humans and cellulose ( was Magnesium)

[Guest guest]

>>>>Grass, on the other hand, is utterly foreign. It has virtually no

caloric value, and while it does contain some valuable minerals, they're

encased in cellulose, which, in laymen's terms, is wood.

***That goes for ALL green leafy vegetables, doesn't it? Do you think humans

should not bother to eat *any* green leafy veggies?

(Unjointed grass also contains a number of vitamins and antioxidants in

*much* higher concentration than many green veggies, btw.)

And what about grains? By that logic - they too are somewhat of a *foreign*

food that we cannot eat in their *as is* state - rather we must prepare them

carefully in order to extract the nutrients, and to neutralize the

anti-nutrients. Yet and still, the *healthiest* group WAP found, the Dinkas,

consumed primarily seafood and *oatmeal,* as did the robustly healthy Isle

of group.

So where do you draw the line...should we only eat foods that don't need

*any* preparation? Are these foods the *only* 'natural' foods for humans to

eat?

I have not read *all* of NAPD, but I'm sure some of the healthier groups

consumed *some* plant material (properly prepared) that contained a good

amount of cellulose. A case and point from the WAPF site re Aborigines:

" The traditional role for Aboriginal women was that of gatherer. They were

responsible for harvesting insects, shellfish and almost all plant foods.

Most regions of Australia offered a cornucopia of nutritious plant foods,

even the arid desert regions. The east coast of Australia alone boasts over

250 edible plants including tubers such as yams and grass potatoes, fern

roots, palm hearts, legumes, nuts, seeds, shoots, ***leaves*** and a wide

variety of fruits such as figs and berries.9

Plant foods required more careful preparation since many of them were

difficult to digest and even poisonous. Aboriginal women spent many hours

washing, grinding, pounding, straining, grating, boiling and cooking plant

foods. "

http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/australian_aborigines.html

Suze Fisher

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg/

mailto:s.fisher22@...

[Guest guest]

>> >>>Grass, on the other hand, is utterly foreign. It has virtually no

>> caloric value, and while it does contain some valuable minerals, they're

>> encased in cellulose, which, in laymen's terms, is wood.

> ***That goes for ALL green leafy vegetables, doesn't it? Do you think

humans

> should not bother to eat *any* green leafy veggies?

Suze,

You bring up a good point. There are very few absolutes regarding what we

should and shouldn't eat. Grass isn't only for ruminants. Look at horses.

They don't ruminate yet they do a large amount of grass-eating. Mice?

Rabbits? Even some primates eat *some* grasses. Deer (which are ruminant

browsers) have been observed in the wild killing and eating ground nesting

birds (their front hooves are very effective at that sort of thing).

Virtually all of the more complex species (which includes every mammal) have

the ability to eat and benefit from a fairly wide range of foods that don't

necessarily fall into the categories that they are highly adapted to.

I'm a bit concerned that we're severely overestimating the unwholesomeness

of foods that we aren't quite as highly adapted to. I'm also concerned that

we're defining adaptations too narrowly. We're *omnivores*. Generally

speaking, that's a trade-off. We gave up specialized ability to deal with

any one type of food to deal moderately well with virtually all types of

food. That became even more successful as we developed the adaptation of

technological processing of foods (smashing, grinding, prying, drying,

soaking, possibly even cooking, etc) to various degrees even prior to the

emergence of homo sapiens. Homo habilis was already processing foods.

Monkeys technologically process foods. The very act of processing a food

*is an evolutionary adaptation* just as much as having 2 or 3 or 39 ruminant

stomachs would be. If we can render something digestible that contains good

nutrition, and we experience no ill effects from doing so, then it's an

appropriate food. We're not any more perfectly biologically adapted to

carnivory or frugivory than we are to folivory. We require tools to catch

and process animals and we pretty much always have. We do very poorly

nutritionally on a fruit-centric diet. Grasses and leafy vegetables can't

begin to provide significant caloric value, but we have tools and molars

that do allow us to get at some of their other nutritional constituents.

We have two dietary adaptations that are the most significant in determining

human diet. One is that we have an extraordinarily *average* digestive

system compared to other animals...we're stuck between the digestive

adaptations of virtually each category of dietary adaptation. Are we closer

to a wolf or a gorilla? Neither? It depends on which features you

emphasize or de-emphasize. That's why comparative anatomy can be used to

*suggest* almost any diet is better suited to us than another. Another

massively important dietary adaptation is our technological processing

ability. It was a feature, to varying degrees, of virtually all known

hominids. Our species debuted on the scene with that adaptation already

firmly in the bag.

Any conclusions we might *infer* about human dietary adaptation by looking

at Price's work, archaeology, or comparative anatomy should be seen only as

strongly *suggestive* of a generality and not as definitive proof of an

absolute. We can't wander around grazing as our primary dietary function,

but that hardly means that our ingenuity can't be applied to render foods

available to us that wouldn't be available to us in some supposed state of

pure nature that hominids (and even some other current primates) haven't

existed in since at least two speciation events prior to our current

biological state.

Finally, we're extremely poorly biologically adapted to a graminovorous

diet, but yet Price noted that the healthiest tribe he found in Africa

consumed grains. I think that has implications as profound as our obligate

need for dietary B12, DHA, EPA, vitamin D, or preformed vitamin A.

Sorry about the rambling nature of this post...