From: KPJ (kpj@sics.se)
Date: Thu May 16 2002 - 05:27:57 MDT
It appears as if J.W. Harris <index@cox.net> wrote:
|
|? I thought the only pure carnivore humans were traditional Inuit
|such as Eskimo. Many people eat a mostly carnivorous or mostly
|vegetarian diet, but note that 'mostly'. We are omnivores, and it's
|difficult to stay healthy at either extreme.
As to `omnivores': humans are neither omnivores nor carnivores. The aquatic
apes were originally eaters of fruit and half-rotten animals. This explains
why humans wish to have `well-hung' (half-rotten) meat, and why they wish to
destroy the meat by cooking and/or roasting it.
Cats eat fresh meat, humans want their meat spoiled.
|Inuit don't suffer from gout like king Henry VIII because they get
|most of their calories from fat, not protein.
Inuit have a genetic mutation which make them survive their food. Non-inuit
tend to have a problem with the heavy intake of vitamins A and D. In fact,
polar discoverers have been known to die from eating e.g. polar bear liver.
Other useful mutations will be found with more DNA research, I presume.
|I prefer a low meat diet myself but I will never willingly become pure
|vegetarian. (I may have to amend that if genetic engineering of
|plants makes for big changes in food production before MNT makes old
|methods of food production obsolete. I'm still waiting for Spirulina
|to become cheap enough to try out. Is there any reason for it to be
|as expensive as it is?)
I have come to the conclusion that you might wish to avoid eating mammals,
as their diseases also might infect you. I understand HIV infected humans
when they killed and ate monkeys. Also, scrapie (sheep disease), Mad Cow
disease (cattle) and Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD) appears to actually be
the same disease, infecting several kinds of mammals, including humans.
When one can use nanotech to build a steak from atoms, untouched by nasty
micro organisms, the above problems will disintegrate, naturally. But those
who wish to live for a long time will wish to avoid unnecessary risks in
these primitive ages.
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