Can humans evolve to digest toxic food like vultures?
After watching the documentary "What the Health?" on Netflix, I criticized it for not taking into account the possibility that we might evolve to be more tolerant to processed meats, milk, ect.
Here's an article on the recent sigh that evolution is still ongoing: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... _milk.html
If humans recently evolved to become lactose tolerant, who is to say that we can't evolve to not die by eating at McDonald's? Better yet, who is to say science can help humans evolve faster in this regard?
What the Health basically follows the assumption that "Evolution has stopped and we must eat a plant-based diet that our ape ancestors, whom they have a radically different anatomy and digestive system, ate".
I don't buy that. We are not apes. We descended from them, but that doesn't mean we can't evolve to be radically different from them.
What do you think?
jrjones9933
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The theoretical possibility certainly exists, but current conditions do not make it likely that almost everyone who can't digest vultures will die without reproducing.
The question does contain a bit of irony, if you consider pink slime. I think the trade name was something like reconstituted beef product. They took the carcasses which remain after butchering, soak them in ammonia to kill bacteria, sluice off all the little remaining chunks of meat, reconstitute it, and add it to hamburger. It's meat, after all. There was an uproar about five years ago, but I doubt it ever really disappeared. Also see that ready-made packaged spicy tuna for poke bowls and sushi rolls. It's made in a similar manner.
I almost forgot to mention why I thought of that second part. It might not take much to extend that process to vultures. We'd adapt long before we'd evolve.
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"I find that the best way [to increase self-confidence] is to lie to yourself about who you are, what you've done, and where you're going." - Richard Ayoade
I only used McDonald's as an example of the kinds of foods we are exposed to everyday; GMO's, processed meat, artificial flavors, ect.
And there is also a great number of lactose-tolerant people out there. Could it be that those lactose-tolerant people are the latest generation?
Because...
1. Mother nature can't produce enough food to sustain the large human populations, especially in countries like China, and so we must resort to GMO foods that, while toxic, can increase the availability of food to poor people.
2. Cancer sucks and not all people can truly determine themselves to eat a healthy, plant-based diet; it is not an easy process to do. Also, if we can evolve to resist toxic food, would that make us more cancer-tolerant?
3. Organic, non-GMO foods are expensive to produce and to buy. There is likely little profit to be had with that.
Sweetleaf
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Why in the world would we want to live off McDonald's? Why would science waste time on helping us digest rubbish?
Some people do live off junk and survive already.
Yeah that is kind of my thoughts, if anything I would hope that Mcdonalds eventually collapses. Maybe science should investigate how people get tricked into eating that rubbish in the first place and why they continue to eat it..and work towards putting an end to that.
As far as I am concerned evolving to be better at eating Mcdonalds sounds like devolution.
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Mother nature already has a solution for that...it's called death. If a population outgrows its resources the excess die to maintain a happy balance. When societies start, the model they follow is to have as many children as they can to give a "better chance" that at least one will survive to look after the parent. This leads to population explosions, lack of resources, widespread death. Eventually families learn that it is better to have fewer children but give them greater resources as that increases the chance of their survival. Developed countries all behave in this manner, but developing countries like Africa still go for the "quantity over quality model". Why is this? Why have they not gone from one model to the other? Because of our foreign aid, our charities, our constant efforts to "feed the starving in Africa". If people have lots of children and foreigners come to feed and cure them then what are they going to learn from that? The developed nations of today grew at a time when there was no foreign aid like today. So as cruel as it may seem, we're not actually helping these people by feeding them, we should let the water find its own level.
As to the question, it's unlikely humans will evolve this as it's not particularly key for survival. We don't really eat toxic things. It's more likely that we'd evolve immunity to things like cholera etc, things that do give people in certain parts of the world a greater chance of survival.
Last edited by Chichikov on 28 Aug 2017, 3:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
jrjones9933
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Mother nature already has a solution for that...it's called death. If a population outgrows its resources the excess die to maintain a happy balance. When societies start, the model they follow is to have as many children as they can to give a "better chance" that at least one will survive to look after the parent. This leads to population explosions, lack of resources, widespread death. Eventually families learn that it is better to have fewer children but give them greater resources as that increases the chance of their survival. Developed countries all behave in this manner, but developing countries like Africa still go for the "quantity over quality model". Why is this? Why have they not gone from one model to the other? Because of our foreign aid, our charities, our constant efforts to "feed the starving in Africa". If people have lots of children and foreigners come to feed and cure them then what are they going to learn from that? The developed nations of today grew at a time when there was no foreign aid like today. So as cruel as it may seem, we're not actually helping these people by feeding them, we should let the water find its own level.
