>
>> He also implies that what really prevents cancer is not the meat/fat but
>> rather the antiscorbutic properties of both diets...so should we be
eating a
>> lot more lemon?
>
I read recently a scientific study on the diet of 3 different species of
monkey followed in the wild and they discover amazing amount of vit c intake
way beyond the FDA recomendation (and they were small monkey). So there is
something here.
jean-claude

Monkeys' diet high in vitamins, minerals

By ANNE M. PETERSON

Associated Press

May 22, 1999

SAN FRANCISCO -- Forget the filet mignon and poached salmon.
Leaf-eating
monkeys have a diet richer in vitamins and minerals than most humans, a
researcher
said.

The fruits, flowers and plants that monkeys eat are loaded with
nutrients -- more so than
the daily recommendations for people, according to physical
anthropologist Katharine
Milton of the University of California, Berkeley.

Milton said she was surprised by the findings because she didn't think
plants were all
that nutritious. But the monkeys were getting unexpectedly high levels
of vitamin C,
calcium, potassium and other nutrients.

"It's just so much higher than what we believe is adequate for human
beings," she said
Wednesday.

For example, a 15-pound wild monkey takes in about 600 milligrams of
vitamin C a
day, 10 times more than the recommended daily allowance, or RDA, for
humans.
Milton didn't want to draw medical conclusions about how human diets
are lacking.

"It is important for people to realize they're not monkeys," she said,
but added that the
"diets of monkeys and apes show that there are avenues of I research
worth pursuing."

Milton's study, to be published in the June issue of "Nutrition: The
International Journal
of Basic and Applied Nutritional Sciences," was conducted on Barro
Colorado Island, a
Panamanian nature preserve.

She studied four monkey species that live on the island: howler,
spider, cebus and
tamarin. She followed the monkeys around, picking up food they dropped
from the
trees.

"It's really fascinating," said Dr. S. Boyd Eaton, a professor of
radiology at Emory
University in Georgia who has done research concerning primate
nutrition. "It's very
interesting that creatures so very close to us subsist and thrive on
such substantial
amounts of vitamins and minerals. If we ate some of the same amounts of
certain
nutrients, we would get sick" Milton found that wild Panamanian fruits
are considerably
more nutritious than the cultivated fruits found in supermarkets.

The wild fruits had higher levels of calcium, potassium and other
micronutrients and a
different sugar content than the fruits found at the local supermarket,
she said. The wild
varieties consist mainly of glucose and fructose, like honey, while
domestic fruits
consist mainly of sucrose. Eaton said such research helps scientists
understand how
diets evolved.