Ward said: >>other items like nuts, flowers, bark, and anything else that composes >> [snip] >>Why not throw these out too since they don't contribute >>that much volume-wise to the diet? And Bob said: >These do not have the physiological difficulties of digestion that meat >has, the metabolic waste products that flesh foods contain, the state of >decomposition in which they are typically eaten, the strong acid-forming >qualities, and so on. Hmmm, no comment about B-12 here, which I also mentioned. Remember that B-12 too has its ultimate origin in the animal kingdom, and that it is no secret anymore in the natural hygiene community that not a few are unable to get their fair share from intestinal bacterial animals (fauna), and have to take supplements to get the level up to normal on their total veggie diets. Even according to natural hygiene practitioners. I would like to see some kind of peer-reviewed studies documenting the above claim about the supposed difficult digestion of meat. I believe Kirt has claimed here that meat (raw, at least) is easily digested (for which I would also like to see some documentation). It is very frustrating never to see any bona-fide scientific evidence about this one way or the other. I have looked before myself at the university library a few times but have never been able to find anything yet. (Perhaps the Journal of Food Science would be the place to look if one could get past all the jargon and study up on biochemistry for a year first.) My own experience (admittedly subjective) is that lightly cooked (20 min. or so) fish digests--or at least seems to pass through the stomach--within about 2 hours for me; quicker than most nuts. Red meat probably would be slower, but this just goes to show you can't just lump everything in all together in one black-and-white category. Even without this bit of subjective personal experience, however, certainly by the criterion of difficult digestion, nuts should probably also be on the list of suspect items if you believe the food digestion charts we see in natural hygiene. I would also like some kind of scientific documentation that the metabolic waste products of reasonable amounts of meat are not within the body's physiological capacity to handle. Most foods result in some kind of metabolic waste. The question is not a black-and-white consideration of whether they do or not, it is whether the body's normal physiological capacity handles it without undue strain. As far as decomposed meat--this is again a rather black-and-white assumption. In evolutionary times, the meat would have been eaten fresh at the kill, then some dried for later consumption so as not to waste it. Or if scavenged, the meat might have been eaten either fresh, or perhaps in some less-than-ideal state, but probably not very much decomposed (not compared to modern supermarket meats anyway by comparison to which it would probably be downright fresh) given competition for carcasses by other animals. As far as that goes, one could also state that some plant foods would have been eaten in some less-than-ideal state, at least later in palelothic times during the period in which modern homo sapiens evolved (the last Ice Age), as some would have had to be stored for later use during the winter, or cooked to exploit them at all, etc., given survival requirements. On the other hand, while I can grant acid-forming qualities of meat, one has to remember that this (along with the other factors cited above for that matter) in the real world occurs in the context of a total diet--not as if the meat were being eaten as the exclusive item. We are looking at a total dietary package here, not one element in isolation from the others. The above statements seem to assume that one should eat only the most easily digestible, least-acid-forming, least decayed, least-waste-forming foods. And anyway, there was no such choice in the real world eons ago, which was not at all that black and white, as there was considerable variation in availability of different foods. There are also differences among plant foods in the above factors. Should we then eat only those plant foods like sweet tree fruits which might be the least difficult to digest of all, etc.? Some would say so, of course, but it didn't happen that way during the time the species evolved. What matters in most things nutritionally is proportions and degrees of items ingested. The above black-and-white reasoning seems to ignore this. I.e., any longer digestion time = bad, so eliminate it. Less than pristine = bad, so eliminate it. Forms more acid than some other food = bad, so eliminate it. Puts out somewhat more waste products than some other food = bad, so eliminate it. And all of this still ignores the most basic evolutionary argument of all: If a species survives--even flourishes in the case of human beings who were able to expand far out of their original habitat--then if you give credit that evolution happens at all, you have to assume the species has adapted to that behavior when it persists (and in the case of meat-eating, considerably increased) over many eons, especially when brain size and physical size increased at the same time. (Most evolutionary biologists now believe the larger brain size would not have been possible without the increase in animal food.) If you don't agree to this basic axiom of evolution (that species adapt to persistent behavior), then you are basically saying you don't believe in the mechanism which is the engine of the evolutionary process itself. If one wants to do that, fine. However, if we are going to nitpick evolution arguments, let's at least try not to sweep the basic axioms of the theory under the rug. You will find scientists nitpicking evolution arguments far, far more than we ever do here, but this is not one of them because it's the whole point of the theory in the first place. Based on the fossil and other evidence, you either accept this point or you do not. Do you accept that evolution occurs or not, Bob? If so, but you reject the basis on which the entire theory has been built to date (that it is changes or persistences in behavior and environment that drive the process), then what alternative mechanism do you propose to explain your thesis that some meat was a part of the diet for 2 or 3 million years but was never adapted to? It would be helpful to see some positive statements about what you *do* stand for on these points rather than just criticisms about what you do not, so we could see on what basis you are reasoning from. --Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]> Wichita, KS