Roy said:
>>On an unrelated issue, I just heard over the instincto
>>grapevine that Zephyr/Ano was really ill a few weeks
>>ago.
>Ano came down with a serious case of trichinosis probably due to eating
>a raw mongoose on HI. As Denis pointed out last week predators in the
>wild more often than not are infested with parasites and are best not
>eaten raw. Ano is in slow recovery due to good medical help.
>Trichinosis can be fatal if left untreated.
A few selected historical/epidemiological info on trichinosis :
1) amongst animals it is found worldwide; amongst human beings principally
in United States, Canada, Eastern Europe ...with parts of South America,
Africa and southern Asia and Middle East as secondary source of infection.
2) The disease is a puzzle and an affront for north american public health
authorities because its prevalence is less in the tropics/subtropics than
in the temperate zone, where sanitary conditions are much higher. Reason
generally accepted but not demonstrated is that less meat is consumed in the
tropics...
3) Interestingly trichinosis does not occur amongst Hindus, Jews and
moslems, for whom there are religoius bans on eating pork, by far the main
vector of the disease.
According to Asa Chandler (in Introduction to parasitology, 1940 - )"there
can be little doubt that this worm, with the pork tapeworm as an accomplice,
was responsible for the old Jewish law against the eating of pork".
Historians surmised that Mohammed recognised pork ingestion as a cause for
the disease and would thus have followed Moses' example in prohibiting pork.
4) Based on autopsy survey the prevalence of the disease would be 2.2
percent in the US. Vagueness of non-acute forms suggests that real incidence
could be higher. Most cases actually go undetected.
5) Flesh eating animals are the natural hosts. Most mammals are susceptible
to the disease. But in attacking human beings the parasite condemns its
descendance to death : the infection reaches a dead end, for human beings
have no predators.
6) Of particular relevance for the instinctos : eosinophils may play a role
in immunity to the nematode worm because experimental depletion of
eosinophils has been shown to result in increased numbers of larvae
recovered from infected animals.
In this contect it is interesting to note that, even if their eosinophil
count is much higher than that of people on a normal diet, first generation
instinctos probably have lower eosinophil counts than second generation
instincto. As an exemple my count was nil before and also 9 months after
beginning of instincto (0% of leucocytes). Last (compulsory) blood analysis
gave 336 units/mm3 or 7 %. This amount has been incresing steadily over
the years. For second generation instincto, I've heard rumors as high as 12
% of the leucocyte formula, but have no evidence...
Hence my free advice : if you can't help eating carnivorous animals, wait a
little bit ...
Denis said:
>>From a purely evolutionary point of view we are much more adapted to
>> 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 ...]
>
>It would seem to me that a couple of million years as omnivorous
>primates would largely erase this history, and unless you subscribe to
>The Aquatic Ape Theory, before 40.000 years ago I think that our
>consumption of fish was quite limited.
I think your view is anthropologically biaised, but we've already discussed
this issue in a prior exchange. The evolutionary determinants of our
"natural" diet do not originate only in the "hominid" stage of our
prehistory. Our evolution from protozoon all the way to fish, early
mammals, monkeys... was not a process of deletion, but on the contrary a
process of accumulation of information. An accumulation which alllowed early
human beings extreme efficiency and flexibility in their copīng with a
variety of environments and diets.
>people, consumption of insects seems to have stayed with us as a
>supplement to our diet throughout our development - except for maybe in
>very marginal areas like the Australian Interior where I could imagine
>insects and larvae might be the mainstay of the diet.
Again : amongst our direct (early) simian ancestors, we have many insects
specialists... We should not restrict your dietary views to the knowledge of
the diet of extant or non-extant human groups. What we need is a much
broader perspective which can encompass everything which has been eaten by
all our ancestors. This is not to say that we should eat as a matter of
priority those things which our ancestors, as a whole, ate the most. This
is just to say that our instincts are more at ease with fish than with meat.
Carnivorous mammals being amongst the latest species having developpped on
earth, and none of our pre-hominid ancestors having been a predator of these
carnivorous mammals, I would not rely too much on my instinct for
carnivorous animals. This is of course a personal view.
>>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.
>
>Does not a lack of technology fit into the picture somewhere here? As
>for the urchin shells I wonder whether they were not just a seasonal
>phenomena and whether those grasslands that we supposedly evolved in
>were located close to any oceans. That of course leaves us with lakes.
IMO the savannah:grassland period is, from a dietary point of view not as
relevant as the extended period spent in the tropical forest. When applied
to food and diet questions, it constitutes IMO a gross misrepresentation of
the question of human adaptedness... In the grasslands/drylands (as opposed
to the lush forests) we would have, over hundreds of thousand
invented/improved cooking, made up the first tools, the fist weapons...and
learned the rudiments of agricultura and domestication for the future onset
of our civilizations (agriculture, animal selection and domestication ...)
No wonder all the anthropologists are putting an emphasis on that period
of time ...But is there any relevance for the natural diet of mankind ? I
don' think so. On the question of foods, everything had been decided before.
>>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.
>
>Maybe the snakes and crocodiles were overeating in an attempt to make
>up for deficiencies in their feed. I wonder how much the health of
>animals in "the wild" has deteriorated since man began cultivating and
>polluting the planet like he has in recent years. I guess we will never
>know.
Or they had no choice.
I'm convinced that the more we'll learn about anti-nutritional effects, the
more we will have to pay attention to the question of overeating. What we
need to figure out here is that while eating instinctively in our denatured
wolrd , we probably often reach the point where not only we are not
benefiting from the extra food but we are actually depriving our body of
useful elements which could be in demand elsewhere. Of course one can
still hope that the negative fallouts of this first overeating will be
compensated by ...a second overeating of compensatory foods...and so on and
so on...
An example to illustrate my topic : there has been numerous discussions
lately on the list on the question of calcium. I'm often astonished by the
level of scientific mastery displayed by many participants . But I'm also
surprised by the simplism of antiquated reasonings such as " let's eat
more calcium containing foods to get more calcium in the body in the right
place". Why would our body work that way ? If I don't stop filling my tank
before it starts brimming with gasoline, I'm on my way to drown the
engine....
High protein diets are suspected to prevent an adequate assimilation of
calcium; and vitamin D is known to enhance the absoption of calcium and
phosphorus from the intestine, but also the resorption of calcium by the
kidneys...How can we make up our minds ? Isn't calcium after all like love :
the more we fear we are lacking of it, we less likely we are to find it...
Cheers
Denis
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