Dana Carpender > writes:



>Lord Hatred wrote:


>> So you're saying you approve of using evolution as it pertains to the
>> origin of homosapien but against the usage of the evolution of
>> homosapien as a creature itself as it pertains to dietary requirements?
>> You can't have it both ways.


>No, I'm unconvinced that 10,000 years -- maybe 500 generations -- is
>long enough for evolution to have completely altered our nutritional
>requirements.

I would agree about the "completely" part, but there has been apparent
natural selection in human populations who diverged only relatively
recently. Good examples would be sickle cell anemia and thalassemia,
which presumably became more prevalent following exposure to malaria
(or less prevalent in populations who moved away from the skeeters,
I forget which).

More relevantly to diet, consider that there are groups of humans
(such as many Pacific Islanders, for example) who have a propensity
to weight gain (and in fact obesity, as well as type II diabetes).
It's hypothesized that their ancestors -- the relatively healthy
ones who survived long enough to reproduce -- had undergone numerous
selection events [1] which favored a genetic propensity toward
putting on weight, possibly because of a sort of "feast or famine"
environment (and possibly because to get to the islands they had
to ride canoes for weeks). With regular access to food, these
people tend to be on the hefty side. The Pacific islands were
settled probably between three and ten thousand years ago.

Yemenite Jews who were airlifted to Israel had much the same thing
happen to them (probably a lot "worse", in the sense that having
diabetes can be said to be worse than being in danger of starvation).

Conversely, people of European descent have the lowest prevalence
of type II diabetes (although it's increasing); it's thought that
those with the "thrifty genes" were largely, err, culled from the
population with the arrival of really dependable food sources in
the I dunno late middle ages or so.

(I'm not quite convinced this last part is true, though, because
type II diabetes usually starts appearing after the start of the
reproductive years. But I haven't read much on it.)




[1] Kind of a euphemism for "lots of horrible death".

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