Gary Utter made a comment (perhaps as tongue-in-cheek as my piece) about the possibility that a hundred years from now people might look back on us and think we were brutes because we ate animal flesh.
He may be on to something. Since this is my final post here I’m going to put on my longhaired, pointy-headed intellectual hat and my PETA lapel button and see what comes out.
Human beings are the product of evolution. I really don’t care to get in to the whole creation vs. evolution thing, so spare me the arguments on that notion. I’ve seen them pretty well discussed on another blog and we shouldn’t burn bits rehashing it here.
Evolution is a long-term project and it is not particularly concerned with individual success or failure so much as with group and species survival.
Niven’s Law:Mother Nature does not care if you are having fun.
That fairly well sums it up for me.
Given that, if we look on the agriculture/civilization phase of human development it is not unreasonable to ask what purpose this serves in relation to the evolutionary forces at work on the human genome? Bear in mind that evolution can lead species off the proverbial cliff- not all progress is good progress.
What agriculture did was to afford people a larger and more stable food supply. That supply also became more diverse as trade increased between disparate human societies. Animal husbandry had already been a part of the human equation before extensive agriculture took hold, and it continued and grew as human civilization developed, so Man’s taste for meat was never really challenged in any widespread and systemic way. Certainly there were vegetarian sects, but they by no means were the overall norm.
Agriculture and its concomitant boost in the food supply led to a lot of sweeping changes in the way humans developed as individuals. A better food supply means that people live longer, children have a better chance of surviving in to adulthood, and those same children can probably have more children with a better chance that they will survive as well. This isn’t anything new in the way of theorizing, by the way, and it’s all pretty general, but then so is evolution.
So for ten thousand years or so humans have been living within a food supply system that is unlike anything they have experienced previously. We eat tons of carbohydrates and processed sugars that simply were not a part of the diet as we evolved. The result is that a new evolutionary pressure is being placed on Man- we are slowly sorting out the species on the basis of who can easily handle a high carbohydrate diet, and who cannot.
If this is the case then Dr. Atkins and his devotees (of which I am one) are basically shoveling shit against the tide.
Atkins’ diet works by forcing the body to burn fat as ketones rather than carbohydrate-derived glucose (a massive oversimplification of the process, but essentially correct). To do this the dieter is required to drastically reduce the intake of carbohydrates so that the blood sugar drops enough to force the body in to relying on fat for fuel. The Atkins dieter consumes meat, vegetables, cheeses, but stays away from grain products and non-alkyl-sugars. Once the desired weight loss is achieved the carbohydrate consumption is allowed to rise, but never again to the level it was at before. This keeps the body from flipping back to a glucose-primacy metabolic model, thereby avoiding the debilitating effects of hyperinsulinization, which Atkins blames for all the myriad ills of obesity and other blood-serum maladies that are killing people in numbers that make national murder rates look like an unfortunate statistic.
The Atkins Diet works- after long years the medical wilderness the doctors and researchers are finally admitting that people who can’t lose weight on a low fat regimen can see real success and very positive health benefits from it.
Bully for us.
But what happens if we are not allowed to eat meat, or dairy? What happens to that portion of the population that cannot handle a high-carb diet if the societal conscience decrees we shall no longer feast upon the flesh of our fellow inhabitants of this tiny, tortured globe?
Basically, we’re screwed. Sent to the evolutionary scrap heap, and good-bye to bad baggage.
It works somewhat like this: those who can thrive on a high-carb diet will have certain very subtle, but very real advantages over those who cannot. They’ll live longer, and healthier. They’ll be more likely to have kids who do the same. Those who can’t handle it are doomed to cycles of weight gain and weight loss with all the collateral damage that does to the body, and they pass this tendency on to their children. Now, we are a manipulative and technological species, so our scientific knowledge will doubtless interfere with this process. It’s not as if we would see these huge disparities erupting within a hundred years. But in another ten thousand years, who can tell?
What is created is a system where some people have an advantage based on their genes, whereas others are severely disadvantaged in the opposite direction. Mother Nature knows the solution to that formula. Mankind’s knowledge may be able to hold back that judgment, but not forever.
Bear in mind that should this process actually be under way, and I really don’t have a clue one way or the other, its conclusion is by no means foregone. What happens to all those carb-dependant types should our precious civilization come crumbling down around our ears?
I suspect they’ll be eaten by those of us who were pining away for a thick, juicy steak.
Interesting theory - but I think we've essentially reached an evolutionary dead-end; not that we're necessarily going to die out as a species (though this is possible), but that our technological prowess has reached a point that shortly we'll be able to short-circuit the biological, evolutionary impulses and simply make ourselves as we physically wish to be.
