> If old stone
> age man had started his day 100,000 years ago with
> Cheerios and milk we
> STILL would not be sufficiently adapted to it.
Hmmm. I'd like to jump back into the fray here for a
moment.
At beyondveg.com there is a fascinating, if somewhat
lengthy, interview with Ward Nicholson (an ex Natural
Hygienist). According to Ward:
"Where the fossil record is concerned, Niles Eldredge,
along with Stephen Jay Gould, two of the most
well-known modern evolutionary theorists, estimated
the time span required for 'speciation events' (the
time required for a new species to arise in response
to evolutionary selection pressures) to be somewhere
within the range of 'five to 50,000 years.'[113] Since
this rough figure is based on the fossil record, it
makes it difficult to be much more precise than that
range. Eldredge also comments that 'some evolutionary
geneticists have said that the estimate of five to
50,000 years is, if anything, overly generous.'"
(http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview2c.shtml#genetic
change)
Now, if this is true, then 1) the descendents of your
Cheerios eating cavedweller could be adapted to a diet
of milk and cereal by now (perish the thought); 2) we
should be emphasizing those foods available within the
last 50,000 years (ice age to beginning of
agriculture); and 3) since the *vast* majority of
nutrition during this period came from hunting it's
not much of a stretch to consider 'bambi cheese' a
pretty common occurence.
Later in the interview he states:
"...those population groups that do retain the ability
to produce lactase and digest milk into adulthood are
those descended from the very people who first began
domesticating animals for milking during the Neolithic
period several thousand years ago.[119] (The earliest
milking populations in Europe, Asia, and Africa began
the practice probably around 4,000 B.C.[120]) And even
more interestingly, in population groups where
cultural changes have created 'selection pressure' for
adapting to certain behavior--such as drinking milk in
this case--the rate of genetic adaptation to such
changes significantly increases. In this case, the
time span for widespread prevalence of the gene for
lactose tolerance within milking population groups has
been estimated at approximately 1,150 years[121]--a
very short span of time in evolutionary terms."
Two of the most common arguments on this list seem to
revolve around these very questions - how long ago
should we look, and how adapted can we be to a certain
food. Recently the question was asked how many foods
are still the same as their paleo counterparts. A
better question, in my mind, is whether we have
adapted to 'new' versions of foods we were already
adapted to. (Or, if not yet adapted, how easily can we
adapt and how long it would take).
Check out the article. It's a good read, even if you
have to jump through hoops (lots of links) to get anywhere.
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