180k-Year-Old Mutation Allowed Humans To Become Vegetarians, Move Out of Africa

Vegetarian? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 08:09 · Score: 5, Insightful

Wouldn't that be omnivores?

Re:Vegetarian? by preaction · 2012-09-21 08:15 · Score: 5, Informative

We were already omnivores, this allowed us to not be required to eat certain foods (fish and shellfish), so we could survive away from the sources for those.
Re:Vegetarian? by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-09-21 08:17 · Score: 4, Informative

No, humans were omnivores before, same as other primates. Omnivore means having a diet of both meat and plants, both in large quantities. It doesn't mean that you can survive on either just meat or just plants alone. Indeed, most omnivores require a mix of meat and plants for the diet to be healthy.
So far as I can see, this mutation is not truly vegetarian, either - it lets us reduce meat consumption in favor of plants, but not replace it entirely.
Re:Vegetarian? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 09:20 · Score: 2, Funny

It actually let us replace meat completely. Take it from a vegan developer.
Re:Vegetarian? by WillKemp · 2012-09-21 10:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's not true. There are a few non animal sources if B12. I was vegan for 14 years and i didn't just seem healthy, i was healthy - healthier than i would have been if i was a lacto vego.
Re:Vegetarian? by gox · 2012-09-21 11:03 · Score: 4, Informative

Humans require B12 which can only be obtained from animals.
That's not entirely true. Animals don't produce B12, it is produced by single celled organisms that are omnipresent in nature. Animals consume it while eating vegetables because they don't wash them. We do, and that's why we can't get enough of it through an ordinary vegan diet. If we lived in nature, we would. So the supplement a vegan needs to get is something that is previously removed from the food source.
Re:Vegetarian? by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-09-21 12:53 · Score: 3, Informative

Vegetarian != vegan.
Re:Vegetarian? by russotto · 2012-09-21 13:18 · Score: 5, Funny

Its not like you ca add one thing to the vegetarian diet and 'fix' it.
Actually, you can. Meat.
Re:Vegetarian? by Swave+An+deBwoner · 2012-09-21 13:20 · Score: 3, Informative

B12 is produced by microorganisms, and apparently that's where most animals get their B12 from -- e.g., eating soil.
Cyanocobalamin is the usual B12 supplemental form and can be obtained in tablet form over the counter or from supplemented foods.
Nutritional yeast is usually supplemented with B12, though the amount varies. Looking at a few labels: KAL Yeast Flakes lists "150% Daily Value" in 3 rounded tablespoons; Red Star Yeast VSF (flakes) lists 8 micrograms or "133% Daily Value" in 2 heaping tablespoons; and impressively, Twinlab SuperRich Yeast Plus lists 25 micrograms or "416%" in 2 tablespoons.
Many people find that nutritional yeasts taste good. I sprinkle yeast flakes on popcorn and mix yeast into soup or over pasta both for the nutritional boost and because it's a source of umami flavor:
http://www.thekitchn.com/umami-for-vegans-136507
Brits and Aussies have Marmite and its clones:
http://www.marmite.com/love/nutrition/vitamin-b12.html
Re:Vegetarian? by WillKemp · 2012-09-21 13:47 · Score: 2

About ten years ago, i stopped eating wheat and other similar grains, because they didn't really agree with me. After a while of that, i started getting the urge to eat fish. At that stage in my life i couldn't really think of a good reason not to, so i did. I never started eating dairy or eggs again - and i still don't touch them. And i didn't start eating other meat until several years later, when i went to work in Afghanistan. I also started eating bread again while i was there (and drinking alcohol, after a year off it - but that's another story!).
The years off wheat etc were definitely beneficial and starting eating it again didn't seem to do any harm. And i'm certain that the years of being vegan were good for my health long term too. I'd quite like to go back to being vegan, but i couldn't be bothered with the hassle nowadays - and i've developed a taste for meat too1 ;-)
Re:Vegetarian? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 14:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Dairy products (say 1/4 lb of cheese or a pint of milk would be enough) and eggs contain quite a bit, though cooking eggs decreases the ability of the B12 to bind.
Re:Vegetarian? by dutchwhizzman · 2012-09-21 16:00 · Score: 4, Informative