I do wonder if we'll survive as we get richer, have fewer children and live longer - after all, if you're living in 2100 hundred and have a life expectancy of 200 years (and being healthy for nearly all that life-span), then where does the pressure to produce come from? Will we just die of boredom?
On the other hand, we might engineer ourselves for new experiences and this will provide for the less sedentary of our progeny the ability to have something to do - Mars too cold and too little gravity? Simple - we'll engineer you to be able to live there fairly comfortably and now you'll have the wonderful task of making a whole new world....etc, etc, etc....
Dean,
You are thinking pretty much only of Europe and the US, though.
More than half the current population of the world lives on mostly carbohydrates and very little meat (India, China, and most of the rest of SE Asia). It's only going to get worse for China and India, as they already produce about as much food as they can, and have precious little extra space for meat.
So perhaps evolution is still working, with western meat-eating civilization on one end, eastern carbohydrate on the other....?
Nathan-
I'm willing to be called narrow minded in the scope of my little thesis. I'm willing to be challenged on my grasp of the facts and human nature. I'm willing to be called wrong (and I often am).
But don't call me Dean. :)
Mark,
With the principles of extra-terrestial terraformation now much better understood than they were 20-30 years ago, I would say that our likelihood of re-engineering Mars to suit us is more likely in the forseeable future than us re-engineering part of the human race to fit Martian gravity and other conditions there.
On the second hand, living on Mars, with its smaller small and resulting weaker surface gravity, itself will likely re-engineer its new inhabitants from Earth with not very many generations.
On the third hand, we still have to get humans to Mars. Each in one piece. Which may not be as easy as we all thought when we were perusing "The Case for Mars".
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
On the third hand, we still have to get humans to Mars. Each in one piece. Which may not be as easy as we all thought when we were perusing "The Case for Mars".
Looks like Martian air defenses took out another
incoming this week...
Evolution is not an issue. Technology overrides it. This is not to say that we WON'T evolve, but we are already doing primitive gene engineering. In another hundred years, we will control the human genome.
Evolution will be at our direction.
So will the evolution of plants and animals. We may give up slaughtering cattle because we are raising cacti that look and taste like Porterhouse. And maybe not. :)
John... if the veganazis somehow succeed in outlawing the consumption of meat, there are still other sources of protein. You can buy powdered soy protein or whey protein, and you can use things like flax meal as a source fo both protein and fiber. I'm not sure how they could ever outlaw dairy... what are you killing by eating a piece of cheese?!
As for your notions about certain high carb dieters passing on high carb attuned genes... I think it is more likely that high carb dieters will pass on damaged genes due to malnutrition. That combined with bad parenting when it comes to teaching their children how to eat properly, will lead to a pollution of the gene pool and a continued exponential increase in various disease rates.
I'm not sure how they could ever outlaw dairy... what are you killing by eating a piece of cheese?!
PETA certainly objects to the consumption of dairy -- anyone remember the Rudy Giuliani "Got prostate cancer" ad that stirred up such a fuss?
They claim that the dairy industry is cruel to the cows. If they manage to get enough people to support banning the consumption of meat, the consumption of dairy products would only be a matter of another five to ten years of propaganda.
Anyway, the cheapest alternative source of protein is plain ol' dry beans. Then we'll be replacing bovine flatulence with human flatulence as the primary source of greenhouse gases (in the propaganda), and then that would be banned "for the good of the planet."
Nathan, whats interesting to me is the effect the two main diets have on mankind. Its interesting that the active, inventive world is a meat eating world and that the hive-like world is a carb eating one. I think that even in cultures like China's people prefer meat, its just that there are so many of them and they are forced to be dependent on a rice heavy mixed diet.
I know that my mind is clearer on a meat diet.
The forces that push a plant diet scare me. I think "they" would like us to be passive and malleable. I think this is the effect of their religion on the Indians and other religiously based vegetarian cultures.
John: You have some mistaken notions about agriculture. We have a very substantial and growing body of evidence that agriculture wound up shortening the human lifespan. This subject is worth a thread of its own, but I'll just say in passing that I can provide you with several references---I did a huge amount of research on this at one time---and it appears that three things happened when people switched to agrarian socities:
1) They became smaller in stature
2) They started living slightly shorter lives
3) Women started having babies at 2-3 times the normal rate.
