Dead at 42

[KennyR]

There are already accusations in the press that Caron Keating's low immunity to cancer was related to her very strict vegetarian diet. I wonder.

[KennyR]

tpg wrote:
Utter bollocks... :-(

Google seems to think so too. But at the same time I can't help thinking that we're better off just eating the things we're evolved to eat, since our bodies are made to deal with it. Anyway, that's best left for another thread.

[KennyR]

As if our evolution is one single 'thing'

You should feel your teeth. I have incisors and canines, made for cutting and tearing nothing but meat. I can only digest fats, proteins and starches - not cellulose. I'm a meat eater. So are you. Question is, when things adapted to eat meat (at least some of the time) stop eating meat, what happens?

Caron Keating was a strict vegan, she always had been. She didn't even drink milk, instead using soya milk. By the vegan ideas she should have been totally healthy and immune to cancer. But she died young. Now, is that a statistical blip, or is there something deeper to it?

[KennyR]

As I said before, according to me your view on evolution is far too simplistic.
Our teeth are build for eating everything, but not to grasp grass or wounding prey.
Our diet vary. An Inuit has defenately a different diet than an amazon indian. And Europe is a true mixture of ppl.

And what is the one thing common to all races of human beings, no matter what they do or where they live? Eating meat.

[KennyR]

And ten millenia before that, any plant with enough nutrition to keep you alive was a luxury.

[KennyR]

Vegans would never survive any famine, that's just sillyness. Without mass farming they wouldn't survive now. Only the people who could eat anything would survive.

Edit: Although, starvation brings out the meateater in everyone so it's a moot point. Vegan or not, rat would look pretty tasty in a famine.

[KennyR]

We can't make vitamin C because we started out as fruiteaters and we never had to. So we still have to eat fruit. Evolution proves my point again.

[KennyR]

No, fruit. The quantity of vitamin C in most vegetables is negligible, and reduces to zero if cooked. You must eat fresh fruit to get vitamin C.

Edit: Although its added to lots of things these days, so we don't notice.

BTW: Did you know you can get a lot of these vitamins by eating animal liver?

[KennyR]

tpg wrote:
Soy also provides "complete" proteins.

It's also been implicated in health problems and birth defects(!)

The vegan lobbies think with their emotions too much, not with their brains. They were already given a slap by the goverment for claiming that meat eaters had higher rates of cancer when their evidence did not support it. I don't really think these people have figured out everything a human being needs. Nobody really has.

I don't know why people seem to think evolution stopped when we invented microwave dinners. Maybe they don't like the idea that they'll be "improved upon."

Evolution only happens when it's needed, not otherwise. Horseshoe crabs have been horseshoe crabs for five hundred million years, because they've never had to be anything else. Mutations can happen, but if they don't impart an advantage, then they'll generally be lost and not perpetuated. As soon as we invented technology, evolution practically stopped, because there is no necessity for change any more. If it goes on, chances are human beings will still be more or less the same 500,000 years from now.

[KennyR]

tpg wrote:
Funny then, that people are more than happy to jump all over me about my dietary preferences...

Sorry Chris, but it's an undebatable fact - eating meat for human beings is natural. Not eating it is unnatural. Unnatural things tend not to be healthy, since the body isn't designed to cope.

[KennyR]

Speel wrote:
Nonsense.

Only if it's necessary to survive humanity would lose it.

No, it's not. It's a certainty that modern medicine and civilisation are allowing disadvantageous genetic traits to survive and propagate. I'm not a Nazi or a eugenesist, so I don't want to stop it. Unfortunately, I don't think it's leading us up the evolutionary ladder. Even war isn't the evolutionary device it used to be - it's so destructive these days that to die you just need to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Evolution thrives through need. Only when human beings are struggling to survive will they actually biologically improve.

[KennyR]

Speel wrote:
yes, but not 'take over the world!'

They will. All it takes is time.

That matters what you want from evolution.

More intelligence and less biological weaknesses would be nice, as well as rid of the genetic diseases.

Imagine a medieval battle, an arrow could hit you no matter how good a swordfighter you are.

But the stronger of us could survive the arrow. It's harder to survive than an attack by a big cat or the gore of a wild pig, but still easier than a bullet or two kilos of high explosive.

[KennyR]

Speel wrote:
Illogical assumption. Why wouldn't it be the fertile ones to take over the world? I'd say the chance is 50-50

Why did early humans with no tails take over from ones with them?

Answer: Use it or lose it.

Biological/genetic diseases/weaknesses can be important for the survival of the society, or other aspects of survival. (unfortunately I can't remember an examply to show you how)

Sickle-cell anaemia protecting from malaria, perhaps? That's the classic example. However, it's one of nature's burps, since it's usual almost as fatal as malaria. The human genome is full of these "patches" to protect us. They're mutations that would usually be bad, but through chance, protected their carriers from some kind of disease or environmental change. They're not perfect.

Biological diversity is good for the species, but keeping those bad genes for no reason is not.

[KennyR]

Speel wrote:
Bad genes can cause evolution changes.
It's the experiment grounds.

Just by being there? No way. They've got to apply a disadvantage that gets the creature killed or unable to mate.

[KennyR]

Speel wrote:
I mean, producing 'bad' genes.

There is no evolution without need, regardless of mutation present in any population. Not now, not in the future, not ever.

Take a million pigeons and let them loose on a planet with robotic systems to keep them fed, kill any disease or viruses, and to give them contraceptives when the population gets too high, and ten million years you'll come back and find they're still pigeons. Maybe 100, even 1000 million years.

But release pigeons on a planet with none of these protections, and 10 million years later you'll find a biosystem full of different kinds of life form evolved from pigeon - birds of prey, land animals, aquatics.