In spite of the conventional wisdom, it is entirely possible to be too
thin, and many fad diets are lacking in nutrients.
Humans have been omnivores for millions of years, vegan diets are very
likely to be lacking in things like vitamin B12, which is only found
in a couple plant sources (that most people don't eat).
If you do a bit of digging, you will find that the Body Mass Index is
quite misleading in terms of health -- the group of people sorted by
body mass index that have the highest mortality and morbidity are the
ones in the "normal" range, the healthiest (lowest morbidity and
mortality rates) and in the overweight group.
A much better measurement is body fat percentage, but even then the
sickest people are in the lowest weight class, I suspect because they
are underweight due to pre-existing illness, not because being thin
makes you sick.
Humans in evolutionary terms did not have constant food supplies as we
do today, we evolved in a feast or famine situation, which is why many
populations in marginal environments for people tend to gain huge
amounts of weight on a steady high calorie diet -- the ability to
store excess calories efficiently let them survive long periods of
inadequate food supply, while those who didn't store up every
available calorie died of starvation when the food supply got skimpy.
You don't want to be carrying so much excess weight you wreck your
knees and can't breath sitting down, but a few extra pounds won't hurt
you.
Peter
_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com
To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those
individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner has no
control over the content of the messages of each contributor.
