baby diet choice experiment [WAS: Outlive]
Donna Richoux
> Wood Avens wrote:
> > On 8 Dec 2004 00:44:02 GMT, pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au (Peter
> > Moylan) wrote:
> >
> >>There's probably no way I could find the reference now, but there was
> >>once an experiment where children were permitted to eat whatever they
> >>wanted. They probably went for the junk initially, but in the longer
> >>term they ended up with a well-balanced diet.
> >
> > I remember this being quoted in Dr Spock's classic 'Baby & Child
> > Care'. I was going to have a quick scan through my ancient, battered
> > copy of same, but it's not where I thought it was, which means it
> > could be almost anywhere. If I happen across it, I'll have a look.
> >
> I remember it too, although I never read Spock. I found it very
> reassuring information during the time when our two year old daughter
> refused to eat anything but Crawford's Cheddars or drink anything but
> Ribena - a stage which lasted for almost a year and seemed to cause her
> no discernible harm although it worried her parents and grandparents
> rather a lot.
It strikes me as one of those stories told so many times as to be more
folklore than science. I've heard about this experiment all my life; I
think it was supposed to have been done in the 1920's. But searching on
the keywords now turns up only a single passage:
http://www.indiaparenting.com/articles/data/art08_002.shtml
Dr. Davis conducted an experiment using three 8 to
10 month old babies who had been fed only on breast
milk. At each meal six to eight dishes of wholesome
unrefined foods were placed before them and they
were allowed to point to what they would like to
eat. Dr. Davis discovered that left to their own
devices, these babies had a healthy development.
Over time, they chose what was generally accepted as
a well-balanced diet. Their appetites varied from
meal to meal and day to day. This study seems to
indicate that babies somehow have a natural inbuilt
ability to eat in a manner that does not harm their
development. We must remember that we managed our
diets successfully for centuries before we were told
the do's and don'ts of nutrition.
But adding "Davis" to the mix doesn't turn up anything further. Can
anyone locate a more scholarly reference?
I'm going to add alt.folklore.urban to the groups, because people there
have great skill in tracking down scientific evidence.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Wood Avens
wrote:
>But adding "Davis" to the mix doesn't turn up anything further. Can
>anyone locate a more scholarly reference?
Davis CM. Self selection of diet by newly weaned infants. Am J Dis
Child 1928; 28: 651-79.
Davis CM. Results of the self-selection of diets by young children.
Can Med Assoc J. 1939; 41: 257-261.
Nancy Munro, A Review of the 1928 Research by Clara Davis, "Self
Selection of Diet by Newly Weaned Infants" Journal of Home Economics:
October, 1966 (Volume 58, Number 8)
(I Googled on "Clara Davis" + diet.)
--
Katy Jennison
spamtrap: remove the first two letters after the @
Tony Cooper
wrote:
> Dr. Davis conducted an experiment using three 8 to
> 10 month old babies who had been fed only on breast
> milk. At each meal six to eight dishes of wholesome
> unrefined foods were placed before them and they
> were allowed to point to what they would like to
> eat. Dr. Davis discovered that left to their own
> devices, these babies had a healthy development.
> Over time, they chose what was generally accepted as
I gotta laugh at this. I have a grandson that is 14 month old, and
was breast fed for the first few (?) months. Nick points at
*everything*. I don't know if he understands in his yet-undeveloped
mind what pointing means, but the hand waving with the index finger
extended was one of the first gestures he ever developed.
As far as pointing at what he would like in his mouth, anyone that's
around an infant of this age knows that *anything* seen that is
smaller than a pumpkin is something that they will put in their mouth
... keys, apples, electrical plugs, baby food, coins, and - if given
the chance - things on the floor that have no business in any mouth.
One of the primary tasks of a mother of an infant in the months-old
stage is to constantly monitor the child and prevent unwanted things
to be put in the mouth.
The idea that an infant can point at a bowl and know that the bowl
contains applesauce, pureed lamb, or wallpaper paste is laughable. An
infant is like a baseball pitcher that shakes off a pitch he doesn't
want to throw, and will shake off a second spoonful of something that
the child doesn't like the taste of. You could put anything in the
first spoonful, though.
I wonder how people like Dr Davis come up with these theories. Not,
certainly, by knowing anything about babies.
(?) The DIL was discreet, and I never noticed if, and when, she quit
breast-feeding. She does seem to disappear less now, so I assume that
stage is over.
>But adding "Davis" to the mix doesn't turn up anything further. Can
>anyone locate a more scholarly reference?
>
Ask Sara or Jacqi. There's no one more scholarly about babies than
someone that has one available for lab tests 24/7.
M. J. Freeman
alt.folklore.urban:
> I wonder how people like Dr Davis come up with these theories.
> Not, certainly, by knowing anything about babies.
It's called education and scientific method. But we all know those are
trumped by personal annecdotes.
> Ask Sara or Jacqi. There's no one more scholarly about babies
> than someone that has one available for lab tests 24/7.
You might want to look up the definition of "scholarly" sometime and
see how it does (or, rather, doesn't) relate to practical experience.
--
Michael J. Freeman mike_f...@SPMBLOKmac.com
'85 VF700S (The Leper) Cincinnati, OH, USA
'83 VF750S (The Shiny Sabre) "Insanity runs in the family
'99 GSF1200S (The Evil Bandit) ...it practically gallops"
Derek Lyons
>The idea that an infant can point at a bowl and know that the bowl
>contains applesauce, pureed lamb, or wallpaper paste is laughable.
>
>I wonder how people like Dr Davis come up with these theories. Not,
>certainly, by knowing anything about babies.
The test, and the results, are further skewed by the fact that the
baby was only allowed a choice of 'wholesome unrefined foods', vice a
wider of choice of foods.
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
Tony Cooper
<mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> posted in
>alt.folklore.urban:
>
>> I wonder how people like Dr Davis come up with these theories.
>> Not, certainly, by knowing anything about babies.
>
>It's called education and scientific method. But we all know those are
>trumped by personal annecdotes.
It could be called that, yes. I went to Indiana University as an
undergraduate. You know Indiana University....the home of Institute
for Sexual Research founded by Alfred Kinsey in the late 40s? That
was scientific research done in the name of education. Now we know
that some of Kinsey's findings were accurate, and some were based on
flawed statistics and improperly designed sample groups.
Anyone can fill the screen with examples of studies done by scientific
methods that are considered as bogus today as Baugh's Paluxy
"Man-track" claims. Research done scientifically is only as accurate
as the procedures followed, and not all scientists know a bowl of
wallpaper paste from a bowl of applesauce when it comes to following
procedures.
>> Ask Sara or Jacqi. There's no one more scholarly about babies
>> than someone that has one available for lab tests 24/7.
>
>You might want to look up the definition of "scholarly" sometime and
>see how it does (or, rather, doesn't) relate to practical experience.
Had I noted that my posting would be cross-posted in
alt.folklore.urban, I would have put scare quotes around "scholarly".
My mistake. I just wasn't paying attention.
As long as you're here, do you disagree with my anecdotally-based
conclusions? That an infant of a few months old is as likely to point
at a bowl of dog food as they are to a bowl of pureed lamb and
carrots?
Daniel W. Johnson
> The idea that an infant can point at a bowl and know that the bowl
> contains applesauce, pureed lamb, or wallpaper paste is laughable. An
> infant is like a baseball pitcher that shakes off a pitch he doesn't
> want to throw, and will shake off a second spoonful of something that
> the child doesn't like the taste of. You could put anything in the
> first spoonful, though.
