On Mon, 28 Sep 1998 12:21:27 -0400, Todd Moody <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>On Mon, 28 Sep 1998, Amadeus Schmidt wrote:
>>......With very low animal parts of about 2% from animals.

>Sorry, Amadeus.  I won't accept an equivocation on primates and
>hominids. .....  Exactly *which*
>hominids do you think were fruitarians?
Well, no matter, how you may call them - already hominids, or pre-hominid
anchestors (I've read about hominids since 4mio years),
one thing seems shure: we do have anchestors that lived in some tropic woods
before the ice age. I do assume here - and that is what I've read in several
scientific publications, in museums and so on.. that these pre-humans

had a diet very much dominated by plant stuff (see teeth, coprolithes ...).
My imagination would compare their diet to that of todays chimps.
They still had no stone tools and were not even capable to break an animals
carcass. Their and our own pysiognomy show still the same signs of a
non-hunting animal (claws/teeth/eyes...).

>> In the course of the last 2mio years that changed somewhere to the numbers
>> mentioned above - about 30% from animal food.
>
>You are overlooking a very important fact.  What happened during
>the last 2-3 million years or so was the *appearance* of a new
>species, the human species.  This species has occupied an
>ecological niche quite different from that of the other primate
>species.
The "new" species is still a slowly mutating descendent from it's anchestor,
and not created new.
I did mention that there was a change - maybe towards denser foods.
May
 it be roots / onions / nuts / meats or altogether.
At the end point we have a human with a 30% meat part in the diet.
But no sign if that has developed towards a *necessary* part of the diet.

And to be comparable with modern diets:
That 30% don't consist of muscles of cows and pigs.
They consinst of a mix of mainly small animals, also insects,
worms, maggots, birds, eggs and taking most of
the whole body (brains, eyes, inner organs, stomach contents, bones, marrow).

>The evidence we have suggests that humans do quite well on a diet
>of considerable animal food.
Like cows do getting power food. They do good.
But they did'd adapt so much to it, that they would need it.
I can see no dependancy (animal vitamin) do you see one?

>If you are merely arguing that humans can get by in reasonably
>good health on a paleo-type vegetarian diet, then I think I
>agree.  I
f you are arguing that for optimum health humans
>*shouldn't* eat meat, then I can't agree.
I *don't* say that complete vegetarianism is a
prerequisite for optimum health.  But I see no lack if leaving it out.
Not only for reasonably good health.
Optimum health is possible for both, vegs and non-vegs, IMO.
There are other aspects I'd see more important.
Freshness of food for example.
Cleanness from poisons.
High fiber parts in the diet (for an adequate symbiont flora).

>.... w-3 fat issue ....
I'd conclude from what you said, that w-3 fats can be obtained from both,
plant and animal sources.
If meats are denser with it, that needn't be an advantage.
It was an advantage if a higher need was established than
available through plants, but i can't see that.

Of course if you eat an animal, which has already accumulated something from
plants that you want to eat, you can have it
 from its body
(if you eat the animals' storage organs).

But if we started as plant eater, and never gave up to be plant-eating
we probably still have the same ability to collect that same stuff
from plants, as that animal has.

Whatever the animal prey has in it, may it be w-3 fats, iron, calcium, whatever
it has it from the plants it eats.

If we developed as plant eaters, then we can obtain that from plants too.

If we find something we need, that's available *only* in meats
- *then* we have a reason not to rely on plants, i think.
In the meantime i try to rely on my instincts to drive me towards what
is best for me.

regards

Amadeus