From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 13:46:30 MDT
Anders Sandberg wrote,
> Huh? This does not fit with my knowledge of biochemistry. As far as I
> know plant proteins are just as complex as animal proteins. What do you
> mean by "completed proteins"?
Unless you claim that all proteins are digested at the same rate, you can
envision a continuum from single amino acids, to simple combinations of a
few amino acids to fully completed proteins containing all 22 amino acids
already constructed into muscle tissue.
This is not a big point, really. The human body is omnivorous and fares
quite well with either animal or plant protein. My original posting was
answering the question about why anybody chooses to be a vegetarian. I
didn't mean my response to try to convince people to stop eating meat. I
have been getting a lot of heated mail on this point. I really don't care
if anyone eats meat. I just explained my personal reasons for not doing so.
> Remember that many pathogens are highly species specific. That is why we
> don't get foot-and-mouth disease (or rather, why in the rare cases it
> does occur in humans is a very mild condition) or most other illnesses
> that hurt livestock.
Sure. I was merely pointing out that animal disease that can infect humans
are more common than plant diseases that infect humans.
Yes. I would even say that most diseases are species specific. My point it
is more likely to become infected with an animal disease than a plant
disease, because humans are closer to animals than plants.
> Also, the metabolism and especially digestion of a grazing herbivore is
> rather different from our own, making it dangerous to just claim that
> unwanted chemicals in meat will transfer in the same concentrations to
> our own body. That is affected by a lot of factors.
I didn't just claim this. It is well documented that dietary cholesterol
ends up in human arteries. Dietary salt ends up in human blood. Dietary
lead ends up in human bones. Dietary mercury in fish ends up in human
brains. High fat diets cause high fat humans. I'm not sure what is so
outrageous about these statements.
All I advocated was a high fiber, low fat, low salt diet. Meat does not
match this recommendation, while vegetables do. I didn't realize that this
was such a politically controversial subject.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> <http://Newstaff.com>
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