The version I read said that the choice was indicated when the baby
stuck its hand in the bowl and proceeded to lick off the hand; this
would get them an an actual spoonful of the contents from a volunteer.
--
Daniel W. Johnson
pano...@iquest.net
http://members.iquest.net/~panoptes/
039 53 36 N / 086 11 55 W
Ulo Melton
<wood...@askjennison.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 20:46:08 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux)
>wrote:
>
>>But adding "Davis" to the mix doesn't turn up anything further. Can
>>anyone locate a more scholarly reference?
>
>Davis CM. Self selection of diet by newly weaned infants. Am J Dis
>Child 1928; 28: 651-79.
>
>Davis CM. Results of the self-selection of diets by young children.
>Can Med Assoc J. 1939; 41: 257-261.
>
>Nancy Munro, A Review of the 1928 Research by Clara Davis, "Self
>Selection of Diet by Newly Weaned Infants" Journal of Home Economics:
>October, 1966 (Volume 58, Number 8)
For those inclined to read it (a group which I've realized does not
include myself), that last one is available on the web:
--
Ulo Melton
http://www.sewergator.com - Your Pipeline To Adventure
"Show me a man who is not afraid of being eaten by an alligator
in a sewer, and I'll show you a fool." -Roger Ebert
M. J. Freeman
alt.folklore.urban:
> As long as you're here, do you disagree with my anecdotally-based
> conclusions? That an infant of a few months old is as likely to
> point at a bowl of dog food as they are to a bowl of pureed lamb
> and carrots?
I have no experience with babies or education in child development, so,
on the whole, I really don't think I should venture an opinion.
Though, in general, my inclination is to defer to professionals.
Tony Cooper
<mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> posted in
>alt.folklore.urban:
>
>> As long as you're here, do you disagree with my anecdotally-based
>> conclusions? That an infant of a few months old is as likely to
>> point at a bowl of dog food as they are to a bowl of pureed lamb
>> and carrots?
>
>I have no experience with babies or education in child development, so,
>on the whole, I really don't think I should venture an opinion.
Right. That explains why you give more weight to "scientific"
conclusions than you do to anecdote-based observations. The blind man
that grasped the elephant by the tail and said "An elephant resembles
a snake" was a budding scientist making his first observation based on
sampling procedures.
>Though, in general, my inclination is to defer to professionals.
That may change if you ever actually have an experience with a baby.
M. J. Freeman
alt.folklore.urban:
> On 9 Dec 2004 13:54:45 GMT, "M. J. Freeman"
> <mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I have no experience with babies or education in child
>>development, so, on the whole, I really don't think I should
>>venture an opinion.
>
> Right. That explains why you give more weight to "scientific"
> conclusions than you do to anecdote-based observations.
No, I give more weight to science because I understand how and why it
works.
>>Though, in general, my inclination is to defer to professionals.
>
> That may change if you ever actually have an experience with a
> baby.
Oh, I don't know. I understand that one baby does not a population
make. Mine might just be an outlier. Indeed, if genetics mean
anything, any baby of mine is almost guaranteed to be an outlier.
Tony Cooper
<mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> posted in
>alt.folklore.urban:
>
>> On 9 Dec 2004 13:54:45 GMT, "M. J. Freeman"
>> <mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>I have no experience with babies or education in child
>>>development, so, on the whole, I really don't think I should
>>>venture an opinion.
>>
>> Right. That explains why you give more weight to "scientific"
>> conclusions than you do to anecdote-based observations.
>
>No, I give more weight to science because I understand how and why it
>works.
That's the comfortable part about science. It can be logical,
precise, and consistent. Unfortunately, babies don't work that way.
One of the first things done by first-time mothers-to-be is buy some
books on child-raising. Books written by people with "M.D" or "PhD"
after their names. The first book is fine and offers all the answers.
Reading second book, though, the expectant parent will come across
some conflicting advice and conclusions. By the time the parent reads
the fourth book of "scientifically" arrived at information, the parent
will be thoroughly confused and conflicted.
When my children were born, the reigning "expert" was Dr Benjamin
Spock. Spock made his mark debunking previous theories on child
raising and child development. Later, many of Spock's theories were
debunked by other "experts". To his credit, Spock revised his own
theories and even debunked some of his own previous theories.
Since Spock, many "experts" have come and gone. Many have offered
sound advice and well-founded theories, but none have come up with
truly definitive theories that have all held up under further studies.
There are some basic rules that science has promulgated that do hold
up, like a baby's need for certain elements in their diet. However,
if you accept Dr Davis's theory that the baby will instinctively
choose a healthful diet if given the opportunity, you need to apply
the common sense dictum that anecdotal observation over-rules this
particular theory.
Clara Davis did her research in the 1920s. There's no indication to
me that her research would hold up in the 2000s. There's no
indication to me that Davis herself would not modify her own findings
if she continued to study the field.
Doug Anderson
> On 9 Dec 2004 14:40:36 GMT, "M. J. Freeman"
> <mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> posted in
> >alt.folklore.urban:
> >
> >> On 9 Dec 2004 13:54:45 GMT, "M. J. Freeman"
> >> <mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>>I have no experience with babies or education in child
> >>>development, so, on the whole, I really don't think I should
> >>>venture an opinion.
> >>
> >> Right. That explains why you give more weight to "scientific"
> >> conclusions than you do to anecdote-based observations.
> >
> >No, I give more weight to science because I understand how and why it
> >works.
>
> That's the comfortable part about science. It can be logical,
> precise, and consistent. Unfortunately, babies don't work that way.
>
> One of the first things done by first-time mothers-to-be is buy some
> books on child-raising. Books written by people with "M.D" or "PhD"
> after their names. The first book is fine and offers all the answers.
> Reading second book, though, the expectant parent will come across
> some conflicting advice and conclusions. By the time the parent reads
> the fourth book of "scientifically" arrived at information, the parent
> will be thoroughly confused and conflicted.
You are confusing credentialism with scientific method. The fact that
an author can can add letters after his or her name is not a guarantee
that said author used scientific techniques in drawing his or her
conclusions.
(snip)
> Clara Davis did her research in the 1920s. There's no indication to
> me that her research would hold up in the 2000s. There's no
> indication to me that Davis herself would not modify her own findings
> if she continued to study the field.
Of course this part is true, and it would be interesting to have
current research where children were allowed to choose among a variety
of foods, some being of the not-so-wholesome variety.
(snip)
Wood Avens
<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>However,
>if you accept Dr Davis's theory that the baby will instinctively
>choose a healthful diet if given the opportunity, you need to apply
>the common sense dictum that anecdotal observation over-rules this
>particular theory.
I hold no brief for Dr Davis, but, to be fair to her, she wasn't
demonstrating that babies offered chips, ice-cream and broccoli will
choose the broccoli, but that babies offered choices from a range of
foods *all of which are healthful* will over a period of time choose
enough different ones to give them a reasonably balanced intake of
necessary vitamins and minerals and so on. She offered only
whole-foods (strained or sieved), and nothing which contained sugars,
flavourings, etc. I'd be surprised if many people replicated this
particular experiment with their own children.
Tony Cooper
<ethelthelo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Is that what is being done when we assume that Clara Davis arrived at
her theory by "scientific" methods? Based on her theory, I would say
that she wasn't particularly scientific in her approach. She offered
a conclusion that was either based on sloppy scientific research or a
flawed sample. To be generous, perhaps her research was considered to
scientific at the time. IMO.
Tony Cooper
I would think that her results could be the result of the random (1)
grabs of a small child rather than any instinctive action on the part
of the child. If a dog retrieves the red ball six out of ten times
when a red and blue ball are thrown, we have not proved that there is
a 60% probability that dogs can recognize color. Not that babies are
dogs, of course.
