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From:
arjen hoekstra <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Raw Food Diet Support List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 18 Nov 2001 09:56:50 -0800
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Hello everybody,

I just subscribed to this board. Before I decided to
subscribe I went through all the archives of this
board and hopefully read most of the posts that have
my interest. It is obvious that this board has grown
to be a mainly raw meat supportive environment and
that many vegans felt compelled to leave, for whatever
reason this may be. This post should bring up some
differences of opinion as well, but please refrain
from name-calling and remarks without referring to the
contents of this post. I just want to start a
discussion about this subject, since in my opinion
Beyond Veg has failed to address this problem properly
(some of the subjects have been touched on in the
early archives, but not to my satisfaction).

The theory of evolution as we see it today has as
driving force behind it a process we refer to as
natural selection. The first general misconception
about natural selection is that most people think it
leads to optimum health. This is not true: Natural
selection is maximizing reproductive success. Usually
maximizing health and reproductive success lead to the
same result, but this is not always the case. For
example in the elk natural selection promotes the
growth of huge antlers in males, but this is
definitely not a positive attribute to his health: it
costs a lot of minerals to grow the antlers every year
and he spends a lot of energy carrying this huge
weight around.

So evolution is all about reproductive success.
Differences in reproductive success lead to
differences in individual contributions to the gene
pool. These differences are only leading to genetic
adaptation of a certain trait (meaning that everybody
in the whole population possesses that trait) if there
is a selective advantage for this trait. This means
that individuals who possess that trait must have a
higher reproductive success than individuals that
don't possess that trait. How quickly genetic
adaptation occurs depends completely on this selection
pressure. Some selection pressures can even be so
small that that trait never becomes established,
because it is overruled by stronger selection
pressures on other traits or simply because of chance.

If I remember correctly, Ward on Beyond Veg is giving
information on rates of genetic change in certain
traits to make us believe that genetic adaptation to
cooked foods has occurred. If you consider the
information in the previous paragraph, this is totally
irrelevant, since the rates of genetic change are
totally depending on selection pressures (and the
generation time of the organism under observation). We
simply don't know the selection pressure on adaptation
to cooked foods, especially when the relevant time
period is at least a hundred thousand years ago (it is
already difficult enough to measure selection
pressures in living populations; imagine how difficult
it will be when talking about the distant past).
Beyond Veg tries to make us believe that the
adaptation to cooked foods has occurred, but I like to
present some ideas that support the opposite.

Lets start with comparing the possible adaptation to
cooked foods to a trend in modern diet. Over the last
decades a huge part of the population (especially in
America) has started eating a significant amount of
junk food. As we all know this has considerable
negative consequences for our health, so you would
expect strong selection pressures. However, it most
likely doesn't lead to genetic adaptation to junk
foods, since virtually all negative health
consequences occur after the reproductive age! This
makes it possible that the change in diet from raw to
cooked in our distant past might not have led to
genetic adaptation to cooked foods (unless you believe
in Lamarckian ideas). However, there is a way that
eating junk food can become established in humans when
we keep in mind that natural selection doesn't lead to
optimum health but to maximum reproduction. In that
case the negative health consequences of junk foods
don't matter, since somehow it enhances the
reproductive success of the junk food eater. This
seems to be the exact situation: we all can observe
that junk food eaters breed more than health conscious
people, whatever the reason might be. So this can lead
to a trait becoming established in humans, while it
actually has negative health consequences!! This is
extremely important, because the same situation might
apply to cooked foods!!

