Amadeus Schmidt wrote:
> We aren't one cell organisms.
Didn't say we were. Only studies involving very simple organisms can be done
to 50 generations. For primates, waiting 50 generations means thousands of
years.
> I bet rats or cats for example won't loose their ability to produce vitamin-c
> in 50 generations.
Various species do NOT loose their ability to produce some nutrient simply
because it is available. That is necessary but not sufficient. They do
so when a genetic abberation appears amongst the population with such a
trait. Then it might take a number of generations for this mutation to become
dominant, provided that the nutrient stays plentiful. For a complex organism
this might take much longer than 50 generations. This, however, does not
change IN THE LEAST the argument I was making - once the entire specie
loose it ability to make a particular nutrient it does not mean this
specie will die out if this nutrient will become scares. Which is the
point you were making, that vitamin C must have been ALWAYS plentiful.

> If you assume that we humans lost our vitamin-c sysnthesis capability
> _recently_, then you would assume that it was available realy plentiful
> only in _recent_ times.
Was making no such assumption, nor is such assumption needed for the
point I was making.

> Why speaking against fruit?
I do NOT speak against fruit, merely pointing out that fruit is not the
only sufficient source of vitamin C in our ancestors diet.

You have made a few assumptions about what I was saying. Please don't -
if I want to make a statement I will do so directly.

> Game meat, antelope, raw
>  at: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl
> results in:
>  Vitamins
>  Vitamin C, ascorbic acid   mg   0.000
> At which meat should i look to find Vitamin-C??
Various organs contain different concentrations of vitamin C. Adrenals have the
highest, but they are not listed. Kidney (according to this same database)
have 8.9mg per 100gms portion, brain has 16.6mg per same portion. By comparison,
oranges (high in C fruit) have 48mg per 100gm serving, only about 3 times higher
than brain. Adrenals have even higher concentrations and primitive cultures knew
about it (native Americans used to prize adrenals quite a bit).
Veggies also contain plenty of C (spinach 28mg, chard 30, radishes 22.8, etc. - I
picked these at random, not because I knew they were high in C). Thus a diet high
in fruit is absolutely NOT required.

Since people can live on raw animal diet for many months without developing
scurvy these foods must contain enough vitamin C, any web database notwithstanding.

Ilya