(1) "Random", of course, being used incorrectly to convey
"unplanned". We've done the misuse of "random" here.
peachy ashie passion
Well, given both types of "scholarly" education, I can assure you
that at the age of these particular "infants" 8 - 10 months, both of
my children were walking, and certainly more than capable of the
physical coordination required to point to what foods they desired.
--
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an
infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even
considering if there are men on base. -Dave Barry
ashes...@verizon.net
afpslave to Mistress Stacie
JC Dill
<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I would think that her results could be the result of the random (1)
>grabs of a small child
I find it hard to imagine how an array of 12 foods could be setup so
that a small child is equally likely to "randomly" select from any of
the dishes. ISTM that the items closest to the child would be
selected most often if the selection was merely random.
jc
Derek Lyons
>One of the first things done by first-time mothers-to-be is buy some
>books on child-raising. Books written by people with "M.D" or "PhD"
>after their names. The first book is fine and offers all the answers.
>Reading second book, though, the expectant parent will come across
>some conflicting advice and conclusions. By the time the parent reads
>the fourth book of "scientifically" arrived at information, the parent
>will be thoroughly confused and conflicted.
A brief survey of the field has lead me to believe that few of those
books on child raising are "scientifically" constructed.
Tony Cooper
Based on my anecdotal observations of a 14-month-old grandchild, they
have more adventure in their souls than to grab the closest on all
occasions. Sometimes the closest are knocked to floor to get at the
furthest.
Besides, if the placement of the 12 dishes is random, grabbing the
closest would prove only that the proximity dictates choice and there
is no inherent attempt to sample a balanced diet.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
> Oh, I don't know. I understand that one baby does not a population
> make. Mine might just be an outlier. Indeed, if genetics mean
> anything, any baby of mine is almost guaranteed to be an outlier.
From Texas, I presume.
Charles Wm. "or should that be spelled 'outliar' " Dimmick
Dr H
On Wed, 8 Dec 2004, Wood Avens vociferated:
}On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 20:46:08 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux)
}wrote:
}
}>But adding "Davis" to the mix doesn't turn up anything further. Can
}>anyone locate a more scholarly reference?
}
}Davis CM. Self selection of diet by newly weaned infants. Am J Dis
}Child 1928; 28: 651-79.
}
}Davis CM. Results of the self-selection of diets by young children.
}Can Med Assoc J. 1939; 41: 257-261.
}
}Nancy Munro, A Review of the 1928 Research by Clara Davis, "Self
}Selection of Diet by Newly Weaned Infants" Journal of Home Economics:
}October, 1966 (Volume 58, Number 8)
}
}(I Googled on "Clara Davis" + diet.)
No one's attempted any sort of replication since 1928?
Dr H
Dr H
On Wed, 8 Dec 2004, Ulo Melton vociferated:
}On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 20:17:35 +0000, Wood Avens
}<wood...@askjennison.com> wrote:
}
}>On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 20:46:08 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux)
}>wrote:
}>
}>>But adding "Davis" to the mix doesn't turn up anything further. Can
}>>anyone locate a more scholarly reference?
}>
}>Davis CM. Self selection of diet by newly weaned infants. Am J Dis
}>Child 1928; 28: 651-79.
}>
}>Davis CM. Results of the self-selection of diets by young children.
}>Can Med Assoc J. 1939; 41: 257-261.
}>
}>Nancy Munro, A Review of the 1928 Research by Clara Davis, "Self
}>Selection of Diet by Newly Weaned Infants" Journal of Home Economics:
}>October, 1966 (Volume 58, Number 8)
}
}For those inclined to read it (a group which I've realized does not
}include myself), that last one is available on the web:
}
}<http://snipurl.com/b88r>
Was only able to access the first page of the article. That much does
seem to confirm, however, that the original experiments had not been
replicated, at least up to 1966.
Dr H
Dr H
On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Wood Avens vociferated:
}On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 15:36:15 GMT, Tony Cooper
}<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
}
}>However,
}>if you accept Dr Davis's theory that the baby will instinctively
}>choose a healthful diet if given the opportunity, you need to apply
}>the common sense dictum that anecdotal observation over-rules this
}>particular theory.
}
}I hold no brief for Dr Davis, but, to be fair to her, she wasn't
}demonstrating that babies offered chips, ice-cream and broccoli will
}choose the broccoli, but that babies offered choices from a range of
}foods *all of which are healthful* will over a period of time choose
}enough different ones to give them a reasonably balanced intake of
}necessary vitamins and minerals and so on. She offered only
}whole-foods (strained or sieved), and nothing which contained sugars,
}flavourings, etc.
To me all that suggests is that given a choice among all the elements
of a healthy, balanced diet, random selection over a long enough period
of time will tend to result in the "balanced" part becoming manifest.
}I'd be surprised if many people replicated this particular experiment
}with their own children.
I'm surprised that none of her professional peers seem to have attempted
replication.
Dr H
Maggie Newman
Tony Cooper wrote:
>
> I would think that her results could be the result of the random (1)
> grabs of a small child rather than any instinctive action on the part
> of the child.
If you take the time to read the 1928 study, or the 1966 review of the
study that Freeman linked to, you would see that the study was not
based on "random grabs." Certainly it was flawed on many dimensions,
but it was an attempt to ascertain children's feeding habits on a
slightly higher level than "look what my grandchildren eat."
I blame the other Davis, Adelle (1904-1974). I believe it was she who
popularized this study by citing it (in a very inaccurate fashion) in
her "Let's Have Healthy Children," published in the late 1960s or early
1970s and still in print today. I know that's where I heard about it
and I daresay many others, too.
Maggie "my grandchildren are cuter than yours anyway" Newman
Mike Lyle
It looks to me like one of those -- don't know the word -- things: an
enquiring child might be expected to choose an assortment of colours
over the experimental period, and a balanced diet does in fact
contain foods of assorted colours. This would confirm one of the
adaptive advantages of human colour vision; to that extent the
research finding would be justified, but maybe not what the
researcher had in mind. Smell and texture, too.
Mike.
Tony Cooper
Desired, yes, but for what reason? Davis's premise was that the
instinctive reason was to obtain a balanced diet. My premise is that
the child points and wants for no more reason that it's there. The
child may point and want something recognizable like a bottle, but I
have serious doubts that the child points and wants because of some
instinctive desire to balance a diet of carrots and peas.
At some point, the infant knows that he or she prefers carrots over
peas, but the most probable reason to point to the carrots is color
recognition. I suspect that even a child as brilliant as my grandson
could be fooled into going for the bowl with the peas if you dye them
orange and dye the carrots sickly green. (The texture is mushy for
all foods fed at that age)
Children at that age might point to the bowl that contains what they
had already been fed one spoonful of. but I think it's more a "I liked
that" than it is a "That'll be good for me".
Dr H
On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Tony Cooper vociferated:
}
}(1) "Random", of course, being used incorrectly to convey
}"unplanned". We've done the misuse of "random" here.
}
Hmm... there are a lot of different definitions of 'random,' some
of them discipline-specific.
Dr H
Tony Cooper
<mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>It looks to me like one of those -- don't know the word -- things: an
>enquiring child might be expected to choose an assortment of colours
>over the experimental period, and a balanced diet does in fact
>contain foods of assorted colours. This would confirm one of the
>adaptive advantages of human colour vision; to that extent the
>research finding would be justified, but maybe not what the
>researcher had in mind. Smell and texture, too.
