[extropy-chat] what is the upside / advantage of meat ?

[Robert Bradbury]

On 9/22/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> Perhaps those males that devoured beef resulted in higher testosterone
> levels, which caused them to be more determined and more successful
> copulators than those that did not eat beef.  We being the descendants of
> the more successful copulators would have inherited their relatively
> higher
> desire for beef.


I'm not sure you can equate any modern meat consumption with historic
(during periods of an evolving human genome).  Eating meat from lean forrest
animals or wild African plain animals is very different from eating modern
farm bred (potentially drug treated) and feed lot fattened cows.  I've heard
statements attributed to hunters that wild deer or moose are quite different
from hamburger or steak.  Where ice age wooly mammoths (or whales) fall into
this spectrum isn't clear.

Is it known for a fact that "wild" animal consumption results in higher
testosterone?  (And clearly modern farm soy products (soy milk, soy burgers,
etc.) were not available during genome evolution to effect female estrogen
levels.)

I would go with the high protein + high fat --> faster growth --> earlier
sexual maturity --> more children and leave it at that.

As far compensating for loss of muscle mass as one ages by switching from
vegetarian diets to meat diets this approach has clear limits.  You are
losing muscle mass because (a) the cells are becoming increasingly less
efficient at maintaining and turning over muscle mass; and (b) you are
losing cells completely.  This will not be corrected until those cells can
be completely replaced with cells operating at childhood efficiency levels (
i.e. those with relatively "perfect" genomes).

I'll point out two things.  One, there is likely to be a fair amount of
genetic variation with respect to the genes involved in tasting various
foods, processing nutrients and downstream impacts on hormone levels,
personality, etc.  So starting from a "one size is best" perspective is
going to be extremely problematic.  Two, we are rapidly approaching the era
where engineered solar pond grown bacteria (or perhaps algae) will be much
more efficient [1] (and healther) than natural plant or meat food sources.
In theory it should be feasible to produce these with any taste you want
(the taste receptors are both limited and well known) so one will be dealing
only with variables such as smell (which is a larger though not impossibly
larger problem) and texture which can presumably be dealt with by the food
processing industry.

Robert

1.  This solar pond approach eliminates the 1/10 vegetable->animal
efficiency reduction argument.  The number is probably more like 1/3 or 1/4
(but there is still a loss of energy).  But plants are only functioning at
1-2% anyway and it should be possible to push that to at least 8% and
eventually 10-20% before conversion to solar cells and completely synthetic
food factories (electricity -> glucose/protein) are developed.
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