You are comparing people that are very conscious and strict about their diet that happen to have one (debated unhealthy) habit to the average of a very unhealthy nation of people.
If you were to compare honestly, you would take a large sample of vegans of all ages, gender, income group and compare those to people equally concious about what they eat but meat eaters. Factor in the same distribution of age, gender, income group, since vegans tend to be either religious (Buddhist monks for instance) or not poor and living in western countries.
I think you will find that the vegans will not be healthier in general. They may be healthier on specific diseases related to eating meat and unhealthier on factors related to missing essential nutrients that are common in animal produced food but are hard to get in your diet if you are vegan. From what I understand from dietary scientists I happen to know, is that the diseases typically linked to eating meat will probably be a lot more rare than (developmental) diseases from not eating meat in the entire group of tested people. This probably is never truly researched in a way that I propose here, so maybe someone not related to vegan or meat food industries will be willing to sponsor adequate research? Maybe they will find new diseases, or causes for diseases or symptoms not yet discovered.

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Re:Vegetarian? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 17:27 · Score: 2, Informative

2 things in a vegan diet contain b12, mushrooms and bananas.
More important than actually supplying B12 is the secretion of 'intrinsic factor' which is what allows the body to absorb B12 from the diet. Also intestinal floraproduce B12. Learn something beyond the traditional anti-vegetarian/vegan propoganda and you might actually learn something worth knowing. Many 'facts' about vegetarianism come from outdated literature like the idiotic idea that one needs to combine 'complementary proteins' from Frances Moore Lappe and her book 'Diet for a small planet' .
99% of what people believe about vegetarianism is complete hogwash. Being from NZ, being a vegetarian is no mean feat, but in my case it was necessary to prevent chronic gut ache on the standard NZ diet of meat and spuds. I have refused for some time to shovel meat and dairy down my gullet like it's going out of production because frankly, it made me ill. I know a few vociferous meatatarians who don't realise the harm chronic overindulgence in meat can lead to.
I have been a vege for nearly 30 years, how about you?
Re:Vegetarian? by rs79 · 2012-09-21 19:31 · Score: 2

That's not what it says. It just says some people had a higher level of efficiency converting certain fatty acids to EPA ad DHA.
And they're saying this enabled man to live inland away from marine sources.
There's a debate in evolutionary biology, did the source of the w-3 lipids come from marine sources or brains and marrow?
If it's the latter the paper doesn't matter. If it's the former this doesn't imply anything about vegearianism.

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Re:Vegetarian? by flyingsquid · 2012-09-21 22:02 · Score: 2

I call bullshit on this article. So first off, there's nothing to suggest that hominids needed some kind of special adaptation to be able to move out of Africa, after all, they had already done it hundreds of thousands of years before. Homo erectus was the first hominid out of Africa; it's present in Eurasia almost two million years ago, and H. erectus eventually gets as far east as India, China and Indonesia. The Neanderthal-Denisovan lineage then moved out of Africa roughly half a million years ago, with Neanderthals inhabiting Europe and the Middle East, and the Denisovans ultimately going all the way to Siberia. So hominids were already highly adaptable animals, they didn't need some mutation to allow them to persist outside of Africa.
Second of all, the first wave out of Homo sapiens out of Africa actually seem to have taken the coastal route, not an inland route. The first people out of Africa are the australoids, who include the Australian aborigines, Japanese Ainu, probably the Sri Lankan Veddah, and possibly Kennewick Man in Washington. They move out around 70,000 years ago, and since they're today found on islands (Sri Lanka, Australia, Japan) or coastal areas (Washington) they seem to have been early seafarers (the Eurasians move out maybe 30,000 years later, likely taking an overland route). So that doesn't really fit with their idea that the move out of Africa is associated with eating plants and cutting ties with marine resources.
Third, the whole argument is based on the idea that, up to this point, humans are "obligatorily tethered to marine sources". What's the evidence for this? They make some vague claim that early humans in Africa lived "at the margins of lakes, rivers, or seashores in central and eastern Africa." But they don't provide any evidence or argument to explain why humans couldn't have existed anywhere else. Okay, so you get early human remains near lakes, rivers, and oceans... well, for one thing, humans need water, so they camp near lakes, streams, and rivers. Second, fossils get preserved when they are buried in sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rocks primarily form in lakes, rivers, and oceans. So virtually all fossils are deposited in water. That's just paleontology 101. It's hardly surprising to find early humans in association with water, and you can't from that evidence conclude that humans needed fish to survive.