Most children of this age are fed either prepared baby food products
(ie: Gerber's) or table food that is run through a processor. I
haven't paid that much attention to my grandson's diet, but all of
those baby food jars seem to contain similar looking products all of
the same texture. I haven't sniffed them, though.
Nick loves apples. He'll take a whole apple and nip out tiny bites
from it. He also likes applesauce, but I'm not sure if a child that
age recognizes that apples and applesauce are different forms of the
same thing. He may be thinking that this mushy stuff tastes
remarkably like those round, red things.
Babies do have some reasoning power, but it's difficult to tell how
developed it is. He'll take his father's keys and poke them around
his toy cars, but I don't know if he is just mimicking an action or
somehow senses that keys turn things on.
He has a CD with some songs on it that he likes. He'll run and get
his CD and try to stick it in the CD player. Does he understand that
the songs are on the CD and that the CD must be in the tray for the
music to play? Or, is he just mimicking the action he sees and
thinking that the action itself causes the music to play?
I've often wondered where Nick thinks I go when I leave his house. I
don't think, at that age, he has a concept of my home and his home and
distance. Possibly he thinks I stand just outside his door until I
decide to come back a few days later.
It's all rather amazing.
Tony Cooper
This is a cross-posted thread. I'm reading it in alt.usage.english.
"Random" was recently discussed in this group. We have quite a few
mathematicians in this group, and they tend to get surly if "random"
is abused by people thinking of those "other definitions".
Not being a mathematician, I'm perfectly comfortable using "random" to
mean unplanned. It's just not a pot that I choose to stir.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Oh, I don't know. I understand that one baby does not a population
> make. Mine might just be an outlier. Indeed, if genetics mean
> anything, any baby of mine is almost guaranteed to be an outlier.
When people ask whether we're going to have kids, I tell them that I'm
too afraid of regression to the mean.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |...as a mobile phone is analogous
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |to a Q-Tip -- yeah, it's something
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |you stick in your ear, but there
|all resemblance ends.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Ross Howard
(650)857-7572
Lon
> Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> posted in
> alt.folklore.urban:
>
>
>>As long as you're here, do you disagree with my anecdotally-based
>>conclusions? That an infant of a few months old is as likely to
>>point at a bowl of dog food as they are to a bowl of pureed lamb
>>and carrots?
>
>
> I have no experience with babies or education in child development, so,
> on the whole, I really don't think I should venture an opinion.
Purely anecdotal but based on experience with a reasonable
selection of rugrats, I would far more expect the infant to
quickly traverse to the nearest pile of doggy poo and sample
that--particularly if mummy has turned her head for the merest
nanosecond.
Lon
Not to mention sufficient corrections for colors and possibly
odors.
Derek Lyons
>}For those inclined to read it (a group which I've realized does not
>}include myself), that last one is available on the web:
>}
>}<http://snipurl.com/b88r>
>
> Was only able to access the first page of the article. That much does
> seem to confirm, however, that the original experiments had not been
> replicated, at least up to 1966.
The interface is highly unintuitive. The 'next' button takes you to
the next page, but its as slow as tar in January.
Lon
Democratic convention in Los Angeles in 1960, Kennedy sends for
Exner. She arrives at the hotel but several people are there,
including Kennedy's sister. He assures her that they will all be
leaving momentarily and that he wants to be alone with her in his
moment of victory. Eventually most of the visitors leave except
for two: a tall skinny secretarial type, and Kennedy's adviser
Ken O'Donnell. As JFK and Exner slip into the bedroom, the
secretary type slips into the bathroom. Exner is puzzled.
Kennedy/Flynn then suggests a menage a trois. Exner is outraged,
"I can't tell you how disappointed I am in you." Kennedy is in
love with her though. Sweetly, he eventually calms her down and
they later resume their relationship.
There was something about this hotel scene that bothered me.
Something was off and I couldn't put my finger on it until later.
I then realized that Exner had left Ken O'Donnell in the suite
before the fireworks began. I couldn't understand why. Was Kenny,
with the boss' permission, going to make it a foursome? Was he
there because he liked to watch and Kennedy understood? Was he
going to take pictures so Kennedy/Flynn could admire his
handiwork later? Or was he just there to give JFK a ride home
since he would be too tired to drive? None of the above. Kennedy
asks Exner to give O'Donnell a ride home. When she drops him off,
Exner has Ken make an incomplete pass at her. That's when I
realized why Ken had not just called a cab while waiting around.
O'Donnell had been one of those who wouldn't ratify Exner's
visits to the White House. So Exner and Demaris have to make a
lecher out of him in order to weaken his credibility and preserve
theirs.
Although Judith Exner: My Story is pretty thin and prosaic, it
runs on for 300 pages. But evidently, Demaris didn't ask enough
tough questions. Because in 198
Lon
that this was a canard made up by the FBI in order to harass her.
In fact, it is the one scene in the book that has emotional
force. Consider for yourself:
"A what?" I yelled, speaking to them for the first time
since the day they had broken into my apartment.... "You
people are insane! I didn't have an abortion. How dare you
walk in here and accuse me of that....You get out of this
room right now!"
She then adds:
If I could have killed that man, I would have on the spot.
There is nothing heinous about having an abortion today, but
in 1963, my God, it was the sin of the century. They knew
precisely what they were doing when they falsely accused me
of something like that.
Another problem with this story is how Exner knows it was JFK's
child. She deduces this from the fact she had been with no one
else during the whole time, "not ever" she assures us. Trying to
remain a gentleman, I will only refer the reader to approximately
the second half of the book, which details a rather active social
life on her part.
Finally, what raises this latest revelation to a jocular level is
Exner's description of Kennedy's reaction to her pregnancy when
she informs him of the news. Again, let us use Exner's own words
as quoted by Smith:
So Jack said, "Do you think Sam would help us? Would you ask
Sam? Would you mind asking?" I was surprised, but said I'd
ask. So I called Sam and we had dinner. I told him what I
needed. He blew sky-high. "Damn him! Damn that Kennedy." He
loved to be theatrical, and he always enjoyed picking on
Jack.
Sm
Derek Lyons
Sharon, etc. So much for the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact being
conveniently categorized as a "phantasm" and Nuremberg being
pejoratively labeled as "soft law" by imperialist American international
lawyers and professors. Dead Nazis at Nuremberg disproved those
propositions. Since that time, the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and
Principles have served as the legal core of, and precedent for
establishing, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia in 1993, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in
1994, and now the International Criminal Court in 2002.61
Therefore, it came as no surprise that immediately upon their coming to
power in 2001, the Bush Jr. Leaguers did everything humanly possible to
sabotage the International Criminal Court (ICC) precisely because they
were then currently planning, preparing and conspiring to commit
criminal wars of aggression around the world. The highest level civilian
officials of the Bush Jr. administration did not want the International
Criminal Court looking over their shoulders while they were comm
Chris Malcolm
> Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> posted in
> alt.folklore.urban:
>> As long as you're here, do you disagree with my anecdotally-based
>> conclusions? That an infant of a few months old is as likely to
>> point at a bowl of dog food as they are to a bowl of pureed lamb
>> and carrots?
> I have no experience with babies or education in child development, so,
> on the whole, I really don't think I should venture an opinion.
> Though, in general, my inclination is to defer to professionals.
That was a sound strategy in the old days when professionals got to be
professionals by doing the job well. It's more questionable these days
when professionals become so by getting certified by a committee set
up for the purpose, or less formally, by having written a book about
the subject after having been to university to study book writing.
--
Chris Malcolm c...@infirmatics.ed.ac.uk +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]
Chris Malcolm
If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
tell us what to feed our babies with. Even more remarkable than that
is how animals manage to raise their offspring successfully,
considering that not only can they not read books, but they can't even
take professional advice.
