From: Ingrid Bauer
> >Far better arguments (with charts and graphs) may be found in Aiello and
> >Wheeler's "The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis: The Brain and the Digestive
> >System in Human and Primate Evolution" (Current Anthropology vol., 36 #2
> >[April 17, 1995] 159-221.
This article was sumerized in the American press with headlines that stated
"How Eating Meat Made Us Smart".  It talked about how because brains take
such a large ammount of energy, we had to sacrafice gut size.  This
gut/brain ratio is consistenty inverse in all Primate species.  As the
authors state:"The expensive tissue hypothis profitably emphasizes the
essential interrelationship between the brain, BMR, and other metabolically
expensive body organs".

> >Leonard and Robertson's "Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Nutrition:
The
> >Influence of Brain and Body Size on Diet and Metabolism" ( Am Journal of
> >Human Biology vol. 6 (1994) 77-88
This article compares our digestive tracts to other mammal species.
Concludes that we are very different than other Primates and closser to
wolves in terms of upper to lower gut ratios.

> >Non-domesticated plants also have fewer nutrients and are much harder to
> >harvest than their modern cousins.

Only 56 of the thousands of grass species have seeds big enough to be eaten
by man.  Most of these wild big-seeded grasses(33) are concentrated in one
small part of the world.  See Jared Diamonds book "Guns, Germs and Steel".
Other high energy vegetable foods have similar geographic limitations as
well as limited seasonal availability.  All domestic plant foods have been
bred to increase their energy levels (carbohydrates) when compared to their
wild ancestors.  Harvesting wild varieties would have been much less
productive than harvesting a modern crop.

Ray Audette
Author "NeanderThin"