On Fri, 21 May 2004 15:29:22 +0000 (UTC), SeeBelow{at}SeeBelow.Nut wrote:

>It is well known that an organism has requirements for health.  For
>example, if humans don't get vitamin C they develop scurvy.  There may
>be hundreds of requirements for human health.  We know about many of
>them, we have partial information about many, and there may be many
>about which we know little or nothing.
>
>But my topic is: How did these requirements come to be?  They must all
>be the result of millions of years of evolution, beginning long before
>our hominid ancestors lived.
>
>I have never come across anything written on this subject.  In fact I'm
>not aware of anyone (besides myself) even talking about it.  Can anyone
>point me to anything written about the evolution of the requirements for
>health?
>
>Would anyone like to share a thought or two on this topic?
>

You probably have trouble getting information on your "topic" because
it is somewhat vague and general.

There is a lot of information on specific subject, like the evolution
of vitamin C dependence (most animals can synthesize all they need).
Look at http://www.grisda.org/origins/12096.htm, for example.

In general, you are asking about how organisms have become specialized
at adapting to particular environments so that their specializations
become "requirements" for survival. In that sense, we need a
particular range of nutrients and a particular range of environmental
parameters to maintain our health.  Each aspect of these requirements
has been studied at some length, but I don't know of any general work
describing all of them.  Of course, the human nutritional needs are
well studied.  Certainly the general subject of adaptation is part of
any general introduction to biology or to evolution in the sense that
"survival" and "fitness" are really somewhat equivalent
to what you
call "health".
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