As I saw it, Clara Davis's research was simply intended as a mild
corrective to those silly people who had managed to forget that people
are animals, the result of uncountable millions of years of evolution
in which a creature which didn't instinctively eat the stuff it needed
simply died. The problems arise when you give an animal choices which
weren't on the evolutionary menu. That's why Davis omitted sugars,
sauces, etc., from her experiments.
Of course the results would hold up today, because the experiments
specifically excluded the only thing that's changed -- we've got much
better at tarting up cheap food with stuff designed to fool the taste
buds because there are huge profits in it.
IMHO the reason it's not replicated today is because nobody who
understands the science doubts the general conclusions, regardless of
how effective her methods were. It's only doubted by people who don't
understand and distrust science, and convincing them by doing
scientific experiments is a waste of time.
MonkeyHawk
What's more, the socialization of food on relative evolutionary terms has
really screwed up the human diet. Compared to the millions of years of
human evolution, we're just a wink of the eye away from our hunter/gatherer
forebears. For most of our developmental journey, our bodies have been
built to thrive of a largely vegetarian (i.e., gatherer, farmer) diet,
punctuated by massive consumption of barbeque.
The hunters went out every day to kill a mastodon or somesuch. But they
certainly weren't successful every day. And then, once they brought back
the mastodon, they cooked it and ate it to the bone over a period of several
days. Sort of like a Super Bowl party every two or three weeks or so.
If all people converted to the Caveman Diet -- extended periods of
vegetarianism between Cro-Magnon Pig-Outs (actually Mastodon-Outs, but work
with me here) -- the secret of perfect health will be achieved.
Joe Myers
"Bear down on the meat,
ease up on the tater salad."
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>> I would think that her results could be the result of the random (1)
>> grabs of a small child rather than any instinctive action on the part
>> of the child. If a dog retrieves the red ball six out of ten times
>> when a red and blue ball are thrown, we have not proved that there is
>> a 60% probability that dogs can recognize color. Not that babies are
>> dogs, of course.
>
>If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
>the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
>without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
>has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
>tell us what to feed our babies with.
What's this?
In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
The parent chooses the food. For the first several months of life,
the infant is incapable, physically, of doing more that accepting food
that is fed to him or her.
When you jump back to the pre-book times, the choices were based on
acquired knowledge from the parent's parents. Adult reasoning was
involved and the ability of the adult to recognize what could be
harmful based on observation and experience.
> Even more remarkable than that
>is how animals manage to raise their offspring successfully,
>considering that not only can they not read books, but they can't even
>take professional advice.
The adult parent also feeds the infant animal.
>IMHO the reason it's not replicated today is because nobody who
>understands the science doubts the general conclusions, regardless of
>how effective her methods were. It's only doubted by people who don't
>understand and distrust science, and convincing them by doing
>scientific experiments is a waste of time.
That's quite a jump. It's not necessary to doubt science to distrust
a theory that appears to be patently wrong. If you distrust a theory
because you suspect the experiments were based on flawed research
techniques, it indicates that you may have enough respect for the
scientific approach to examine the premise and means of
experimentation to determine whether or not you consider that the
theory is the result of properly applied scientific research.
Even today we are presented with "scientific theories" that we should
reject out of hand. Again I refer to Carl Baugh's Paluxy Man-Track
theory. Baugh presented his "findings" as scientific theory. Baugh
claims to have advanced degrees in science, but his claims are as
bogus as his theories.
A reader that sees his claims, and sees his alleged credentials as a
scientist, but doubts and distrusts based solely on and instinctive
thought that "This can't be right", is not a doubter of science.
Chris Malcolm
> "Chris Malcolm" <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote
Which is the motivation (although not quite the detail) behind the
so-called paleolithic diet, the general idea of which is to pretend
that farmers hadn't been invented and to shift back towards a
hunter-gatherer type of diet. It does make some people feel a lot
better and improves their health. But for best results it needs to be
accompanied by the other important factor in the hunter-gatherer
lifestyle -- acquiring your food took a great deal of physical
exercise.
The problem is we're not adapted to a lifestyle where tons of
extremely tasty food can be acquired with very little physical
effort. But it shouldn't take too many generations of obesity-related
health problems for evolution to start adapting human physiology to
our new lifestyle, and the more we eat the faster it will happen.
Mike Lyle
[...]
> The problem is we're not adapted to a lifestyle where tons of
> extremely tasty food can be acquired with very little physical
> effort. But it shouldn't take too many generations of
obesity-related
> health problems for evolution to start adapting human physiology to
> our new lifestyle, and the more we eat the faster it will happen.
Except (and let it be clearly understood that I have no eugenic
agenda, hidden or overt) that our society doesn't provide selective
pressure. There are now, for us, rather few genetic factors which
result in differential reproduction. Even low fertility itself is
less of a barrier to producing the average number of children. Bad
dietary habits, for our culture, probably have an insignificant
effect on successful breeding.
And evolution takes place over periods much longer than the mere
lifespan of a civilisation.
Mike.
Chris Malcolm
> wrote:
>>> I would think that her results could be the result of the random (1)
>>> grabs of a small child rather than any instinctive action on the part
>>> of the child. If a dog retrieves the red ball six out of ten times
>>> when a red and blue ball are thrown, we have not proved that there is
>>> a 60% probability that dogs can recognize color. Not that babies are
>>> dogs, of course.
>>If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
>>the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
>>without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
>>has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
>>tell us what to feed our babies with.
> What's this?
> In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
> The parent chooses the food. For the first several months of life,
> the infant is incapable, physically, of doing more that accepting food
> that is fed to him or her.
That's why the experiment was performed on children of an age where
they were capable of making the choices.
> When you jump back to the pre-book times, the choices were based on
> acquired knowledge from the parent's parents. Adult reasoning was
> involved and the ability of the adult to recognize what could be
> harmful based on observation and experience.
However, most of the problems of relating food consumption to what was
nutritionally required were sorted out by evolution long before there
were rational animals who even needed to think about child care,
because they didn't do any child care. And since our ancestors evolved
from such creatures, and that basic nutritional/appetitive machinery
would be useful to keep, we would have been unlikely to lose it.
Sara Lorimer
>
> In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
Well, they do have an instinct to breastfeed.
--
SML
Don Freeman
"Sara Lorimer" <que.sara....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1gokzma.qv4hchn56362N%que.sara....@gmail.com...
> Tony Cooper wrote:
>
>>
>> In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
>
> Well, they do have an instinct to breastfeed.
>
Marc Reeve
> In alt.usage.english M. J. Freeman <mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Though, in general, my inclination is to defer to professionals.
>
> That was a sound strategy in the old days when professionals got to be
> professionals by doing the job well. It's more questionable these days
> when professionals become so by getting certified by a committee set
> up for the purpose, or less formally, by having written a book about
> the subject after having been to university to study book writing.
>
Excuse me, but are you the entity formerly known as Christine Malcolm-Dept?
Marc "if so, long time - no see" Reeve
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>>>If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
>>>the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
>>>without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
>>>has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
>>>tell us what to feed our babies with.
>
>> What's this?
>
>> In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
>> The parent chooses the food. For the first several months of life,
>> the infant is incapable, physically, of doing more that accepting food
>> that is fed to him or her.
>
>That's why the experiment was performed on children of an age where
>they were capable of making the choices.
