Hi Bob

There are both truths and truths that are misinterpreted in this article. I
haven't time to comment on every point. However, here are justa few:


Article
 "A traditional Arctic Eskimo, living in a subfreezing climate, could expend
6000 calories and more a day just to keep warm and hunt for food.  The
high-fat animal food sources - fish, walrus, whale, and seal - from his
local environment were the most practical means of meeting the demands of
those rigorous surroundings.  Modern Eskimos living in heated houses and
driving around in their climate-controlled SUVs, still consuming a high-meat
diet, have become some of the fattest and sickest people on earth."

The traditional Actic Eskimo, actually lives in a very warm environment when
at home. Their igloos, according to Weston Price and Stefannson, are
maintained at such high temperatures that the are usually nude within them.
The also spend up to eight months during the winter not hunting and rarely
venturing outside, yet suffer no ill health. What the article doesn't say
about the "modern" Eskimos is that their diet was changed dramatically by
trading with Europeans. Their diet now contains large quantities of
"healthy" wheat and other cereals, potatoes, etc. It is that which is the
cause of the decline in their health.

Article
"Most apes living today eat essentially as vegetarians - consuming a diet
composed of the fruits, leaves, flowers, and bark, with sporadic consumption
of very small amounts of insect material (like termites) and less commonly,
small animals."

Has the writer observed chimanzees killing and eating colobus monkeys? Meat
plays a far greater part in a chimapzee's diet than the writer credits.

On teeth, the article makes out that our teeth are designed to cope with
plant foods. I defy anyone to clench their teeth together and then move
their jaws sideways to "grind" in the way that herbivores do.

Article
"From our lips to our anus our digestive system has evolved to efficiently
process plant foods."

Even a herbivore's digestive system is only about 50% efficient. When eating
meats and fats, our digestion is over 90% efficient, when eating raw veg it
is far less that a herbivore's. No mammal produces any dietary enzymes that
will break down and digest the cellulose that forms plant cell walls. Until
cell walls are ruptured, the cells' contents are not available to the
digestion.

Herbivores use bacteria and other organisms to do the job for them. The
process is a fermentative one and all herbivores are classed by where in
their gut this fermentation takes place. Ruminants -- sheep, cattle, etc --
with their 4 stomachs which contain the necessary organisms are known as
foregut fermenters and those whose caecums and colons contain the
organisms -- horses, gorillas, chimps, etc -- are known as hindgut
fermenters. But wherever the fermentation takes place, nutrients released by
this fermentation process are absorbed.

Our gut is pretty sterile except for our colons. We do harbour bacteria here
and in many people these are fermentative. However, our colons are built to
extract and conserve water, they are not designed to absorb proteins, fats,
sugars, vitamins, etc. In other words we do not absorb nutrients via a
fermentative process. And as we have no cellulose digesting enzyme either,
we cannot be ideally suited to a raw veg diet.

If we take this one step further and compare our colons with those of our
nearest relatives we find that our colon/caecum accounts for around 20% of
our gut's total volume, whereas the colons of the fermentative chimps and
gorillas is more than 50% of the total volume.

Article
"The stomach juices of a meat-eating animal are very concentrated in acid.
The purpose of this acid is to efficiently break down the muscle and bone
materials swallowed in large quantities into the stomachs of meat-eaters.
Digestion of starches, vegetables and fruits is accomplished efficiently
with the much lower concentrations of stomach acid found in the stomachs of
people, and other plant-eaters."

This is mostly true. Meat eaters do have much stronmger HCl than plant
eaters. But the acidity of our HCl is not as weak as the article says, it is
strong as in the carnivores. pH is about 1.5.

Article
"The human intestine is long and coiled, much like that of apes, cows, and
horses. This configuration makes digestion slow, allowing time to break down
and absorb the nutrients from plant food sources.  The intestine of a
carnivore, like a cat, is short, straight, and tubular.  This allows for
very rapid digestion of flesh and excretion of the remnants quickly before
they putrefy (rot). . . . Overall, the intestines of meat-eaters are
noticeably simpler than ours."

Our gut is a simple tube with a bulge (stomach) at its beginning -- exactly
the same as all carnivores. Its total length is approximately 5 times body
length. That of the big cats is approximately 7 times body length. The gut
of a herbivore, by contrast is some 27 times body length and, in the
ruminants, much more complex. In our nearest relatives, it is also a similar
length and, as I have already mentioned, it differs markedly in that apes'
colons are much bigger than ours.

In other words, our gut, in terms of length and complexity is even more
"carnivore" than the big cats.

There are some anomalies. It is true that we have alpha amylase in saliva,
which is used to digest starches. But this action only happens before the
starch reaches the stomach as the action is killed by the digestive juice.
We also have several enzymes to digest starch and the various sugars, which
are used in our small intestine. They must be there for a purpose and that
purpose is to deal with carbohydrates. This could make us omnivores, except
for the still vexed question of how to get into plant cells to allow those
enzymes to digest the starches and sugars.

Could chewing be the answer? It's not likely as a sheep with its continual
chewing, fermentation, regurgitation, more chewing and more fermentation
only manages to gigest about half the contents. We do not even have that
facility.

So, all in all, I believe that we are really not at all well suited to a
diet wholly of vegetation.

Oh, by the way, animal products -- meat, fat, cholesterol -- have never been
shown to cause either heart disease or cancers or, as far as I am aware, any
other disease (except from infected produce or man-made chemical pollution).
Only processed plant material has.

Barry Groves
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk

----- Original Message ----- m
From: "Bob Avery" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2003 4:08 AM
Subject: Meat in the Human Diet


> This article poses some interesting challenges to the paleodiet
> nutritional theory, based primarily on comparative anatomy and
> physiology.
>
> http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/030700pumeatinthehumandiet.htm
>
> Comments anyone?
>
> Bob Avery