It is likely that selection pressures in our distant
past, when we started eating cooked foods, were much
stronger than they are now. However, it is doubtful
that these strong selection pressures apply to getting
adapted to cooked foods. Lets for a moment look at the
history of human evolution. Originally human ancestors
evolved in the tropics and had a mainly frugivorous
diet, probably including greens and possibly some
invertebrates. They also developed a huge brain
capacity, enabling them to adapt the environment to
their wishes (including making fire). This is in my
opinion the crucial step where things went wrong! All
other species are restricted in their development by
the limitations put on them by the environment. For
example, a lion will die when it moves out of the
savanna, because it isn't able to hunt in a different
habitat. Humans don't have these restrictions, because
they just adapt the environment to their wishes!
Instead of nature manipulating us through natural
selection, we manipulated nature. Because of this we
were able to move out of our original habitat, so we
had to deal with unknown food sources and started
killing other mammals and experimenting with fire. The
fact that our brains enabled us to do those things,
doesn't mean that our bodies will automatically adjust
to the new environment. This is obvious in some traits
that never developed any selection pressures, since we
effectively prevented them from happening. We, as a
species originating in the tropics, moved out of the
tropics to create our own little tropical environments
in an artificial way in completely unsuitable habitats
(think of houses and clothing). This makes us still
possess a tropical biological make-up. Human culture,
even in prehistoric times, has effectively cancelled
out genetic adaptation to a lot of traits. This might
as well apply to adapting to cooked foods, since
physiological adaptations like that are less likely to
develop strong selection pressures than morphological
traits (for example having longer legs most likely
make our ancestors run faster, leading to a direct
improvement of survival chances).

I also would like to write down some thoughts about
adaptation to meat. I mentioned before that the
earliest human ancestors developed in the tropics on a
mainly frugivorous diet. My conclusion there was that
humans have effectively cancelled out natural
selection on a lot of traits. In my opinion this also
applies to adaptation to eating meat (at least
mammalian meat; I don't cancel out the inclusion of
some invertebrates and eggs in prehistoric diets). I
find it a bit too coincidental that humans are as far
as I know the only omnivores without extended canines
(I like to reduce the discussion to canines here,
although there are many more traits that point to a
mainly frugivorous biological make-up). Tom Billings
told me that we don't have extended canines because we
use tools instead. Evolutionary spoken this doesn't
make any sense, since tools came into use with Homo
habilis about two and a half million years ago, while
our extended canines disappeared already five million
years ago! Also, the use of tools does not necessarily
mean that canines have to disappear: Chimps are known
to use tools and still possess extended canines. It is
interesting to notice that Chimps and Gorillas have
extended canines, even though the amount of meat they
eat is minimal. This implies that even the smallest
amount of meat eating requires extended canines. You
could argue that Gorillas and Chimps only need their
extended canines for defense, but that doesn't make
much sense, because then you would have expected
prehistoric humans to have extended canines as well,
defenseless as we were without tools between five
million and two and a half million years ago. The
argument that humans are only scavengers is not very
convincing either, because even then you expect them
to have extended canines, since it makes it a lot
easier to rip open carcasses (especially before we
started using tools).

Humans had to be opportunistic feeders, since we moved
away from our original habitat and had to get used to
totally different foods in a totally different climate
zone. Being an opportunistic feeder means a lot of
trial and error and, as I explained earlier, this
doesn't necessarily lead to genetic adaptation to
those foods. We have to keep in mind that prehistoric
humans can make dietary mistakes, just like modern
humans can. Cows are nowadays fed cows and other meat
and they at least survive on it, but it doesn't make
their biological make-up omnivorous.

I really would like to have reactions to this post so
we can discuss the subjects in more detail. One thing
I don't understand of the Raw Animal Food (RAF) eaters
is that they obviously assume that we are adapted to
eating meat but not to cooking foods. I wonder how
they justify this. I also would like to point out that
eating of animal products, especially when raw, have
nowadays serious risks involved, like Mad Cow's
Disease, Bovine AIDS, Bovine Leukemia, E.coli and
Salmonella, to name just a few. All of those diseases
can potentially affect humans (Read "Mad cows and milk
gate" by Virgil Hulse). Claiming that people on raw
food are immune to those disease is playing with your
life, especially when viruses are involved or with a
totally underestimated prion disease like Mad Cow's
Disease, which symptoms look suspiciously much like
Creutzfeld Jacob's Disease in humans. So I am
wondering how health-minded meat eaters, and
especially RAF-eaters, are dealing with those issues.

Best regards, Arjen




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