On Tue, 1 Sep 1998 Ilya <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Amadeus Schmidt wrote:
>> 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).
>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 di
e out if this nutrient will become scares. Which is the
>point you were making, that vitamin C must have been ALWAYS plentiful.
Humans _are_ dependant on vitamin C, however.
If you talk about one-cellers loosing sysnthesis capabilities in 50
generations on whatever, what would you imply on humans then?

Any human of today given no vitamin c
over the storage capability of about 4 months
will die of scurvy (Inuit  as an extreme seem to have an adaption to get
by on as little as 13 mg per day).

So, still all of our anchestors had a sufficient supply, _after_ the
vitamin-c dependency developed.
The Question is only where to put this point.

Would you propose that the vitamin-c dependency build up only recently?
I would not consider that as probable because vitamin-c supplies tended
to decline recently and not vice versa.

It might be possible, that humans-anchestors
did vitamin-C-synthesis
for millions of years, and lost it
if a period of warming, as you tell.
*If* they went through a bottleneck of few individuums, and if loosing
the synthesis capability would have resulted in a strong
evolutionary _advantage_.
But I'd call it highly unlikely that such an event would have happened
on a whole population of humans spread all over the world.
And in ice ages when vitamin-c supplies were rarer.

Besides that, vitamin requirements are IMO still a good indicator
which food resources we are evolved for.
And to find out what that is,
is a main paleo-food goal, isn't it?

>..brain has 16.6mg per same portion.
Good point on eating brains and other organs (if you prefer them over oranges).
Makes more easily understandable why true h/g prefer various other parts
of a carcasse over the mere muscles.

>Thus a diet high
>in fruit is absolutely NOT required.
Of course not,
 only probable.

I read that there is no hunting animal in the world without the
capability of vitamin-C synthesis.
Even omnivores like rats can do it.

regards

Amadeus