I knew it by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 08:12 · Score: 3, Funny

So vegetarians are mutants and humans are originally meat-eaters?

is it a mutation? by Sebastopol · 2012-09-21 08:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'm always sensitive to any claims of "mutation X gave humans power Y" because mutations are so rarely beneficial, the majority of evolution comes from sexual inheritance and selection pressure.

So how do they know it was a mutation? Its not like suddenly humans got a hunkering for plants one day. It had to happen gradually, so this gene must have been kicking around for ages, and must have appeared in multiple tribes; one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species.

Basically, I don't understand this article.

Any experts out there want to demystify this for me a little more? How one random gene in one birth suddenly afflicts an entire population?

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Re:is it a mutation? by SQLGuru · 2012-09-21 08:18 · Score: 2

Mutation just means a change. The first person with Attribute Z was the mutation. Breeding happened. The trait was inherited. More breeding happened. etc. If the mutation was beneficial or preferential, it spread faster. If it was detrimental, it spread slower or disappeared.
Skin color, hair color, eye color ---- all mutations from whatever was original (probably dark for all three).
Re:is it a mutation? by snadrus · 2012-09-21 08:24 · Score: 2

One mutated birth who gets to eat vastly better than the rest of the tribe (as-in not dumb skin & bones) equals likely diffusion. Breeding with the strong, smart (brain nutrients from article), well-fed-looking one becomes very likely.

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Re:is it a mutation? by Sarten-X · 2012-09-21 08:29 · Score: 5, Informative

We'll go in order...

mutations are so rarely beneficial
The vast majority of the mutations that are widespread through the population are either benign or beneficial. The ones that aren't don't stick around in the gene pool long enough to become widespread. It's the other half of the selection pressure you mentioned: The selection pressure culls bad mutations out quickly, so the good (or at least ineffective ones) are all that's left. This is definitely a case of history being written by the victors: The bad mutations don't usually stick around long enough to be noticed (in long-term history).

So how do they know it was a mutation?
Because some folks have it, and other folks don't. From the geographic distribution of where the haves and have-nots are, combined with the prevailing theories about human movements, the researchers can estimate what genetic group first got the change.

one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species.
It doesn't happen suddenly. That one mutation spreads through one family, who suddenly has the ability to survive without eating fish (substituting vegetables, instead). Over the next thousand years or so, that family (and the associated mutation) spread across the local region, and the knowledge of "it's okay to eat vegetables" spread with it. Since that group could wander further (carrying longer-lasting vegetables rather than fish), they spread farther than other groups, until they eventually became dominant.

How one random gene in one birth suddenly afflicts an entire population?
Just to be clear, it doesn't. The one random change will be in one family line, and only really become widespread if it allows the family to outgrow the rest of the population, or if the the rest of the population dies off.

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Re:is it a mutation? by SecurityTheatre · 2012-09-21 08:39 · Score: 5, Informative

Basically, I don't understand this article.
The problem isn't the article. It's your limited understanding of evolution and genetics. :-)
According to modern evolutionary theory, mutations create ALL change. Most mutations don't do something favourable, or really actually probably don't do anything at all, but some of them are favourable and those individuals go onto spread that gene more effectively than their peers until many many generations later, this gene has spread throughout the species (or the region, or the tribe, etc).
If a tribe of ancient humans gradually gained the ability to survive without meat, and a major event such as volcanic eruption or something killed off the local food staple, the tribe that could survive for years without meat might be the only survivors in the entire area. If the species is isolate to that area, they could plausibly be the only survivors of the species.
In this way it is actually possible for the entire species to gain a trait in just a few generations. Or, a mutation can gradually make its way into cultures in a more limited sense.
For example, genetic analysis suggests that ALL blue eyed individuals are descendants from a single individual with a unique mutation about 6-10,000 years ago. People with brown eyes have a huge variety of genes that affect pigmentation, whereas all individuals with blue eyes have a very specific sequence that controls it, which, along with mitochondrial DNA surveys, leads researchers to conclude the bit about a single individual.
Pretty cool, eh?
Re:is it a mutation? by Sarten-X · 2012-09-21 09:03 · Score: 2

What's so ridiculous about it? It's important to note that many factors in human population changes are not genetic - the genes just come along for the ride. Natural disasters, politics, and climate force people to mingle and move, and the good (or at least not-too-bad) genes get passed on every time a male gets close enough to a female.