>
I don't know what experience you've had with 8 to 10 month old
infants, but I would hardly say they are capable of making (reasoned)
choices. Going back to the original statement here:
" Dr. Davis conducted an experiment using three 8 to
10 month old babies who had been fed only on breast
milk. At each meal six to eight dishes of wholesome
unrefined foods were placed before them and they
were allowed to point to what they would like to
eat. Dr. Davis discovered that left to their own
devices, these babies had a healthy development.
Over time, they chose what was generally accepted as
a well-balanced diet. Their appetites varied from
meal to meal and day to day. This study seems to
indicate that babies somehow have a natural inbuilt
ability to eat in a manner that does not harm their
development. "
Granted, Dr Davis may have chanced on three incredibly advanced tots,
but I simply can't accept that they were capable of making choices
based on anything other than random pointing.
To add to the difficulty of accepting that choices were made, Davis's
test group consisted of three babies that had previously been fed only
on breast milk. So, out of the box, you're going to think that a baby
is making a choice about foods offer a balanced diet? "I need some
orange, some green, and some roughage?"
Now that I re-read it, I see that Davis has left herself an out that
you could drive a pram for triplets through: "over time". Given
enough time, I suppose a baby would come up with a balance even if the
balance was a result of a blindfolded wave in the general direction of
the balancing item.
Further, Davis placed six to eight dishes of wholesome, unrefined food
in front of the wee ones, and then came to the startling conclusion
that their choices would not harm their development. Hah! Add one
bowl of high lead-content paint into the mix and see how they do.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
I rather doubt it. Last time I heard from Christine Malcolm-Dept,
which is less than a month ago, she was still in Chicago, not UK.
Charles
Derek Lyons
>The problem is we're not adapted to a lifestyle where tons of
>extremely tasty food can be acquired with very little physical
>effort. But it shouldn't take too many generations of obesity-related
>health problems for evolution to start adapting human physiology to
>our new lifestyle, and the more we eat the faster it will happen.
It's actually extremely unlikely that this will happen at all. Such a
change confers no survival advantage in our modern day, and thus is
unlikely to be selected for.
You have little call to complain about other not understanding science
as you did in an earlier message.
Derek Lyons
>If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
>the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
>without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
>has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
>tell us what to feed our babies with.
When one notes the general malnutrition that pervaded the human race
prior to the 20th century, one indeed does wonder how they survived.
Thus does empirical evidence raise doubt about the experiment.
>IMHO the reason it's not replicated today is because nobody who
>understands the science doubts the general conclusions, regardless of
>how effective her methods were. It's only doubted by people who don't
>understand and distrust science, and convincing them by doing
>scientific experiments is a waste of time.
No. It's also doubted by people who note the general lack of rigor,
controls, proper experiment design, etc.
Derek Lyons
>In alt.usage.english M. J. Freeman <mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> posted in
>> alt.folklore.urban:
>
>>> As long as you're here, do you disagree with my anecdotally-based
>>> conclusions? That an infant of a few months old is as likely to
>>> point at a bowl of dog food as they are to a bowl of pureed lamb
>>> and carrots?
>
>> I have no experience with babies or education in child development, so,
>> on the whole, I really don't think I should venture an opinion.
>
>> Though, in general, my inclination is to defer to professionals.
>
>That was a sound strategy in the old days when professionals got to be
>professionals by doing the job well.
Those 'old days' are largely a creation of whole cloth.
>It's more questionable these days when professionals become so by getting
>certified by a committee set up for the purpose, or less formally, by having written
>a book about the subject after having been to university to study book writing.
Your usage of 'these days' covers anytime in about the last 8
centuries or so.
Donna Richoux
> On 10 Dec 2004 17:04:12 GMT, Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
> >>>If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
> >>>the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
> >>>without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
> >>>has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
> >>>tell us what to feed our babies with.
> >
> >> What's this?
> >
> >> In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
> >> The parent chooses the food. For the first several months of life,
> >> the infant is incapable, physically, of doing more that accepting food
> >> that is fed to him or her.
> >
> >That's why the experiment was performed on children of an age where
> >they were capable of making the choices.
> >
> I don't know what experience you've had with 8 to 10 month old
> infants, but I would hardly say they are capable of making (reasoned)
> choices.
Tony, this is the second time (at least) you've mentioned reasoning or
knowledge or other mental processes. The experiment, as far as I can
tell, did not try to measure language, reasoning, or any direct brain
process. It tried to measure what babies *did*. The point about children
being old enough to choose means motor skills -- they could move, point,
grab, crawl.
>Going back to the original statement here:
Yes, this is the original paragraph I quoted, but I remind you it was
the *only* description I could find at the time, and I had absolutely no
reason to believe it was an accurate description of events. It was in an
undated, uncredited publication from India with nothing else about the
subject.
*My* point in asking about this was that true science is documented in
descriptive articles. In theory, we can track down the original
description of the experiment and results. We don't have to speculate
and argue about what may or may not have happened; theoretically, it is
on record. It's a pity that the original report doesn't seem to be
on-line, only commentary.
>
> " Dr. Davis conducted an experiment using three 8 to
> 10 month old babies who had been fed only on breast
> milk. At each meal six to eight dishes of wholesome
> unrefined foods were placed before them and they
> were allowed to point to what they would like to
> eat. Dr. Davis discovered that left to their own
> devices, these babies had a healthy development.
> Over time, they chose what was generally accepted as
> a well-balanced diet. Their appetites varied from
> meal to meal and day to day. This study seems to
> indicate that babies somehow have a natural inbuilt
> ability to eat in a manner that does not harm their
> development. "
That was at:
http://www.indiaparenting.com/articles/data/art08_002.shtml
>
> Granted, Dr Davis may have chanced on three incredibly advanced tots,
> but I simply can't accept that they were capable of making choices
> based on anything other than random pointing.
Fine. I was hoping to find how it was that she decided they got a
balanced diet and stayed in fine health, but the literature is skimpy.
>
> To add to the difficulty of accepting that choices were made,
You seem to have some other definition of a "choice" than I do. If two
bowls of food are put before a laboratory rat and it eats all the food
from one bowl and none from the other, I say it has made a choice. I
don't say the rat knows English, or could do calculus.
>Davis's
> test group consisted of three babies that had previously been fed only
> on breast milk. So, out of the box, you're going to think that a baby
> is making a choice about foods offer a balanced diet? "I need some
> orange, some green, and some roughage?"
That's what the experiment was trying to measure. Not whether the babies
had those words, naturally, but whether they would wind up with a
balanced diet, however that was defined at the time.
>
> Now that I re-read it, I see that Davis has left herself an out that
> you could drive a pram for triplets through: "over time".
Are you reading the original report?? Where? Even with all leads given
in here in the last few days, I haven't found an original report... No,
you're just continuing to scoff at the Indian newsletter. That would be
fine, except you seem to think that Davis wrote that paragraph. Perhaps
you didn't notice that that paragraph could be just as unreliable as any
other anecdotal report.
>Given
> enough time, I suppose a baby would come up with a balance even if the
> balance was a result of a blindfolded wave in the general direction of
> the balancing item.
>
> Further, Davis placed six to eight dishes of wholesome, unrefined food
> in front of the wee ones, and then came to the startling conclusion
> that their choices would not harm their development. Hah! Add one
> bowl of high lead-content paint into the mix and see how they do.
There are some experiments that are forbidden.
--
Best wishes -- Donna Richoux
Mike Lyle
[...]
> When one notes the general malnutrition that pervaded the human
race
> prior to the 20th century, one indeed does wonder how they
survived.
> Thus does empirical evidence raise doubt about the experiment.
But I don't think malnutrition _was_ a general feature of the human
condition till the twentieth century, or maybe the nineteenth. Large
centres of population like Imperial Rome had _supply_ problems, but
they solved them competently.
