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Don Matesz <[log in to unmask]>
Next Generation Nutrition. (419) 476-2967
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Wally Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote re. my Fire and fallacious reasoning
>Oooo, bad logic. Maybe OK common sense, but bad logic
>none the less. We are NOT chimps. Chimps are NOT our
>ancestors.
NO chimps are not our ancestors--but according to geneticists 99% of human
genome is identical to chimp genome and it is generally believed that humans
and chimps have a common ancestor. I was not saying that chimps are our
ancestors, but was refering to our common ancestor and adding that the fact
that chimps hunt but do not cook shows that most probably our ancestors were
hunting long before they took up cooking.
>It's another chicken-agg thing.
No, its not. To manage fire for cooking you have to have a certain level of
nervous system development, hand eye coordination and intelligence not had
by any other primate.
>We have the tendency to assume "use of fire" means
>full fledged cooking when it may have been only a tiny
>bit for the first few hundred thousand years, a little
>more during the next few hundred thousand years,
>perhaps "half" during the next few hundred thousand,
>and so on.
Of course! I'm certainly not imagining that our there was a sudden jump from
no cooking to preparing food in the style of Julia Child. Still it is a
fact that any successful management of fire requires a kind of neurological
hardware not found in any other primate. Look, we can see this even in
human ontology. Children can't successfully handle fire--or language--until
the "hardware" is sufficiently developed.
>I have no doubt the greatest gains in intelligence
>occured with the help of animal foods in the diet, but
>that doesn't negate the possibility of *very* early
>use of fire.
I wasn't negating the possibility of early use of fire (though I have great
scepticism about it)! I was negating the following three ideas 1) that
cooking vegetables caused increases in intelligence, 2) that vegetables
supply the substrates required for brain development, and 3) that cooked
vegetables are more energy dense than meat!
Referring back to your first theorum, if
>hunting leads to brain growth, and chimps hunt, then
>why is their brain development not on par with humans?
Two plausible reasons occur to me: 1) they don't now and never have eaten
enough meat and fat 2) they don't now and never have eaten seafood as man
has. As I said in the original post, I am inclined to agree with Crawford
and Marsh that early humans must have been inhabitants of coastal regions
where they could get abundant DHA from sea mammals, sea birds, and fish.
Ingrid Bauer wrote:
>in refutation to the argument about brain building requirements for humans
>presented by Don, this argument have been presented:
>
><we actually develop bigger brains by growing them for longer (not faster),
><and most or all of the growth is completed during lactation
>
I don't know what qualifications Ingrid has, but Dr. Michael Crawford, a
renowned biochemist, is probably the world's leading expert on EFAs and
brain development. According to professor Crawford, "The brain is the
earliest organ to develop. Seventy percent of the total maximum number of
brain cells that anyone ever has were built inside the mother during fetal
life." Nutrition and Evolution, p. 130. Thus, contrary to her claim, most
actual formation of brain tissue actually occurs before lactation (good
thing too, or we'd have an incredible number of imbeciles on our hands due
to formula feeding).
If Ingrid is on track, then why is it that the placenta selects neural fatty
acids from mother's blood, passing them on in higher concentration to the
fetus? Long gestation contributes to greater brain development, and long
gestation with increased DHA supplies is even better!
IN addition, If Ingrid's view is correct, then several things beg
explanation:
1) WHY ARE HUMANS THE EXCEPTION TO THE GENERAL RULE THAT OMNIVORES AND
CARNIVORES HAVE MORE SOPHISTICATED NERVOUS SYSTEMS THAN HERBIVORES?
2) Why do studies show that vegetarian moms have milk with lower DHA levels
than omnivores? And why do studies show that children raised on milk lower
in DHA have less intelligence than children raised on milk higher in DHA?
3) Why is it that carnivorous dolphins are the only animals with a brain
near human size (in relation to body mass)? Answer to this question should
address the fact that dolphins evolved from an herbivorous ancestor.
4) Why aren't the vegetarian nations (e.g. India) producing crops of
geniuses? Why have the more vegetarian nations lagged so far behind the
omnivores in scientific and technological innovations?
5) Why is it that cross cultural studies show that (carnivorous) Japanese
children are on average scoring significantly higher on IQ tests than
non-Japanese? Why is it that Japan is scientifically and technologically
so much more innovative and economically potent than even the U.S.?
(Japanese are carnivores at the top of the seafood chain...as Crawford and
Marsh point out in Nutrition and Evolution, they are still a kind of hunter
gatherer society, since much of their food is wild fish. In Japan DHA is
considered to be so important that the government encourages use of it to
fortify foods!)
Don
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