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Re:is it a mutation? by circletimessquare · 2012-09-21 09:05 · Score: 4, Informative

"one mutated birth isn't going to suddenly diffuse across an entire species."
you're right:
1. what happens is those without the mutation die or have less children or no children, or are confined to one small environmental niche
2. while those with the mutation live longer or have more children or move over a wider range taking advantage of a wider range of food
and you're wrong:
1. it could start with one single mutation in one individual
2. it does diffuse across an entire species: that's what sex is for
3. it does happen suddenly, on the time scale of geological time

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Re:is it a mutation? by sjames · 2012-09-21 09:08 · Score: 2

Perhaps we're seeing the evolution of social equality. The old guard (who may well NOT be smarter, just better positioned by their parents) does all it can to expand the divide and then gets out-bread and finally eliminated. If they were REALLY smart, they'd be all about reducing the divide between rich and poor so the poor wouldn't out-breed them so quickly.
Re:is it a mutation? by postbigbang · 2012-09-21 09:11 · Score: 2

The ostensible mutation might have helped humans digest plant proteins... but stomach flora has a lot to do with uptake. Until more is known about the relationship between the two, I'll listen to the premise and wonder aloud how gut flora combined with the mutation to provide a systematic result.
Until then, I think it's clever spaghetti against the wall.

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Re:is it a mutation? by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-09-21 09:16 · Score: 2, Informative

According to modern evolutionary theory, mutations create ALL change.
Caveat: this is only true if you define "mutation" very broadly. Usually, when biologists say "mutation," it means a change in the DNA sequence, but we're learning more and more about heritable non-sequence changes (this usually goes under the name "epigenetics") which can also affect phenotype, and thus have an evolutionary impact. It's still true as far as we know that most heritable changes are sequence changes, but by no means all.
At some point we're going to have to adapt our vocabulary to deal with this, perhaps by returning to the old meaning of "gene" as "a unit of inheritance" and expanding the meanings of "mutation," "expression," and related terms accordingly. It hasn't happened yet, because the accepted meanings have served us well for 50+ years, and technical jargon is often, quite reasonably, very resistant to change.

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Re:is it a mutation? by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2012-09-21 09:18 · Score: 2

This one story about one mutation may be right or wrong. but in general thats how mutations spread across populations. If you don't want to believe in evolution because it contradicts your faith or something thats fine, but don't waste our time trying to tell us we're doing science wrong.

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Re:is it a mutation? by jd · 2012-09-21 12:45 · Score: 2

Non-sequence changes in the epigenome are protein changes in a structure (of sorts) and can arguably still be called mutations. They're typically caused by a response to (non-protein) chemicals in the environment, which essentially act as epigenomic mutagens. Yes, I know, that's not the most common way to phrase it, but the understanding of epigenomics is sufficiently poor that I can probably use such phrasing on Slashdot, and certainly it's close enough in analogy that I could use it in a conversation with someone who actually worked in the field and be understood. Disagreed with, perhaps, or beaten over the head with a baseball bat, but understood nonetheless.

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Re:is it a mutation? by jd · 2012-09-21 12:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

(1) is often referred to as a "founder event", particularly by people like Ken Nordtvedt, who studies human migrations through genetics as a hobby.
(3) There are an estimated 200 mutations in the Y chromosome alone every generation, be they extra copies/deletions of something (known as a short tandem repeat) or a change in a single nucleotide (known as a single nucleotide polymorphism). Most of this is in "junk" DNA (now known to be control sequences and metadata - a prediction many had made for two or three decades at least, and I've been making on Slashdot for 10+ years) but it's also found in coding sequences. Most genealogy (eg: by Family Tree DNA) is done with the "junk" DNA, most prior health work (eg: by 23AndMe) has been done on the coding sequences but expect that to change to everything at some point. Studies on population migrations suggest one mutated birth (such as the ability to digest milk) can spread over most of the species in 6-7 thousand years, and markers associated with (and do not predate) the Vikings can be found in significant quantities in most inhabited continents after far less time than that. On geological timescales, this qualifies as the Newtonian concept of the infinitesimal.

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Vegetarians? by houghi · 2012-09-21 08:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

Vegetarians. You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

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Re:Vegetarians? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 08:41 · Score: 5, Funny

I'm a proxy vegetarian via eating grass and corn fed cows!
Re:Vegetarians? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 09:11 · Score: 2, Informative

Vegetarians. You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

More interesting than that... by erroneus · 2012-09-21 08:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

... being able to eat vegetables is not unusual for ANY monkey or ape. What is more if not most interesting is a genetic mutation which allows us to eat grains. Chimpanzees, for example, simply cannot process grains and as far as I have heard humans are the only primates which can.

