Todd Moody wrote:
> The analogy of wolves and chihuahuas is not
> > apt, owing to the fact that there has been no selection pressure
> > upon chichuahuas to use a different diet.

If you breed wolves for tameness you get dogs. Dogs are basically
underdeveloped wolves. This process is known as neoteny. The smaller the
dog the more neotenized it is. Chihuahuas are basically fetal wolves.
For this reason both wolves and dogs thrive on wolf food: raw meat and
scant amounts of vegetable matter. There is great evidence to show that
Homo sapiens sapiens are neotenized hominids (Ray Audette can give you
information on this). Identical diets would satisfy the nutritional
requirements of a Cro-Magnon and a modern hominid in the absence of
technology.

Todd wrote:
> An anecdote to consider:  My grandmother became a Seventh-Day
> > Adventist in 1940, at age 44.  Following the "health reforms" of
> > the SDA church, originally developed by John Harvey Kellogg...
> [s]he
> > suffered no heart attacks or cancer and remained mentally alert
> > until about the last four months of her life...
> > She ate no red meat for fifty years, no chicken, or anything of
> > the sort...
> I think the point must be conceded that at least *some*
> > people are well adapted to a diet completely free of red meat,
> > not to mention other non-marine animal protein.

An interesting story. But as you say it's only an anecdote. (The placebo
effect is typically 30%.) And you admit that she consumed some animal
protein throughout her life, meaning that she was not a strict
vegetarian. The fact that the human body cannot synthesize vitamin B12,
available exclusively from animal sources, is a very big obstacle for
vegetarians to circumvent-- intellectually and physiologically. In
nature, in the absence of technology--fire, domestic animals, pottery,
agriculture-- a vegetarian diet will kill a human very quickly. Your
grandmother rolled the cosmic dice and got lucky. The fact is that she
was a hominid, and that the ideal diet for a hominid, and indeed any
other animal, is that diet possible in its natural habitat. No matter
what diet she consumed, a hominid diet is what she was designed to eat.
What her immune system allowed her to get away with is another story.

Troy wrote:
> Nature--i.e., the undeniable requirements of
> > > our DNA-- is the only certainty.
> >
Todd responded:
> > But it is not clear that we fully understand what those
> > requirements are, and how they may have changed during the last
> > 20,000 years.

If we stripped you naked of all technology and dropped you into a
wilderness environment, you would quickly discover the nutritional
limitations and requirements of your DNA: raw meat (herbivores, insects,
reptiles, birds, et al), fruits, nuts, vegetables and berries. These are
the possibilities in our ancestral environment. 20,000 years (less that
1% of hominid evolution) is not nearly enough time to allow for
biolgical changes significant enough to change the dietary requirements
of members of a common animal genus.

Troy Gilchrist
NEANDERTHIN
<http://www.sofdesign.com/neander>