all the necessary vitamins and minerals
>> for
>> a long and healthy life.  Period.
>
>Not necessarily.  If the animals you are eating have themselves
>been deprived of necessary nutrients, then you won't get them by
>eating those animals.  A case in point is omega-3 (n-3) fatty
>acids.  In wild animals, these enter the food chain as herbivores
>eat plants that are rich in n-3.  These fats are then present in
>the tissues of those animals and available to their predators.
>But n-3 fats are not present in the tissues of many domesticated
>animals, for the simple reason that these animals are not fed the
>plants that would provide them.  They are therefore n-3 deficient
>when slaughtered and we become n-3 deficient if we rely entirely
>upon them for nutrition.

In the case of essential fatty acids (e.g. w-3), it is a question of how much
is required for health.  When comparing wild animals to domesticated it is
reported that the wild animals have 4 times the amount of w-3 fatty acids as
do domesticated.  However, looking at the percentage of these fats to total
fat, these numbers are small for both wild and domesticated animals.  What
am I trying to say?  That the essential fats are a small percentage of any
animal, wild or domestic, and I believe that our nutrition is adaquate with
only
domesticated meat.  How do you quantify the assertion that the domesticated
animals are "n-3 deficient"?  I don't think that because they may have lower
numbers that this would qualify as deficient.  Are there quantifiable disease
states as a result?

>Similarly, if the food animal's diet is deficient in minerals for
>any reason, the flesh of that animal will not be an adequate
>source of minerals.

Again, how do you quantify this deficiency?  Also, since animal flesh is so
rich in nutrients, how "deficient" would they have to be before it would
affect
our nutrition?  As an example, take iron.  Anyone eating a small portion of
meat will exceed their requirements for iron.  B12 is another good example.

>Finally, to get all those vitamins one must eat organ meats in
>which contaminants are also acccumulated.

This is debateable as Stefanson did very well on a diet of primarily muscle.

>Thus, while it may be *ideally* true that animal flesh provides
>all the necessary nutrients, in the world in which we live things
>are a bit more complex.

Animal flesh has been shown to provide adaquate nutrition for generations of
Inuit.  Though out domesticated meat does have some quantifiable differences
with wild game, I don't think anyone really knows if these are significant.

>Todd Moody
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Wade Reeser   [log in to unmask]