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From:
Secola/Nieft <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Raw Food Diet Support List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 25 Nov 2001 15:06:01 -1000
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arjen:
> Obviously you didn't get my point. Like I said before
> (1): Humans are the most able to change the
> environment to such an extent that they move out of
> their original habitats and have to get used to
> totally different habitats and food sources.

The phrase "have to get used to" is puzzling. But yes humans are capable of
living on many different foods.

> No other
> species is so stupid to do this.

Stupid? It takes great intelligence to exploit new environments and their
bounty of valuable foods.

> Just because our
> brain is able to have us deal with new habitats and
> food sources, doesn't mean that our bodies
> automatically adapt to it.

How do you define "adapt"? Apparently you think we are "adapted" to raw
vegan but not to animal foods and/or cooked foods. Surely you can offer more
than the canine teeth argument (which you readily admit doesn't pass muster
anyway since gorillas have canins, etc.). What _is_ biological adaptation
specifically? It would be wise to familiarize yourself with the comparative
anatomy discussion on beyondveg before you throw up the same weak arguments
that are specifically dealt with there.

The new habitats are hardly relevent to the discussion, but the "new food
sources" are. I am not sure what new foods you mean. Since humans have been
eating animal foods since long before they were human, I can't see much
difference between a gazelle and a wooly mammoth--except that the wooly
mammoth has much more extremely nutritious fat. Tropical seafoods are
generally lean, whereas the colder the water the more extremely nutritious
fat the seafood contains--in general. If humans were adapted to seafoods and
land animals in the tropics, I can't see how exploiting even more nutritious
foods away from the tropics mean that their bodies couldn't adapt.

I see much more of a problem when we use our intellect to modify foods
extensively, as in junk foods, or grains even, where our species starts
subsisting on whole new classes of foods which we were not weaned on during
our entire evolution. This even applies in a way to raw veganism. Here we
have a few idealistic folks who forgo the human omnivore staus and say we
should eat fruits and veggies _exclusively_ (and maybe a B12 supplement).
This the human intellect modifying the native diet on an exclusionary
basis--dangerous stuff.

(I have little doubt that traditional Inuit would have eaten more fruits and
veggies had more been available, and likey that would have improved their
health even further--but here we have folks deliberately excluding an
important class of food from consumption. Why? Because of human intellect,
and its capacity to think thoughts that are false-to-facts, and even to
believe in them to the exclusion of reality.)

For some reason you will not admit that humans have been eating animal foods
since well before they were human, so you lump animal foods in with junk
food. And consider cooked foods the same way. While there is plenty of room
for reasonable disagreement on the pros and cons of cooked paleo foods, I
can not see how animal foods could possibly be a problem for you if you are
considering human evolution as a factor.

Again, you seem to think that there was some tiny period of human prehistory
where humans were forced to eat animal foods for the first time and then it
stopped. But it is clear that humans have been eating animal foods since
well before they were human and most continue to do so to the present.

> By the way, you have a very inappropriate way to use
> the word "thrive". "Survive" is the proper word to
> use: that they survive on certain foods doesn't mean
> that it is the best choice for their health. This is
> particularly obvious for the Inuit, since their
> habitat is far from optimal.

I use "thrive" to mean they were strong, well-formed, lacked evidence of
degenerative disease, happy, had stunning "bio-markers", reproduced very
well, etc. Perhaps you could share your yardstick for measuring how the
"best choice for health" would appear in a group of people.

Unless you are willing to tack down what you mean by the word "thrive" in
constrast to "survive", there isn't a lot that can be discussed. I agree
that folks can survive on foods that are less than optimal for their health
(SAD, grains, raw vegan, etc), but you can not dismiss a huge amount of
human culture, like those reported in Weston Price's book for example, and
simply say they are just surviving so it doesn't matter.

FWIW, if you could show me (not tell me) that humans eating a raw vegan diet
consistently showed better health (defined by some set of reasonable
standards) than the folks in, say, Weston Price's book, I would join you in
condemning both animal foods and cooking.

As for the Inuit, their habitat actually has been modified to resemble the
tropics in important ways. Igloos were often so warm that they removed their
clothes. Their parkas so effective that they would stay warm in sub-zero
temps for great lengths of time. Reports are that the traditional Inuit had
far greater stamina, concentration, patience, and technological savvy than
visitors had ever seen before. I would call that thriving and robust.

That they could live some to 60 some years old on average in such an
environment tells me that paleolithic peoples in far friendlier climates
probably fared even better in longevity, probably much better, regardless of
Ward's research on the subject. I personally have little doubt that if their
diet included more fruits and veggies it would have been better overall, but
to take the other extreme and say that humans should only--by their own
forced choice--have fruits and veggies is somewhat silly to me. And then to
say that everyone who doesn't eat that way is just some fluke of human
big-brained (un)natural selection who aren't eating right is further silly
to me. If not more than a tad self-rightious.

