On Mon, 7 Jul 1997, Troy Gilchrist wrote:

> > Evolution gave us the Ethiopian, the Englishman, and the Aborigine.  Did it
> > really give us ONE diet for all of them?
>
> Answer: Yes. That diet which is possible when a human (or any biological
> creature) is in its ancestral environment without technology; because
> the genetic differences between an Ethiopian, an Englishman and an
> Aborigine are neglible. (A similar example would be the fact that wolf
> food is the best, most natural and healthy fare for chihuahuas.)

Differences that are negligible in the context of the total
genome may nevertheless be of great importance in the context of
dietary adaptation.  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.  But there *has* been
selection pressure upon human beings to adapt to an agricultural
diet.  Whether there has been *enough* pressure for a long enough
time is a separate question.  There is some evidence that
microevolutionary adaptation can occur fairly rapidly.

> Diets such as the Zone or Dr. Ornish's may "work" for some people in the
> near-term, but the long-term effects of fatty red-meat deprivation have
> yet to be determined in such diets. What may work for six months may not
> work two years from now.

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 (who
was excommunicated from the SDA church in 1907) and others, she
stopped eating meat of any kind, except for fish (but not
shellfish, crabs, etc.), which she ate only once or twice a
month, if that.  She died in 1990, at 94 years of age.  She
suffered no heart attacks or cancer and remained mentally alert
until about the last four months of her life.  At that time, she
simply withered away, physically and mentally, and died in her
sleep.  If old age has ever been an actual cause of death, it was
in this case.

She ate no red meat for fifty years, no chicken, or anything of
the sort.  She ate cheese sparingly because she didn't much like
it.  I don't recall whether she ate eggs, but I suspect that she
did have them occasionally.  What I remember very clearly is
this: For breakfast she would eat Kellogg's "Special K" cereal
with whole milk.  Since her ethnic background was Portuguese, she
would make giant batches of beans and rice, with onions and just
a tablespoon of tomato sauce for color.  This was the staple of
her diet, which she would eat with generous amounts of butter
(never margarine), with other vegetables on the side, such as
squash, dandelion greens, okra, etc.

When I would visit her I would look forward to these plates of
beans and rice, and when I got married I made sure that I learned
from her the exact way to make it.

Unless one would argue that my grandmother was cut down in her
prime, 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.  Note that I am
not arguing that this is an ideal diet; I am merely pointing out
that the fact that there are such cases as my grandmother
indicates that not everyone does badly when deprived of meat, if
the diet is otherwise sound.

> Nature--i.e., the undeniable requirements of
> our DNA-- is the only certainty.

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.  It is by no means a certainty that they have not
changed enough to make a difference.  It is a hypothesis, to
which exceptions such as my grandmother can be found.

> Instead of superimposing intellectually
> defined nutritional regimens on the body, it is best to simply get out
> of nature's way.

I agree, but I believe that this requires us to *discover* our
individual nature and what our bodies are genetically programmed
to thrive upon.

Todd Moody
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