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From:
arjen hoekstra <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Raw Food Diet Support List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 20 Nov 2001 14:10:22 -0800
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Wow! The reactions keep on rolling in! Great: I love
talking evolution! I only hope I will keep on having
the time to reply to everyone. Thank you for your
posts Gary: you saved me quite a bit of time for
replies. I only hope that this doesn't evolve in a
discussion of evolution vs. creationism. That is not
why I put it on this board; there are other boards to
discuss that exact topic. Let me react again to the
people who posted.

Anwar:
"You continue to argue from an evolutionary point of
view. I was discarding this view in my argument."

Evolution is the topic of the discussion I started, so
of course I will talk evolution! And you haven't
discarded anything; you just said that you didn't
believe in it.

Anwar:
"You didn't argue me on the fact that no known process
adds to the genetic code of a species and that all
processes which alter the genetic code either damage
or destroy it."

First of all, I didn't reply to it, because it doesn't
invalidate my theory at all. Like you mentioned
yourself, only a small part of our total DNA is
actually transcribed, so a mutation can easily start
including some more DNA to be transcribed, which
basically means adding to the genetic code. Secondly,
I don't really have enough knowledge to talk about
cell genetics; I am specialized in evolutionary
biology on population level. But I can tell you of at
least one process that is able to add to the genetic
code: viruses!

Anwar:
"How come that you didn't address the otter example
either."

Because an otter is still a carnivore, whether it is
able to crack shells or not. The otter just uses a
tool to expand its food sources a little, but it is
still just eating meat. So it is irrelevant for the
comparison with humans, where the inclusion of tools
changed our diets from mainly frugivorous to meat.

Stefan:
"So you are saying they did not thrive on a diet high
in meat and still developed their brain? This is pure
nonsense to me.
Sorry this discussion is no longer of interest to me."

So if I understand it correctly you don't agree with
one of my arguments and then you say that this
discussion is no longer of interest to you. You could
maybe have waited to see if I could have a decent
reply to your objection. Or is my way of reasoning
making to much sense to you, so you have to protect
your ideology with blocking out any information that
might change your mind? If you have problems with my
theory, come with valid arguments instead of just
saying that you are not interested anymore. I thought
you said in a previous post to me that expansion is
good, narrowing down is not. Why don't you live by
what you preach?

It is like Gary said: all I am saying is that Beyond
Veg is speculating. I am speculating as well, but at
least I admit to it, while Beyond Veg is claiming to
have "scientific integrity" and has zero tolerance for
what they call the party movement or something like
that. In my opinion speculating and claiming it to be
fact is one of the biggest frauds in science you can
be part of.

But back to the argument: it doesn't make much sense
to assume a causal relationship just because the
development of brains and the eating of meat happened
at approximately the same time. The increasing brain
size can have to do with a lot of things except for
nutrition, like the nerve support for the complex
bipedal locomotion or, even more likely, to be able to
deal with all the extra sensory input from changing
climate zones and habitats. I'll bet you that the
development for larger brains was already in progress
before we started eating meat.

Anwar:
If Chimps have extended canines and they don't eat
much meat, yet we don't (have extended canines) and do
eat much meat, doesn't that say that we should have
developed them by now?

Sorry Anwar, but obviously you didn't understand much
of my original post, in which I explained extensively
that we have effectively cancelled out most normal
natural selection since we started manipulating our
environment. I explained that this process might very
well have prevented us from getting adapted to cooked
foods and eating meat. We are not supposed to eat
meat, simply because our biological make-up doesn't
support it!

Carol:
"The likelihood that the growing incidence of junk
food eating is the result of the high birth rate among
junk food eaters seems to me to be rather slim."

Jo said that she expects it to be a trend based on
socio-economic factors. I totally agree with both of
you. However, I just observed a phenomenon; I didn't
try to give an explanation for it. The reason is
irrelevant in the "eyes" of natural selection. I think
it just makes very clear that some traits can easily
prevail in our modern society (for whatever reason),
while they are detrimental to our health. It shows
again how we alter the normal natural selection
process.

Carol:
"They also developed a huge brain capacity. Why, I
wonder?"

This is a very good question. Stefan (and Beyond Veg)
seem to think that it has to do with the consumption
of meat, but I replied to that a bit earlier in this
post. I also gave a couple of other possibilities
there. All I wanted to say with that information is
that our brains became at least so powerful that they
enabled our mostly frugivorous ancestors to perform
the unique ability to manipulate nature and cancel out
a large part of the normal natural selection process.

Carol:
"So at some point, in order to add this new (enlarged
brain) size to the mix, you have to have a mutation."

No, this is not true. Mutations are only necessary to
develop new traits. If there is a selection pressure
to promote larger brains, the smaller brained people
will have more chance to die and less chance to breed,
which will slowly increase the average brain size.
This is the principle behind selective breeding in
dogs and a lot of agricultural products as well.

Carol:
"Anatomical features can become specialized purposes
that are quite different from those for which they
originally came about, as you mentioned yourself in
the antler example."

You must have misunderstood me: I never said that the
antlers have another function than what they were
originally meant for; they are just meant for
reproductive purposes. In my second post I explained
that there can be three possible reasons for extended
canines: eating, defense and reproduction. I deemed
the last two unlikely, as I explained there.

Carol:
"But one of the reasons for being a scavenger and not
a killer is precisely because someone has opened up
the carcass for you."

This is only the case if the animal was killed by
predators and that is a minority of the cases. Also,
if prehistoric humans would only have carcasses from
predator kills to their disposal, they would have an
extremely hard time to get access to it, because those
carcasses are usually used up extensively and
protected viciously by the predators. So a scavenger
without claws and extended canines would have a huge
selective disadvantage.

Carol:
"The Purdey theory of Mad Cow is about how rogue
prions are created."

I have never heard of this theory. Could you please
guide me to some info?

Jo:
"Glad to hear that you were spared from severe
detoxification symptoms. Did you experience any at all
during your transition? Did you lose weight? How old
are you, if you don't mind me asking?

I am male of 34. I am rather thin, but that is how I
have been my whole life; so I didn't lose any extra
weight by going raw. I didn't have any detox during my
transition to raw, but in 1994 I had a 3 month
experimental fase with only tree fruits, during which
a normal little mosquito bite on my finger became
hugely infected and caused massive pain. This might
have been detoxification.

Jo:
"My experience was that I gave raw veganism too much
time, because it adversely affected my long term
health."

It is hard for me to say anything about that, since I
don't know what you ate and what your background is.
Did you take a B12 supplement? (Please everybody:
don't come up with me taking a supplement shows that
we are not adapted to a raw vegan diet. I have said
that our original diet could have included
invertebrates and even when that is not the case, the
soil on the greens and the insects on the fruit would
have given me plenty of B12 in natural circumstances).
My motivation to change diet has always been mostly
ecologically inspired, I guess probably because I
didn't have any health problems anyway. But I still
believe that eating vertebrate meat is not part of our
biological make-up. The claim that so many people say
that they feel much stronger after including RAF
doesn't impress me. First of all because I don't know
if they had a good diet and secondly because meat
might be just another stimulant, comparable to taking
steroids: it makes you feel stronger, but is has an
adverse effect on your health.

Jo:
"I can't see how a diet based on high levels of
processed sugar wouldn't be harmful for the short term
either."

I am sure it would be harmful. But that doesn't matter
as long as the reproduction is not affected.

Best regards, Arjen



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