Posted by Larry Hoover on March 3, 2005, at 22:13:20
In reply to Re: Animal Rights » Larry Hoover, posted by alexandra_k on March 3, 2005, at 20:26:03
> > Some individuals are thriftier, or more efficient, or less genetically unstable, and get by on a lesser quality of food.
>
> Right. So not all people would require suppliments then?Require, no. But they're not a huge expense, either.
> > And it does not falsify the conclusion that some may do best with meat.
>
> How much better? There is a difference between consuming meat every night and once per week.Was that a concession? :-0
> > The "colouring" of which you speak is the flavinoid B-vitamin known as riboflavin. For it to enter one's urine, it must first have entered the bloodstream, and gotten past the liver. At that point in time, it is available to all bodily tissues and organs. The kidneys are too unselective to retain most nutrients in the blood, allowing them to spill into the urine. The yellow stain is proof of uptake.
>
> I defer to your expertise there...
> So we absorb the riboflavin okay then???
> We don't seem to need as much of it as they put in if it is coming out in access ;-)It's not at all that it's an excess, it's a bolus.
The best way to understand how the body handles nutrients (and drugs, for that matter), is to consider the body as being separated into different compartments. Each compartment is totally surrounded by membranes, so the metaphor is apt.
When you swallow something, it remains outside the body. Your entire digestive tract is surrounded by tissue, but the contents are external to the body itself. In geometric terms, mammals are really nothing more than a complex torus. A torus is a blob with a hole through it. A drinking straw is a torus. A donut is a torus. We're rather convoluted, but between our mouth and anus, food remains in that hole up the middle.
In the stomach, duodenum, small and large intestine, membranes are set up to allow the passage of a variety of substances into the body out of the gut, and provides numerous pumps for important stuff to enhance uptake further. Getting nutrients past the gut membranes is uptake. Swallowing is intake, and they're not synonymous.
Once stuff gets past the gut membranes, it quickly transfers to blood, and that's considered to be one of the body compartments. The blood is separated from all the tissues by membranes (blood vessel walls, as an example) and from the tissues themselves by the special membranes of the capillaries. The organs are each considered to be compartments. So is bone. Muscles are really multiple compartments of the same materials, but you get the picture, I'm sure.
The only way the tissue and organ compartments can get anything they require, anything at all, it must first make it into the blood. And then, it must make it across the membrane(s) which are the boundaries of each tissue compartment.
When you swallow a vitamin supplement, you get a concentrated burst of nutrient(s) entering the blood. That sudden concentration increase is called a bolus. It tends to substantially increase the blood concentration of that nutrient, but the instant that happens, the kidneys start to let it go. The kidneys just don't seem to be that "smart", really, or we've evolved to expect fairly frequent intake of most nutrients. In any case, it is quite true that the urine becomes enriched in nutrients. But for the few hours the blood concentration is high, all tissue compartments have an excellent opportunity to take up the nutrients across their own membranes. If the kidneys can "see" the nutrient, so can all the rest of your body. Yellow urine is proof of uptake, and blood enrichment.
> > I have no interest in suffering. I kill mice which invade my pantry. I shan't have little beasties pooping in my food. My cat kills mice for its own reasons, and I do not judge it. Not all behaviours lend themselves to being weighed on the ethical balance.
>
> No. We don't condemn animals hunting. Animals aren't moral agents. Would you think it is okay to squash a retarded human being for pooping in your food?I think I could find ways to manage the human. Mice are small and scurry into walls. They also breed when they're only a few weeks old.
> If not - why not?
> What is the difference?
>
>
> > Sorry. I wished only to ensure consistency of argument with empirical evidence.
>
> Thats ok.
>
> It can be hard to figure just how much the empirical evidence affects the argument, though.Empirical evidence is a major component of my own decision-making.
> My main argument was Singers - that we should consider comperable suffering comperably. That animals have comperable sentience to a human infant, therefore to take greater account of human infants than animals is morally unjustifyable.
>
> If you take greater account of human infants than animals then that is morally unjustifyable.
>
> That was my main point.I'm comfortable with my decisions.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:461535
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20050224/msgs/466245.html