David Wright said:In article <[email hidden]>,
Maleki said:I read somewhere human is the only "animal" that does not
store vitamin c in his body. Elsewhere I remember I read
something to the effect that this feature in human
might've been the result of having eaten a lot of fruits
in his diet, in some long period of his evolution, to the
extent that the vitamin c levels in his body reached toxic
level and killed off those who could store it and left
only the ones who could not store it in the body.
Dubious. I don't know about this "storage" business; we
all can store some C in our bodies. Otherwise, we'd
develop scurvy after a few days of no C in our diets. The
whole point of vitamins is that they're substances we need
but can't make for ourselves, and thus must get them from
our diets.
Humans are unusual among mammals in not being able to make
our own C;
If other apes can make their own needed C in their bodies,
why human, being just another "ape", cannot? As I said,
somewhere, in a book or news item and not a usenet post,
someone claimed this was a clue to human's consumption of a
lot of fruits daily to the effect of poisoning himself by
vitamin C. Those who could make C in themeselves died out
and the rest stayed around and we're the descendents.
Quoted message said:guinea pigs and other primates also lack the ability. But
many animals that can make C have much higher serum levels
of it than we
do.
Quoted message said:If the above picture is correct, then Atkins diet cannot
be healthy based on the claim they make that it
corresponds to what human has been eating most of the time
during his evolution (before domestication of grains
began). Fruits are missing in this diet. Anybody knows how
the diet's advocates explain this?
They can always take a multivitamin.
The point is not vitamin C. The point is human dependence on
fruit consumption. One more time: If human consumption of
fruits have been so regular and substantial that it has had
evolutionary imprints on us (such as our inability to
manufacture C in our bodies), then how can Atkins Diet
proponents put the consumption of fruits aside without
worrying about _other_ evolutionary imprints that
consumption of large amounts of fruits has had in us?
Imprints like a number of other dependencies on fruits known
and unknown to us at this point.
If we stop eating fruits, we may lose much more than what a
"multivitamin" can provide. How do the Atkins' Diet freaks
explain this?
--
sagi ke pArs koneh nemigireh.
