Jack LaLane, the fitness guru who first came to fame in the 1950s, has been
a strict vegetarian since his late teens.  Today he is in his 70s and
remains quite vital and active, looking quite good for a man of his
advancing years, still able to do numerous chin-ups and push-ups on
command, things that many men half his age could not do.

It is clearly and indisputably possible for some individual homo sapiens
sapiens to be happy and healthy on unnatural regimens like this.  Troy and
Ray seem to feel that it is utterly impossible for selective pressure and
mutation to explain any of this, but I don't have any doubt that it's part
of the story, myself.  I also quite suspect that if you fed Beagles nothing
but cooked beans and cow's milk for five hundred generations, by the end of
that time period you'd have at least some dogs who no longer had major
health problems from that.  Call me a crazy radical.  :-)

Nevertheless it does remain that studies on vegetarians show that most of
them wind up with health problems as a result, and that in general they
don't live as long as people who eat meat.  It's hard to argue that most
people would be healthier eating this way.

Perhaps much of this argument is wasted space given that most of those
debating the issue appear to be in large agreement over every important
point.  The only thing going on here is that some of us don't want to budge
one inch on the idea that there could have been any dietary adatpation over
the last 10,000 years and some of us think there possibly has been some.
How much energy is worth devoting to this debate?

Well, perhaps a considerable amount.  If there -are- some humans whose
systems have adapted them to having slightly different needs, it's probably
important to know that.  I may need to pick up D'Adamo's book....