Re: Diet and Evolution
- From: an588@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Catherine Woodgold)
- Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 22:10:53 -0400 (EDT)
"camelopard" (camelopard@xxxxxxx) writes:
I am puzzled by the statements of some dietary supplement advocates,
which I take to be true statements, that certain vitamins, minerals, amino
acids, etc. are not present sufficinetly in foods to meet the daily needs of
the human body, even if we eat an enormous amount of the providing foods,
and thus we have to take supplements.
This doesn't seem to make evolutionary sense. It seems that the human
body should receive ample nutrients from the foods it is able to digest.
No, no, it doesn't work that way.
Optimal health is not necessarily obtained by duplicating
the circumstances under which the species evolved.
If you take your assumptions further, you could argue
that species should evolve to be healthy when they're
taking in no food at all. That way they could live
through famines, and go further and save time and
energy by not bothering to eat even when there's
food present.
That's obviously impossible.
Often, providing larger amounts of food and other
resources leads to better health.
During evolution maybe most individuals were in poor
health, but when a better environment is found
(with less famine, etc.) they immediately do better.
They don't usually have much trouble adapting to
a situation of more food being available.
The same is true for each nutrient. It would be
nice if we evolved to be perfectly healthy without
taking in any vitamin C or iron. But it's not
realistic to expect us to evolve that way in only
a few millions (or billions) of years. We need
those nutrients.
We need calcium to hold our
bones up. In a calcium-poor environment we might
evolve to be smaller or have narrower bones or
something, but we would still use calcium.
If we suddenly obtained food with more calcium,
our bones would immediately become stronger and
less likely to break.
The optimal amount of each nutrient may be larger
or smaller than the typical amount in the diet.
It depends on realistic things like having to
contend with the force of gravity, as well as
on adaptation to the diet available.
There are many studies showing lower rates of
various diseases among people taking vitamin supplements.
Some studies show lower rates of "death from all causes".
This suggests that the optimal amounts are larger
than in a typical diet.
It does not follow logically from this that the
diet earlier in our evolution must have had those larger
amounts -- just as showing that preventing famine
reduces the death rate does not prove that our evolving
ancestors did not often experience famines.
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Diet and Evolution
- From: Perplexed in Peoria
- Re: Diet and Evolution
- References:
- Diet and Evolution
- From: camelopard
- Diet and Evolution
- Prev by Date: Re: More evidence on what makes men gay
- Next by Date: Colour Vision
- Previous by thread: Re: Diet and Evolution
- Next by thread: Re: Diet and Evolution
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
