Gary:
>> What I'm looking for is a critique of the following:
>>
>> http://venus.nildram.co.uk/veganmc/encephal.htm

His support is one pop anthropology book (one wonders how long he had to
look for a brain growth theory that doesn't meantion animal foods), after he
trashes pop anthropologists.

The brain graph is proof that human brains grow faster and he (cribbing the
author) makes extra lines to argue the opposite. Besides, neoteny is the
process, and such a process has very little to do with any arguments against
the concurrent trend of brain explosion and animal food consumption. The
form of neoteny is interesting, but what does it have to do with animal
foods?

He says:
"Finally, we should like to know what kind of nutrient requirements brain
growth has - does it justify a need for a high protein and fat diet? Without
specific figures it is difficult to answer this question precisely."

This should be the beginning question, not the end. And it is largely
ignored, except to...

"However, we might reach a reasonable lower estimate by just looking at how
much brain material is actually built each day. The nutrient profile for
mammal brain (bovine brain) is shown in the table below."

And a cow brain is how big compared to its body? Why choose a cow I wonder?
;)

"If we take our 0.6 grams of daily brain growth, we can see that in terms of
nutrient makeup, this would consist of 0.47 grams of water, 0.059 grams of
protein, 0.056 grams of fat, and 0.0084 grams of ash."

Huh???????? The huge human brain is over half fat by nutrient analysis--so
is a cow's tiny brain for that matter. Where are these numbers from????????
No reference, of course.

"This trivial nutrient requirement is, of course, easily met by human breast
milk during the period of maximum growth rate. The turnover rate of
molecules in the structural components of brain tissues is low, because they
are long lived."

So why didn't every animal on Earth evolve a big brain? The article is weak
in that most of it is irrelevent, much of it is misleading, some of it (the
last part that he didn't appear to steal from the book) is very confusing
and unreferenced.

"I am afraid that our predisposition to see brain size evolution where there
is none mostly grows out of extra-scientific prejudices having to do with
the comparatively large size of our own brains."
T. Deacon, The Symbolic Species, p.168

Whether the human brain grows faster (which it does according to his own
figures) or longer (which it does), is irrelevent to the fact that it grows
a huge neo-cortex which it not true for any other land mammal. And is
irrelevent to any argument correlating the expansion of the human brain with
animal foods, which is clearly correlated. I suspect Deacon has nothing to
say about animal foods (Coleman says that at one point) and Coleman copped
the other arguments to use as his "proof" that it had nothing to do with
diet, but I wouldn't know how much he did this without reading the book
myself. Send me a copy and I'd be glad to. It sounds like an interesting
book--in contrast to Coleman's article.

I'll not be wasting more time "critiquing" vegan-edge stuff. It has its
audience...

Cheers,
Kirt