Re:More interesting than that... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 09:24 · Score: 2, Informative

Exactly, we owe our big brains to the energy starch gives us. Very few primates can digest starch while diferent human groups developed civilization the day they domesticaded a starchy plant (rice, corn, potatoes, wheat, etc.)
Re:More interesting than that... by PPH · 2012-09-21 11:02 · Score: 2

Notice that supplementation is not required for healthful vegetarian diets,
So, what do they mean by "appropriately planned"?
Consider that many of the recommended fruits, nuts, soy products and whatever haven't been available locally or year-round until the (recent) advent of air freight and refrigerated shipping (so, what does your vegetarian carbon footprint look like), I wonder how one was expected to maintain such a diet thousands of years ago.

a carnivore diet would be a slow death from scurvy
Yeah. All those poor Eskimos.

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Moved away from water? by Nyder · 2012-09-21 08:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

unless they mutated away to live without water, humans did NOT move away from water.

I'm pretty sure they still lived around water. Rivers, Springs, Oases, Wells, whatever, but they needed the water.

But what do i know?

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Re:Moved away from water? by PPH · 2012-09-21 08:30 · Score: 5, Funny

They'd have to drink their Scotch neat.

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Re:Moved away from water? by udachny · 2012-09-21 08:48 · Score: 2

You are wrong, it's because you are not actually a human, you are a bunch of letters on my computer screen. We, humans, can survive without any water for months at a time. In fact we don't really even need water at all, it's just a habit from the old times, we live mostly on solid coffee beans and salt. Lots and lots of salt. That's how we fight off the land pyranha as well, they hate salt.

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can i haz teh dictionary? by luis_a_espinal · 2012-09-21 08:27 · Score: 5, Informative

How the hell did the original poster went from this

The scientists found that a key genetic variant gave humans the ability to convert fats from plants into essential nutrients for the brain."

To this?

180k-Year-Old Mutation Allowed Humans To Become Vegetarians, Move Out of Africa

People who don't know their scientific terms mis-quote scientific articles. News at 10.

Re:can i haz teh dictionary? by Urza9814 · 2012-09-21 08:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

What's wrong with the summary? We no longer needed to get those nutrients from meat -- we could survive solely on plant life. Therefore, we could become vegetarians.
Re:can i haz teh dictionary? by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2012-09-21 09:03 · Score: 2

The point is that the mutation (putatively) allowed humans to survive on a vegetarian diet, when they couldn't do so before. This would be very valuable for a nomadic "hunter-gatherer" lifestyle in times and places where there was plenty to gather but not so much to hunt (or fish, as the case may be).

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The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Re:can i haz teh dictionary? by luis_a_espinal · 2012-09-21 09:52 · Score: 3, Informative

The point is that the mutation (putatively) allowed humans to survive on a vegetarian diet, when they couldn't do so before.
Uh, you need to read how to learn, as well as how to apply logic. What the article says ("ability to convert fats from plants into essential nutrients for the brain") does not mean (or imply) "avoid meats by choice". It doesn't mean/imply ("ability to survive on plants alone"). It simply means "ability to exploit a greater variety of food products for brain sustainment with greater efficiency".
That is all. Any other interpretation is not an interpretation of logic, but of choice (aka "wishful thinking").

This would be very valuable for a nomadic "hunter-gatherer" lifestyle in times and places where there was plenty to gather but not so much to hunt (or fish, as the case may be).
Inconsequential. That does not imply vegetarianism (be it voluntary as in humans or mandatory as in herbivores.) In the name of Jebuz, buy a dictionary or use google and learn the meaning of the word "vegetarian".

Headline wrong by br00tus · 2012-09-21 08:36 · Score: 5, Informative

The Slashdot headline is wrong and the initial website it links to has a wrong headline.

If you read the scientific paper, it says the mutation happened about 85,000 years ago, not 180,000 years ago. This makes it logically consistent with other biological discoveries, archaeological finds etc.

It's to generate more page views by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-21 08:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

The headline is flamebait. The editors know the Slashdot nerds will see the term "vegetarian," become furious, and click on the article, and post furious posts, which will generate more furious posts and more page views. Profit!