The only part that's controversial is the lifespan, because it's much harder to prove. But as a rule, we know that hunter/gatherers are taller, have lower incidents of most diseases, and their women don't get pregnant anywhere near as often. It appears that a diet high in carbohydrates actually brings on menarche at an earlier age in girls, and causes them to be more likely to ovulate during breast feeding.
In other words, it appears that the switch to agriculture was not, necessarily, all that great a deal for individual human lives. It may have increased the sum total of human misery, even while making civilization possible. Niven is right: Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun or not. Even if life was shorter and harder in many ways, if it increases the number of babies significantly, then it's going to be successful.
Humans at some point decided that agriculture was a "safer" way to assure that they had regular food--or maybe just a regular supply of beer? :-) It is not clear that they were correct about that: they thought it was a better deal but actually brought more work and misery to themselves. But it gave 'em more babies.
Interesting, eh?
Again, I have references. Lots of 'em. Ask if interested.
By the way, I also agree that at this point, our control over human evolution is such that I don't see major evolutionary changes that happen which aren't planned and consciously engineered. Drugs and such will assure that.
What I do suspect, however, is that within a century or so, killing and eating animals will start to seem a lot more barbaric to most people. Why? Because we'll be able to grow all the meat we want in baths, in effect creating animals without brains or other unnecessary organs. We'll just grow the muscle tissue we want and cut it off and eat it. So why would you be so cruel as to make some animal suffer unnecessarily?
For similar reasons, by the way, I believe that within a century or so most people will consider abortion past about 8 weeks to be a scandalous violation, because anyone who doesn't want to be pregnant can simply have the embryo painlessly removed, given up for adoption, and grown in some other host.
The social changes we'll be facing over the next hundred years are breathtaking to contemplate. Some are predictable, some obviously won't be until they happen.
Excerpt from one of my old entries that sees this from a biblical view. One further note by the way, is it a coincidence that this disease is being kept alive by the process of feeding the animals bits and pieces of other dead animals? These animals are herbivores, and are not meant to eat feed that are comprised of dead animal tissue, which amounts to a form of cannibalism:
Though Atkins is not nearly the ultimate perfection in eating right, it does finally, after so many years of disinformation steer us towards a means of eating that is much more closely consistent with Scripture. For 30 years or so, we were taught that the healthiest diet could be found in the Food Pyramid, with its emphasis on breads, wheats, pastas, etc. Meats were way up there near the top, only to be eaten sparingly. In addition, we have seen vegetarian diets being touted as one of the healthiest ways of eating, but the truth is, it's precisely the opposite of the way the Lord instructed the Jews to eat in the Old Testament.
In Genesis, after the Great Flood, the Lord declared man an omnivore:
Genesis 9:3-4 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, [which is] the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.
The commandment not to eat the blood was reiterated throughout the Old Testament, and when we come to Leviticus, we see a detailed commandment instructing the Israelites on what they could and couldn't eat:
"Leviticus 11:2-10 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, These [are] the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that [are] on the earth. Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, [and] cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat. Nevertheless these shall ye not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: [as] the camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he [is] unclean unto you. And the coney, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he [is] unclean unto you. And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he [is] unclean unto you. And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he [is] unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch; they [are] unclean to you. These shall ye eat of all that [are] in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which [is] in the waters, they [shall be] an abomination unto you:"
Is it any coincidence that one of the most common food allergies we have today is with shellfish, which was declared unclean by the Lord? God certainly didn't give the Israelites these dietary commandments just for the heck of it. It was clear he had their well-being in mind, and wanted to keep them as healthy as possible for those times.
In the New Testament, the dietary laws of the Old Testament are replaced with a new promise:
"1 Timothy 4:4-5 For every creature of God [is] good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer."
Well, my thoughts on evolution are pretty straightforward, and I do remember that there were those who proposed that evolution for human beings screeched to a halt about the time man mastered the assorted uses of fire. Personally, I think the dead hand of Darwin is probably not so easily forestalled, but I doubt that argument will be settled in our lifetimes.
I see the argument regarding the eastern cultures as feeding my little paranoid fantasy in that they have already collapsed to the will of the Carbo-Chauvanists.
John,
We might settle the argument in our lifetimes; I figure it better than 50/50 right now that I (39 years old) will live long enough to be among the first generation of geezers (say, when I'm approaching my 70's) who will get the option of replacement livers, lungs, hearts, etc - meaning that at 75 I might be given another 50 year lease on life...and be pretty healthy right up to the end.
Sometimes I do wonder if its all about to End - can we really go to a point where we can manipulate life like that, or will we be taken away from the universe because such things simply cannot be? Be interesting to watch....
Ah Mark, are you gonna eat that? (reference to your old liver.)