Mike.
Dylan Nicholson
"Derek Lyons" <fair...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:41c00be8...@supernews.seanet.com...
> Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> >The problem is we're not adapted to a lifestyle where tons of
> >extremely tasty food can be acquired with very little physical
> >effort. But it shouldn't take too many generations of obesity-related
> >health problems for evolution to start adapting human physiology to
> >our new lifestyle, and the more we eat the faster it will happen.
>
> It's actually extremely unlikely that this will happen at all. Such a
> change confers no survival advantage in our modern day, and thus is
> unlikely to be selected for.
Well, obesity has already been shown to be linked to fertility.
So either genes that allow obese people to reproduce as well as
normal weight people, or genes that tend to minimise obesity
would be expected to be more successful. I would lean toward the
latter being more likely, because there are physical limitations on
how well an obese human being can function, whereas
avoiding obesity seems far easier to achieve (e.g., a less
efficient food-to-fat conversion ability, or a lessened
appetite).
The only question is how strong the selective pressure is, and
whether it's strong enough to counter human technology (which
may grant obese people the same survival/reproductive ability
as non-obese people).
Having said tht, I would expect social pressures to have a
far more rapid effect on obesity patterns.
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> On 10 Dec 2004 17:04:12 GMT, Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >>>If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
>> >>>the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
>> >>>without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
>> >>>has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
>> >>>tell us what to feed our babies with.
>> >
>> >> What's this?
>> >
>> >> In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
>> >> The parent chooses the food. For the first several months of life,
>> >> the infant is incapable, physically, of doing more that accepting food
>> >> that is fed to him or her.
>> >
>> >That's why the experiment was performed on children of an age where
>> >they were capable of making the choices.
>> >
>> I don't know what experience you've had with 8 to 10 month old
>> infants, but I would hardly say they are capable of making (reasoned)
>> choices.
>
>Tony, this is the second time (at least) you've mentioned reasoning or
>knowledge or other mental processes. The experiment, as far as I can
>tell, did not try to measure language, reasoning, or any direct brain
>process. It tried to measure what babies *did*.
If choice is involved, then there must be some reasoning involved.
Otherwise, it's not a choice but simply an involuntary gesture. The
para states "they were allowed to point at whatever they would like to
eat". That, to me, most certainly means reasoning was involved.
>The point about children
>being old enough to choose means motor skills -- they could move, point,
>grab, crawl.
I don't see how you can come up with that. The motor skills involved
in moving and grabbing come before the mental skills - or instinctive
skills - of choosing what to grab and where to move. When the child
arrives at the point where a choice of what to grab is involved, then
there is some reasoning power involved. In the para about Davis,
there was choice involved.
>> Granted, Dr Davis may have chanced on three incredibly advanced tots,
>> but I simply can't accept that they were capable of making choices
>> based on anything other than random pointing.
>
>Fine. I was hoping to find how it was that she decided they got a
>balanced diet and stayed in fine health, but the literature is skimpy.
>>
>> To add to the difficulty of accepting that choices were made,
>
>You seem to have some other definition of a "choice" than I do. If two
>bowls of food are put before a laboratory rat and it eats all the food
>from one bowl and none from the other, I say it has made a choice. I
>don't say the rat knows English, or could do calculus.
Are you saying that a rat cannot reason? I don't see how the inability
to speak English or any other language indicates a lack of reasoning
power.
I define a choice as a selection between two or more alternatives.
The paragraph you quote indicates that the choice was made according
to some process of selection and not on random movement. Therefore, I
have to assume some reasoning power.
>>Davis's
>> test group consisted of three babies that had previously been fed only
>> on breast milk. So, out of the box, you're going to think that a baby
>> is making a choice about foods offer a balanced diet? "I need some
>> orange, some green, and some roughage?"
>
>That's what the experiment was trying to measure. Not whether the babies
>had those words, naturally, but whether they would wind up with a
>balanced diet, however that was defined at the time.
Uhhhhh. I don't think "wind up with" is an accurate portrayal of what
was trying to be determined. The infant could "wind up with" a
balanced diet purely by chance. There's an inference there, to me,
that it wasn't chance that caused the infant to wind up with a
balanced diet. It was choice, and choice involves reason.
>> Now that I re-read it, I see that Davis has left herself an out that
>> you could drive a pram for triplets through: "over time".
>
>Are you reading the original report?? Where? Even with all leads given
>in here in the last few days, I haven't found an original report
"It" is the paragraph quoted. That's all I can work with.
>... No,
>you're just continuing to scoff at the Indian newsletter.
Yes. I'm scoffing. What's the problem with that? I'm using my own
reasoning power to determine that the paragraph states information
that I deem scoffable. You are scoffing at my scoffing based on your
reasoning power.
> That would be
>fine, except you seem to think that Davis wrote that paragraph. Perhaps
>you didn't notice that that paragraph could be just as unreliable as any
>other anecdotal report.
Well, yeah, but we deal with what's presented. The paragraph was
presented, and I'm discussing - and scoffing - at what was presented.
I'm not necessarily scoffing at Davis, but I am scoffing at what Davis
was purported to have concluded from what the paragraph states.
Aue discussions are frequently like this. Someone presents some
information, a news article, or a quote and we discuss what is
presented. Sometimes people add to the body of information, and
sometimes the discussion remains about only the information presented.
I don't see that there's a requirement to have the entire body of
information available in order to trigger a discussion.
>>Given
>> enough time, I suppose a baby would come up with a balance even if the
>> balance was a result of a blindfolded wave in the general direction of
>> the balancing item.
>>
>> Further, Davis placed six to eight dishes of wholesome, unrefined food
>> in front of the wee ones, and then came to the startling conclusion
>> that their choices would not harm their development. Hah! Add one
>> bowl of high lead-content paint into the mix and see how they do.
>
>There are some experiments that are forbidden.
You don't have to allow the infant to ingest the paint. Just see what
he/she reaches for.
The grandson, Nick, was over earlier today. He made a beeline for the
dog's bowl of food on the kitchen floor. I think there was some
reasoning power involved in that choice. I think that Nick thinks
that anything available at his level must have been intended for him,
and that the dog seems to enjoy eating from the bowl so there must be
something good about the contents. His mother disagreed with both
reasons and quickly moved the bowl out of reach.
Louise Bremner
If so, there'd be more than a name-truncation involved....
________________________________________________________________________
Louise Bremner (log at gol dot com)
If you want a reply by e-mail, don't write to my Yahoo address!
Mike Lyle
All sound. There's no selective pressure on physically unfit people
in advanced urban societies. I'd say (perhaps I did say it earlier
on, but I can't remember) even low fertility itself isn't always a
barrier to successful breeding in our society.
The only selective factors I can see as possibly operating are that
it's no longer a reproductive disadvantage to have bad eyesight, low
intelligence, or poor disease-resistance. But since generations tend
to regress to the norm, this may not matter. Especially as our
minority culture can't last for ever.
Mike.
Mickwick
>On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 21:49:19 +0100, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux)
[...]
>>You seem to have some other definition of a "choice" than I do. If two
>>bowls of food are put before a laboratory rat and it eats all the food
>>from one bowl and none from the other, I say it has made a choice. I
>>don't say the rat knows English, or could do calculus.
>
>Are you saying that a rat cannot reason? I don't see how the inability
>to speak English or any other language indicates a lack of reasoning
>power.
>
>I define a choice as a selection between two or more alternatives.
>The paragraph you quote indicates that the choice was made according
>to some process of selection and not on random movement. Therefore, I
>have to assume some reasoning power.
