Amadeus Schmidt wrote:
> This way we can from our vitamin dependencies conclude, which
> (kind of) food items must have been _always_ in our anchestral food.
> For example our Vitamin C dependency shows us, that fresh plants,
> especially fruit, have always been with certainity in our food after maximum
> 4 months of shortcomeing (4 months is our maximum vitamin c storage).
> And this is absolutely shure for all of our anchestors,
> because otherwise they would have died of scurvy before reproduceing (us).
Not really true. An otherwise very successfull specie could survive with
adaptations even in spite of developing a deficiency on a particular substance.
This is what has happened with humans. AT SOME POINT in our past vitamin C
has indeed been plentiful in whatever environment our ancestors were in.
We lost our ability to manufacture it over time. (Studies show that it takes
about 50 generations for a population to completely loose the ability to
make something that is plentiful in the food, at least for single cell
organisms). Then the envoronment has changed, but the specie was so
well adapted otherwise that it still succeeded and instead developed
adaptations (such as vit. C pumps to increase concentrations in the
brain, for example). So your assertion that vitamin C must have always
been in the food supply in more than sufficient amounts isn't true.
Your second assertion, that it was the plants, and specifically fruit,
that have been the source for C is also faulty - uncooked meat has enough
C for humans to survive without deficiency symptoms (certainly enough to
avoid scurvy). This is not to say that it contains optimum amounts of it,
but optimum amounts are not needed for successfull propagation.

Ilya