From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Thu May 16 2002 - 11:33:30 MDT
KPJ wrote:
>
> 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.
The aquatic ape is a minority theory. It is more likely we got into the
habit of cooking meat by using fire on the dry windy savannahs to start
wildfires to kill and cook large amounts of animals.
>
> |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.
On the other hand, scandinavians, and Laplanders, specifically, evolved
a diet highly dependent upon fish, deer, and dairy products, so the
'mutation' isn't so rare.
>
> 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.
Scrapie and MCD are similar, but not the same disease. While MCD is
linked to CJD in humans, there is no evidence of scrapie jumping to
either cows or humans from sheep. And while hoof-and-mouth disease is
also common in deer and moose in the wild, there are no known cases of
humans contracting CJD from eating venison. The whole MCD situation in
Europe has seemed to me to be a case of vegans crying wolf for personal
political gain.
The incidence of HIV jumping to humans more likely comes from people
being bitten by HIV infected apes, as well as cutting their skin while
butchering apes. Cooking of virus infected meat tends to destroy the
virus, and successful infection seems also to depend on the victim's
immune system being already compromised due to either malnutrition,
sickness, or drug use.
>
> 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.
Then I shall be sure to stay away from cereal storage and distribution
centers, for fear of Hanta virus, Bubonic Plague, smallpox, and a host
of other diseases communicable by rodentia.
Personally, my first major genomic modification will be to get
photosynthetic skin, whereupon I'll organize POOPER: People Organized to
Oppose Plant Exploitation and Repression.
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