> Any decent book about human evolution will tell you
> that the original diet is mostly frugivorous,
> including greens, roots and possibly some
> invertebrates. This is before we started manipulating
> nature to a large degree and moved out of our original
> habitat.

This is also before "we" were anything remotely human. The "original diet"
of humanity you keep claiming was for an animal with a brain no larger than
a chimp--a different species, even a couple removed. So much of the problem,
arjen, is that you appear to have this idea that there was some sort of
golden age of natural humans who ate raw vegan (and maybe some slugs, eh?)
and then it all turned bad. This is just verbiage--verbiage that resonates
strongly with you for some reason, and very religious in nature actually. We
were in Eden and then fell from grace somehow. Great sci-fi, but not so
great as a theory or even a speculation.

"Any decent book about human evolution" will tell you a lot of worthy stuff.
Why perseverate on the "original diet", take it out of evolutionary context,
and ignore millions of years of evolution since then?

> Kirt:
> "The idea that the "normal selection process" is
> inhibited also needs to be spelled out--very
> carefully."
>
> Like I said before (2): selection pressures are
> extremely hard to estimate, even in living
> populations, so for the distant past it is virtually
> impossible. However, it is obvious that we have
> inhibited the normal selection process in some traits
> since we are still a naked ape, even with people
> living in the polar area.

Huh?

> Kirt:
> "The facts are that humans thrive on a wide variety of
> diets.....Weston Price found the best health in those
> people who ate the most seafood. Initially he set out
> to prove vegetarian diets were the best, but he found
> just the opposite. If a diet (say raw vegan) is the
> most biologically appropriate, wouldn't we find that
> most healthy people practiced that diet."
>

arjen:
> Again inappropriate use of the word "thrive". Like I
> said before (3): Moving out of our original habitat
> means that we need to start experimenting with new
> food sources and people make mistakes in that process.
> That they eat certain foods doesn't mean that it is
> the best for their health; it means that there is a
> lack of more appropriate foods in their new habitat.

That they eat certain foods _may_well_mean_ that it is best for their
health. You have failed to show in any way that the "new" diet with more
animal foods is less than optimal. (You just believeit beforehand.) Indeed,
it may well be that just because pre-humans survived on a mostly plant diet
that doesn't mean it was the best for their health. Certainly, by any
indicator you may show, paleolithic humans were an improvement over their
predecessors

> By the way: I read Weston Price's book from beginning
> to end. Price compares people living of totally
> refined crap with people of the same tribe living of a
> more natural diet. Of course he will find that the
> ones eating a more natural diet are much healthier.
> That still doesn't mean that they wouldn't be better
> of on their original diets (and preferably in their
> original habitats).

Then please show ANY evidence of a people eating your version of an original
diet in any habitat? And then we will see how they compare to the folks in
Price's book. Then there will be something to discuss. Until then what you
are saying above is un-falsifyable and won't win you any favor.

> Kirt:
> "Humans thrive on animal foods, find them delicious,
> go to great lengths to obtain them, have health
> difficulties without them."
>
> Wow, lets make a list of your totally warped
> perception of reality:
> 1) Wrong use of the word "thrive"; should be
> "survive".

Still waiting for your yardstick and then we can continue.

> 2) More than 99.9% of the meat eating humans need to
> spice and salt their meat, otherwise they can't
> stomach it.

Interesting statistic. Source? And does that include all the humans and
pre-humans in the last couple millions of years too, or just the SAD folks
today.

> 3)Some people go through great effort to obtain
> heroin. Does that mean it is good for them?

It kills their pain for a time, but I assume you mean healthy for them, no?

You would need to show that animal foods are addictive in the sense that
heroin is for your dismissal above to have any validity. A person dying of
thirst will go through great effort to get water. Does that mean it's
heroin?

Anyway, it is seen consistantly that cultures place a high value in the
healthiness of animal foods. This is especially true of all recent
hunter-gatherers ever studied.

I'm curious, do you go thru great effort to obtain raw vegan foods of the
quality you prefer?

> 4)Lets look a bit closer at the distorted view of
> reality about people having health difficulties
> without animal foods. You conveniently ignore that
> most people have health problems with animal foods.
> Lets look at the facts here: virtually all
> degenerative diseases are linked to the consumption of
> animal products.

There must be something else going on since recent hunter-gatherers ate
plenty of animal foods and have no such troubles.

> You have the amazing ability to look
> only at the diseased vegans and only at the healthy
> meat eaters.

What you don't get, stuck in your polemics, is that there are more than two
ways to eat. Not just raw vegan, not just SAD. Regardless, you admit there
are sick vegans out there?

> Everybody with a more realistic view on
> life can tell you that there are healthy vegans and
> that there are diseased meat eaters (in fact plenty of
> the last category).

Yeah, since just about everyone eats meat. ;)

Still, the argument isn't about whether people eating SAD are sick. It is
about the role of animal foods in human evolution.

cont...

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