From: estropico@virgilio.it
Date: Thu Apr 24 2003 - 03:16:34 MDT
From: "estropico" <estropico@virgilio.it>
X-Mailer: YaBB
Going back for a moment to the very first message of this thread. I think that
question went unanswered:
Damien Sullivan <phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> And is it speculated that American Indians and aborigines have
> less tolerance for alcohol since they're new to it. (They have a
> weakness to it, but whether that's cultural or metabolic I don't know.)
Well, the explanation I have *heard of* refers to East Asians rather than
American Indians and aborigines and it has to do with the elimination of
pathogens from water.
The theory goes that in Europe people discovered brewing, relying on the
alcohol content of beer to do the job, while in the Far East people discovered
tea, relying on the boiling of water to do probably a better job. Given that
beer consumption was not restricted to adults in those times, selection
encouraged the spread of genes for alcohol detoxifying enzymes in the
liver. In other words, so the theory goes, infants that were given water were
more likely to die due to infection than those that were given beer were
likely to die due to liver problems.
When I heard of this, on some tv program, I remembered that ancient romans
used to drink their wine diluted with water. I guess what their were actually
doing was disinfecting their water with wine.
Cheers,
Fabio
---- This message was posted by estropico to the Extropians 2003 board on ExI BBS. <http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=67;action=display;threadid=55595>
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