At 13:58 18/04/1997 -0500, you wrote:
>Denis said:
>>A certain OSHAWA said the same thing fifty years ago. I don't know
>>how recent a discovery is the argument of the similitude of
>>proteins...But basically what the founder of macrobiotics said was
>>that, as far as RAF is concerned, we are necessarily more adapted to
>>the oldest species than to the newest ( he used it as an argument to
>>exclude red meat from macro but to >accept fish as a source of protein
>>). This made much sense to me even before I became an instincto.
>>Personally I eat mammal meat once or twice in the year. An attitude
>>which, I guess, gives me some affinity with the vegans which were
>>thrown out of the list earlier on...

>Peter
>Since man began to eat fish only quite late in his development - about
>40.000 years ago - this argument does not seem to hold water.

Denis

My remark was based on macroevolutionary factors, not on the "recent"
history of  human dietary evolution.

This argument holds as much water as the water from the oceans hold many
fishes,  Peter. And for a very simple reason: if you go back up our
phylogenetic tree, you will find mammal eaters only at the latest stage of
human development (homo sapiens and their immediate precursors were  by far
the biggest meat eaters of all primates ), but fish eaters you will find for
an extended period of time. That time precisely  when there was no
terrestrial life on the planet, and your ancestors had fins all over their
body....Our genes carry along millions of years of marine evolution. From a
purely evolutionary point of view we are  much more adapted  to a marine (
what I refered to simplistically as "fish" in my earlier post  ) and insect
diet , than to a  mammal diet. [ if there is some truth in my logic, fish
should be likewise an acceptable diet for most terrestrial
carnivores/omnivores ...]For the same reason, but to a more pronounced
extent i guess,  we are  more adated to eating birds and herbivorous mammals
than to eating carnivorous mammals.  Keeping that in mind, one will approach
very cautiously the  eating of carnivorous mammals ( as a side mention,
carnivorous animals are natural  receptacle for all sorts of parasitic
infestations and intoxication borne by their preys ...)

As for your claim that "man began to eat fish only quite late in his
development", I think it might be more appropriate to say that
anthropologists have found that  human groups in the temperate zone  have
started to rely exclusively on seafood  diets at a late stage of their
history  ( late Upper Paleolithic). I guess you will readily agree that the
fact that our  commitment to maritime lifeways does not seem to predate
Upper Paleolithic times in the temperate zone, has little in common with the
actual history of seafood in the overall  evolution of human diet.
I would tend to hope, given the incredible delicacy that  sea urchins and
other seafoods may have added to our ancestors' fare, that tropical beaches
and shorelines  have been harvested  well before the date  you mentionned.
The fact that broken  urchin shells are much less visible than remains of
cup up walrus certainly gives something to think about for anthropologists
versed in epistemology.


Somebody...
>>* In a number of talks, Viktoras has claimed that B vitamin shortages
>>are due to overeating and flatulence. Specifically, overeating causes
>>fermentation and changes the intestinal flora - i.e., the B-vitamin
>>producing bacteria cannot thrive, and flatulence has a similar effect.
>>By bringing your eating back to the correct level, the intestinal
>>flora will soon adjust and B vitamin producing bacteria will thrive
>>again. (The topic of producing B12 within your intestines and colon is
>>controversial; the bacteria are there but there is no hard proof
>>that you can absorb it, as the B-12 receptor sites are upstream in the
>>digestive tract.)

Peter :
>Interesting information.

Denis :
Cases of perfectly instinctive overeating by non human animals with
deleterious consequences on vitamin absorption include reptiles,  free
ranging as well as  captive. Water snakes and crocodiles that feed too much
on prey animals containing the enzyme thiaminase, found in a variety of
fishes, have been reported to be affected by vitamin B1 deficiency, on
account of the destructive power of this enzyme on this particular vitamin.
"There are flaws even in Nature".  Neither  overeating nor farting are  a
privilege of human beings.

Cheers
Denis