>But how much of Veterinary study is focused on nutrition? It baffles
>me that a lot of vets recommend crappy food. It makes me wonder how
>much they really know.
Honestly, I have no idea how much time goes into nutritional studies
in assorted veterinary schools. That is why I didn't even attempt to
answer that question. I expect that like medical schools there is great
variation.
So much of nutritional studies is so new, even in human medicine. That
means that phrases like "crappy food" may not pan out for some of them
when more is known. All that any of us can do is to do our best with
what bits and pieces we learn, and to remember to not hold any hypotheses
too tightly to our hearts or scream too loudly about any hypotheses we
dislike. Those approaches are more suited to theology than to something
needing scientific rigor.
How many people even know that there are so many food items that alter
drug behaviors that there is at least one RD (Registered Dietician) guide
of these foods? We are constantly finding out new things about foods.
Some can be possibly scary (like the substances that form in starches and
meats when cooked at high temperatures which turned out far worse on such
possible-carcinogen tests than the items you mentioned yesterday. Yet,
while those high temp compounds get such results in rodents they might
not be a danger or as much of one in humans due to our pre-adaptations
from a long history of cooked foods, and no one can say if they could be
a problem for ferrets.
There is a lot more that I do not know about food than I know, and that
is true for us all -- even if we just look at how much remains unknown
from suggestive studies, preliminary results, traditional foods that were
used for health reasons but lack investigation, etc. So, we wait for
rigorous proof of some things, we try others, and we each just do our
best.
>Your knowledge and intelligent approach have enlightened me to dive
>deeper into my pet nutrition >research and yes, look for actual proof.
>I had heard from a few people and MANY web sites who
If rigorous proof were easy to come by more people in this
conversation than Linda Iroff would have already had masters degree
defenses in sciences, perhaps even doctoral defences... Of course,
more may have but Linda is the only one I am aware of -- so this
also speaks to knowing that there are always things we don't know in
a round about way... I do not have any advanced degrees. I had been
studying for a double undergrad major in bio and geo (though I was
thinking of making the geo a minor) at the same time that I was
working for an anatomy dept., taking grad classes, and starting work
on a hypothesis I had which fascinated me for my master's thesis
(later done by someone else for a doctoral thesis) . I was doing too
much at the same time for someone who had just finished nursing her
mother through terminal cancer (a smoking related type) and who was
working her way through school. I had to leave when I got a tropical
disease after assisting in a study in the Amazon Basin. It was not
the only time that over-work, not being able to afford food, etc. got
me sick during my studies. At least what i had could be put together
to to get a bachelors. If anyone thinks that going for an advanced
degree is easy then that person is deluded...
Even more important than the paper, I learned a lot about how to continue
learning. That is the ultimate lesson that school should give, I think.
I am rusty and I have trouble getting the references I need when I have
questions, but I muddle along, so I'm not a complete idiot or lazy, any
more than anyone else here is. (Sometimes I get lucky because many
people like folks who remain curious: I was reading a human
archeo-osteology text recently and the explanation for cribra oribitalia
and porotic hyperostosis did not make sense to me physiologically.
Asking around has led to a group of people discussing this topic across
disciplines and the holes in an anemia hypothesis that has been widely
accepted in some subsets of anthropology as a given : a paleontology
curator, two archeology curators, a forensic anthropologist, a
pathologist, and paleo-pathologist and MD, and several anatomists. I am
way, way out of my league but that is letting me learn and even getting
me some re-prints and book suggestions; being out of my league is very
useful to me in such situations, and I am grateful for kind folks who
teach.
Questions can often be more important than answers and knowing how very
much is not known can often be more important than knowing what is known.
Rigorous proof is not easily come by (or we'd all have advanced degrees),
so we all just do the best we can in making our choices -- leaving some
things while we wait for proof and trying others. The big things are
just to accept that we will have many differences of opinions and need
to be tolerant of them, and not to panic when there is not enough
information.
Oh, and I was not clear about natural selection and evolution... Natural
selection refers to the many pressures and to reproductive success,
while evolution is the change in the proportion of a given allele in a
population. An allele is a variant of a gene for a certain location
(locus, plural is loci) in the genetic material. Hope that helps, and
hope that it is clear enough now.
[Posted in FML issue 3945]
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