On Mon, 28 Sep 1998, Amadeus Schmidt wrote:

> Todd, I felt that I owe you an answer on this thread, why I'd
> consider a vegetarian diet a valid option in reconstructing a paleodiet.
> The figures we did agree at showed that for a very long time (until
> beginning of ice-age) a kind of fruitarian diet was primates/hominid's
> diet. With very low animal parts of about 2% from animals.

Sorry, Amadeus.  I won't accept an equivocation on primates and
hominids.  Primates are not a species, they are a class.  Just as
different species of birds thrive on vastly different diets, it
is reasonable to expect different species of primates to do the
same.  The fact that some primates do well on nearly vegetarian
diets has *no* strong implications for human diet.  Most
primates--the vast majority--are not hominids.  We also do not
know which primates were the direct ancestors of hominids, so we
don't know whether they were fruitarians either.  Darwinian
theory calls for a *single* pre-hominid primate ancestor species.
We don't know what it was, or what they ate.  Exactly *which*
hominids do you think were fruitarians?

> 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.

> But what does such an amout -you call considerable- mean for the metabolism
> of a hominid body? Could it for example create any dependencies? IMO it didn't.
> Where were it's advandages or, maybe even pitfalls/drawbacks compared to the
> ma
> inly fruitarian diet.

Again, you are presupposing that humans used to be fruitarians.
The evidence we have suggests that humans do quite well on a diet
of considerable animal food.

> If, for example, meat becomes available for cows (they get it presently as "meat flour")
> even such grass specialists *can* use it, and indeed use it for a quicker
> growth of their bodies. But are such effects leading to a goal
> *we* could want to achieve? May it be Health? Longevity? mental sharpness?

You are begging the question in the comparison to cows.  Cows
are, as you point out, grass specialists.  Humans are not, and
never were.  If cows were forced to eat meat in the wild for 2
million years, two things might happen:  Either they would become
extinct or they would become omnivores, well adapted to meat
eating.

> In the case of the hominid, it appears as if a (almost) fruitarian
> beeing - the hominid - suddenly got the possibility to access a new
> food resource - meat.

Again, please specify the fruit-eating hominid that you are
speaking of, so that I can understand the lineage you are trying
to describe.  The point is that human beings are well adapted to
eating meat, as well as vegetation.  We are now recognizing the
importance of the eicosanoids in the maintenance of health, and
these are best kept in balance with protein intake greater than
what can easily be achieved on vegetation alone.

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.  If you are arguing that for optimum health humans
*shouldn't* eat meat, then I can't agree.  Humans have been
meat-eaters for as long as there have been humans.  You have
never presented any evidence to the contrary.

Even the w-3 fat issue does not speak in favor of a vegetarian
diet.  Yes, you can get ALA from purslane and other greens.  But
the *total fat* content of 100g of purslane is only .1g, and I
don't know what percentage of that is ALA.  100g of beef will
provide .22g of ALA.  It would be even better to have dietary EPA
as well as ALA.  Feedlot meat won't provide any, but neither will
purslane or any other greens that I know of.  Thus, for EPA
purslane is as bad as beef; for ALA beef is better than purslane.

Todd Moody
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