Social Darwinism rolled up with the predictable biases, and topped off with a nice metaphor. It would have sounded worse to end that paragraph with "we should let millions of people starve to death."
The deliberate ignorance of history in the quoted post seems worth noting, as well. Colonialism played no part in creating this situation, and plays no part in perpetuating it for the benefit of the former colonial powers? I always laugh bitterly at how their sense of moral responsibility disappears when conservatives think about how to treat the out-group.
If you want to abuse science, take it to PPR. This is the wrong subforum.
_________________
"I find that the best way [to increase self-confidence] is to lie to yourself about who you are, what you've done, and where you're going." - Richard Ayoade
Mother nature already has a solution for that...it's called death. If a population outgrows its resources the excess die to maintain a happy balance. When societies start, the model they follow is to have as many children as they can to give a "better chance" that at least one will survive to look after the parent. This leads to population explosions, lack of resources, widespread death. Eventually families learn that it is better to have fewer children but give them greater resources as that increases the chance of their survival. Developed countries all behave in this manner, but developing countries like Africa still go for the "quantity over quality model". Why is this? Why have they not gone from one model to the other? Because of our foreign aid, our charities, our constant efforts to "feed the starving in Africa". If people have lots of children and foreigners come to feed and cure them then what are they going to learn from that? The developed nations of today grew at a time when there was no foreign aid like today. So as cruel as it may seem, we're not actually helping these people by feeding them, we should let the water find its own level.
Social Darwinism rolled up with the predictable biases, and topped off with a nice metaphor. It would have sounded worse to end that paragraph with "we should let millions of people starve to death."
The deliberate ignorance of history in the quoted post seems worth noting, as well. Colonialism played no part in creating this situation, and plays no part in perpetuating it for the benefit of the former colonial powers? I always laugh bitterly at how their sense of moral responsibility disappears when conservatives think about how to treat the out-group.
If you want to abuse science, take it to PPR. This is the wrong subforum.
Educate yourself rather than just telling people you disagree with that they're wrong.
Waiting around for humans to "evolve" through natural natural selection to be able live off of mcDonalds food would take thousands of years.
But if you want to use unnatural selection (ie use modern science to manipulate our genes) to force us to evolved faster - then- it would be stupid to make your goal "so we can live off mcdonald's food".
The reason being that hamburgers and cheese are high on the food chain.
If you wanna ensure our survival you would use genetic manipulation to make us into creatures that could digest cellulose so we could eat plentiful stuff that's low on the food chain like wood, or grass.
Even termites cant digest wood (the depend on a bacteria in their stomach to do it for them).
Or give us the right genes so that we could digest cockroaches. Today the only creature that digest cockroach meat are cockroaches. But if you created GMO humans with stomachs with right enzyme we could do it too. And instead of being upset by cockroaches in our apartments we would delight if our apartments turned into the equivalent of volunteer cattle ranches stocked with the finest in black angus roach meat on the hoof!
Or better yet ...engineer humans that eat plastic. Or maybe just engineer livestock that can each plastic waste. And then we could eat the livestock.
We've become so weak and soft from having an antibiotic for everything, a minor infection is enough to kill most people now. There are bacteria living permanently in hospitals that will chew you up and spit you out. We're certainly not evolving to become tougher. So many of us are kept alive by artificial means today, if our technological infrastructure were to suddenly cease functioning, you wouldn't be able to bury the bodies fast enough to keep ahead of the stench.
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jrjones9933
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I only used McDonald's as an example of the kinds of foods we are exposed to everyday; GMO's, processed meat, artificial flavors, ect.
And there is also a great number of lactose-tolerant people out there. Could it be that those lactose-tolerant people are the latest generation?
Because...
1. Mother nature can't produce enough food to sustain the large human populations, especially in countries like China, and so we must resort to GMO foods that, while toxic, can increase the availability of food to poor people.
2. Cancer sucks and not all people can truly determine themselves to eat a healthy, plant-based diet; it is not an easy process to do. Also, if we can evolve to resist toxic food, would that make us more cancer-tolerant?
3. Organic, non-GMO foods are expensive to produce and to buy. There is likely little profit to be had with that.
There is no evidence that GMOs are toxic. Everything has genes and splicing some into another isn't that big a deal.
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