From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Apr 30 2003 - 09:52:42 MDT
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, gts wrote:
> Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> > There is a 3rd "rational" argument [for vegetarianism].
> > Animal food sources are simply inefficient!
> > (Perhaps you include this in "scientific").
>
> If you mean animal foods are more expensive then I won't disagree. People
> have a right to save money at the expense of their health, but that is not
> optimizing the diet.
No, I mean "optimal" in terms of making the optimal use of the available
energy in terms of Watts of sunlight -> calories of well-balanced nutrients.
The less efficient foods one consumes the fewer people the planet can support.
> Our intellects have very limited knowledge of proper diet. Many questions
> remain unanswered. Nutritionists themselves cannot agree on proper diet.
> They argue on television and at national health conferences. There is
> however no way to argue with millions of years of evolution.
At the genetic level there is no "proper diet". There are millions of
polymorphisms in the genome and what is right for one person will not
be right for another. Eating meat is bad for people who have hemochromotosis.
Eating foods high in cholesterol is bad for people with defective cholesterol
receptors. The list is long. Saying a "paleo" diet (or any other diet) is
the right one without knowing an individual's genetic background is naive.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Apr 30 2003 - 10:02:48 MDT