Re:It's to generate more page views by aevan · 2012-09-21 08:58 · Score: 5, Funny

You had me up until 'click on the article'

Re:Oh wait, I get it now... by mcgrew · 2012-09-21 08:52 · Score: 4, Informative

TFS was worse than the normal FS. First off, the "vegetarian" bit. Now that I've RTFA, we were omnivores, but we needed fish or our brains wouldn't develop propery, so we were stuck living near the ocean. Once we could live without fish we could live anywhere.

It had nothing to do with vegetarians, the sumitter is probably one of those PETA vegan nuts.

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yea!!, and the british.. by tempest69 · 2012-09-21 08:55 · Score: 2

I don't believe that Americans came from the British, because there are still British people. Clearly Americans came from a Creator, and we owe him the decency to stop claiming that many Americans are simply the descendants of Europeans.

right there with you man.

Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses. by rasmusbr · 2012-09-21 09:22 · Score: 2

No, it's like a watching a juror change her way of thinking about the story as more and more evidence is revealed throughout the trial.

Until someone can show me how to make a creator out of dead empty space, you need to just accept the fact that there is a creator-creator. Until someone can show me how to make a creator-creator out of dead empty space, you need to just accept the fact that there is a creator-creator-creator. Until someone can show me how to make a creator-creator-creator out of dead empty space...

Re:and this is why the stereotype exists by Ol+Olsoc · 2012-09-21 09:36 · Score: 5, Funny

African Americans love Chicken

Everyone loves chicken, you insensitive clod!

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Have you looked at a chimp's skin color? by billstewart · 2012-09-21 09:51 · Score: 2

Chimps and Gorillas are basically black, with lighter-colored palms of their hands. We didn't turn light-skinned till we moved north and needed the extra vitamin D.

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FYI: It is ~80K years not 180K. by morto · 2012-09-21 10:10 · Score: 2

"Studies suggest that anatomically modern humans arose in Africa approximately 150 thousand years ago (kya), expanded throughout Africa ~60–80 kya, and to most parts of Europe and Asia ~40 kya[1]–[6]. Numerous mitochondrial DNA studies support what Foster and Matsumera [5] describe as a ‘remarkable expansion’ from a small geographic region dating broadly to ~60–80 kya." see http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0044926

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Re:Just Keep Pulling Shit From Your Asses. by geekoid · 2012-09-21 11:28 · Score: 2

It's just .. turtles all the way down!

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bad title, this is an omega-3 story by manu0601 · 2012-09-21 15:00 · Score: 2

The title is wrong, this was not about becoming vegetarian, it was about been less dependent on fishes for omega-3 intake

The brain needs an omega-3 fatty acid called DHA. We can get it by eating fishes, or create it by transforming alpha-linonenic acid we get from vegetables (good sources are flax, wallnuts, colza). The mutation they talk about is about transforming alpha-linonenic acid into DHA.

This does not make use vegetarian, as there are still many nutriments we are unable to get from vegetables. The point is that it let us have working brains without relying on eating fishes

An interesting point is that the enzymes that process omega-3 also process omega-6, and the mutation therefore also increased our ability to process omega-6. This was not a problem until we started eating animals fed with too much omega-6. The animal flavor of omega-6 is called arachidonic acid. Excess of that one lead to cardiovascular problems and it promotes cancers because of excessive inflamation.

ummm.... vegetarian? by shaitand · 2012-09-21 16:22 · Score: 2

Humans are omnivores not vegetarians. This mutation would have allowed them to be omnivores rather than carnivores.

Only a massive modern globally fueled artificial availability of things that can't grow in one place allowed people to be vegetarians and mostly skinny and malnourished vegetarians at that.

Meat on the other hand requires no exotic combinations or preparations to keep you nourished. You are made of meat, and all animal meats have everything you need to produce and maintain the meat that is your body.

Re:Oh wait, I get it now... by Dan+East · 2012-09-21 16:36 · Score: 2

So which other animals must eat fish for their brains to develop properly? Do any other primates have to eat fish? Or did all the rest of the primates also mutate about the same time so they don't have to eat fish either? If humans are the only primate that had to eat fish, and we don't now, then how do the researchers know we required fish at some point in the past when other primates do not?

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180k-Year-Old Mutation Allowed Humans To Become Vegetarians, Move Out of Africa

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