"John Edser"  wrote
>
> Evolutionary theory has a lot to offer
> medicine. Obesity is not mostly caused by a lack
> of exercise it is mostly caused by eating, almost
> exclusively, _simple_ carbohydrates (non
> wholegrain foods, refined sugars, alcohols,
> i.e. most modern foods). These foods represent
> one of the biggest health threats humans
> have ever had to cope with.  We are not adapted
> to an intake of just simple carbohydrates. Even
> a teaspoon of sugar overtaxes the pancrease
> because of sugar _concentration_. Hypoglycaemia
> (blood sugar loss)
> and diabetes are epidemics in the west. It
> appears the more wealth we create the worse
> becomes the diet because the less we seem
> to care about our own basic biological
> adaptation.
>
Animal nutrition is a very complicated subject. What happens is that
vulgarised forms of it are pressed on the general public, usually by people
who ought to know better. When I was at school the orthodoxy was the
"balanced meal". Ironically I have read from Jewish sources (Jews are
forbidden to mix dairy and meat products) justifications of this rule based
on the idea that the body uses different enzymes to break down different
foods. They cannot both be right.

In fact the reason for the Jewish milk / meat rule probably has nothing to
do with nutrition and is intended to ban a pagan rite in which the sacrifice
was ritually boiled in milk for its own mother. Also there is no reason food
intake should be balanced over a period of a few days. As for a "balanced
diet" in the longer term, it is possible to survive without gross health
problems on a wide variety of diets. For instance Eskimos eat mainly fish
and meat, whilst Indians are often strict vegetarians, and neither group
drops down dead.

At the moment, the concept of "good carbs and bad carbs" is being promoted,
largely because people are sensitised to the idea of carbohydrate intake by
the Atkins diet. There is probably some truth in it, as a non-nutritionist I
wouldn't want to comment. However all carbohydrates are converted to glucose
before being used as energy by the mitochondria anyway.

There was the story in the Times recently of a boy who had refused to eat
almost anything except jam sandwiches. He wasn't overweight, and had no
disease caused by dietary deficiency. Presumably there is enough protein and
trace elements in the jam and bread to keep him going, whilst the
carbohydrates which form the vast bulk of his intake are just burned for
energy. The body is wonderfully efficient at dealing with different fuels.
>
> The misuse of animal products to use
> up the bodies store of carbohydrates until
> ketone toxicity sets in to reduce weight is madness.
> What hope do we have to get our "genetic engineering"
> right when we cannot even get our diet correct?
> We pretend we are omnivorous when we are basically
> vegetarian (dentition, intestine length and
> vitamin c dependency). Feed a cow a sheep's heads
> and you get a prion BSE because these animals are
> not evolved to cope with animal products in their
> diets. For similar reasons we take unnecessary risks
> eating any animals that are closely related to
> ourselves.
>
Eating "bush meat", which includes chimpanzee, is a very bad idea. It
reduces the numbers of rare and scientifically interesting species, and is
just asking for pathogens to transfer from apes to men.
Chimpanzees are largely vegetarian but have a small amount of meat in their
diet, mainly small monkeys. Humans seem to have expanded the meat component
enormously. Modern aboriginals live on marginal lands, so are not
necessarily a good guide to the food economy in prehistory, but hunting
always appears to be important. We don't use teeth to kill prey, which
explains dentition. We do require some vegetable matter, which explains the
intestine and vitamin c dependency, and of course it is possible to survive
on a totally meat-free diet without too much difficulty. It is rather harder
to be a vegan (avoiding all animal products), and of course it is
practically rather difficult to run a dairy farm without killing surplus
bulls, calves, and cows at the end of their economically useful lives.
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