I haven't been following this thread. I just want to mention that I put
two containers of rat poison down last night and the vole I'm after (ah,
voles, I know, cuddly, I should have got a humane trap, but it found the
bread bin, see?) ignored one and completely emptied the other, carrying
a vole's body's volume of granules to the other side of the kitchen (in
cheek pouches? in panniers?) and caching it all in the toe of one of my
boots.
What I want to know is, does this vole have a mind or does it just seem
to have a mind? (Last week it cached some hazel nuts in my underpants.)
--
Mickwick
Skitt
> I haven't been following this thread. I just want to mention that I
> put two containers of rat poison down last night and the vole I'm
> after (ah, voles, I know, cuddly, I should have got a humane trap,
> but it found the bread bin, see?) ignored one and completely emptied
> the other, carrying a vole's body's volume of granules to the other
> side of the kitchen (in cheek pouches? in panniers?) and caching it
> all in the toe of one of my boots.
>
> What I want to know is, does this vole have a mind or does it just
> seem to have a mind? (Last week it cached some hazel nuts in my
> underpants.)
Once it trades the rat poison for your bread is when you should start to
worry.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
Hatunen
wrote:
>M. J. Freeman proclaimed:
>
>> Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> posted in
>> alt.folklore.urban:
>>
>>
>>>As long as you're here, do you disagree with my anecdotally-based
>>>conclusions? That an infant of a few months old is as likely to
>>>point at a bowl of dog food as they are to a bowl of pureed lamb
>>>and carrots?
>>
>>
>> I have no experience with babies or education in child development, so,
>> on the whole, I really don't think I should venture an opinion.
>
> Purely anecdotal but based on experience with a reasonable
> selection of rugrats, I would far more expect the infant to
> quickly traverse to the nearest pile of doggy poo and sample
> that--particularly if mummy has turned her head for the merest
> nanosecond.
Jan and I have had about fifty babies over the last two decades
and that sounds about right to me.
Purely anecdotally, of course.
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
Doug Anderson
> On 09 Dec 2004 08:59:43 -0800, Doug Anderson
> <ethelthelo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> writes:
> >
> >> On 9 Dec 2004 14:40:36 GMT, "M. J. Freeman"
> >> <mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> posted in
> >> >alt.folklore.urban:
> >> >
> >> >> On 9 Dec 2004 13:54:45 GMT, "M. J. Freeman"
> >> >> <mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>>I have no experience with babies or education in child
> >> >>>development, so, on the whole, I really don't think I should
> >> >>>venture an opinion.
> >> >>
> >> >> Right. That explains why you give more weight to "scientific"
> >> >> conclusions than you do to anecdote-based observations.
> >> >
> >> >No, I give more weight to science because I understand how and why it
> >> >works.
> >>
> >> That's the comfortable part about science. It can be logical,
> >> precise, and consistent. Unfortunately, babies don't work that way.
> >>
> >> One of the first things done by first-time mothers-to-be is buy some
> >> books on child-raising. Books written by people with "M.D" or "PhD"
> >> after their names. The first book is fine and offers all the answers.
> >> Reading second book, though, the expectant parent will come across
> >> some conflicting advice and conclusions. By the time the parent reads
> >> the fourth book of "scientifically" arrived at information, the parent
> >> will be thoroughly confused and conflicted.
> >
> >You are confusing credentialism with scientific method. The fact that
> >an author can can add letters after his or her name is not a guarantee
> >that said author used scientific techniques in drawing his or her
> >conclusions.
> >
> Is that what is being done when we assume that Clara Davis arrived at
> her theory by "scientific" methods? Based on her theory, I would say
> that she wasn't particularly scientific in her approach. She offered
> a conclusion that was either based on sloppy scientific research or a
> flawed sample. To be generous, perhaps her research was considered to
> scientific at the time. IMO.
I haven't looked at Clara Davis's work. I'm responding to your
dismissal of science because contradictory child-care books are
written by people with the initials M.D. or PhD after their names.
The initials that appear after the name of the author do not tell you
whether their work was done scientifically.
Tony Cooper
<ethelthelo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Oh, nonsense. There was no dismissal of science or scientific method
in my original comments above. If you read what I've written, it
merely points out that there are conflicts in what is written in the
field of child care/child raising that confuse the lay reader. The
books that I am referring to purport to give advice and instruction to
the new mother.
Even if each individual author's methods were sound, the end result is
confusing to the intended audience when the works of one author
conflict with the work of another. It is that confusion on the part
of the intended audience that I am commenting on.
In Clara Davis's case, based on what has been reported in this
newsgroup, it does not appear to me that the author's methods were
sound. That's the specific though, but the general thrust of my
comments had to do with the reader's confusion and not the methods
used by the authors.
>The initials that appear after the name of the author do not tell you
>whether their work was done scientifically.
True enough, but that has nothing to do with the lay reader's
confusion. I'm pointing out that the lay reader is confused by the
conflict in disparate advice and instruction and not by the
methodology used by the authors.
Richard Maurer
Was only able to access the first page of the article.
That much does seem to confirm, however, that the original
experiments had not been replicated, at least up to 1966.
Katy Jennison wrote:
Found it. It was research done in the 20s and 30s
by Dr Clara Davis.
From Spock:
"Dr Davis discovered three important things. First, babies [8-10
months old] who chose their own diet from a variety of natural foods
developed very well; none of them got too fat or too thin. Second,
every baby, over a period of time, chose what any scientist would
agree was a well-balanced diet. Third, from meal to meal and day to
day, the appetite varied a lot. Each separate meal wasn't
well-balanced. For several meals in a row a baby might feed largely
on greens. Then he would change about and go more heavily for
starches."
I expect that it would be hard to replicate because of things
we have learned about experiment design since 1928.
First of all, there is the fact that the experimenters holding
the babies can see or smell the presented foods. Plenty of chance
to influence the infants choice.
Then there is the problem of ethics.
We know more about Minimum Daily Requirements. If an infant
chooses mashes peas 7 meals in a row and none of the other
good stuff, then the infant is not getting enough of Vitamin X1 or X2.
Do the experimenters allow an 8th meal of mashed peas?
If each dish contains the MDR, then there is no point
to the experiment.
Which brings me to something I have been wondering about.
I seem to remember that about 1966 it was still the mainstream opinion
that all food was broken down in the stomach, and everything that
the body needed was constructed on the other side of something.
Perhaps the scientific community was just coming out of this phase
in 1966 and saying that vitamins needed to be ingested in original
form. But here we see that even in 1928 there was the concept
of healthful food. So maybe the idea was that all starches were
equivalent, all proteins were equivalent and so on.
What was the history of food equivalence?
-- ---------------------------------------------
Richard Maurer To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California of a homonym of a synonym for also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mickwick
>Once it trades the rat poison for your bread is when you should start
>to worry.
Sorted. I've moved the bread. And I've hidden the car keys.
--
Mickwick
Paul Wolff
<mick...@use.reply.to> writes
>
>What I want to know is, does this vole have a mind or does it just seem
>to have a mind? (Last week it cached some hazel nuts in my underpants.)
Placing its nuts in underpants displays remarkable sophistication, for a
vole.
--
Paul
In bocca al Lupo!
Sara Lorimer
> What I want to know is, does this vole have a mind or does it just seem
> to have a mind? (Last week it cached some hazel nuts in my underpants.)
Perhaps you need a tighter belt.
--
SML
grey...@yahoo.com
>
>> The hunters went out every day to kill a mastodon or somesuch. But they
>> certainly weren't successful every day. And then, once they brought back
>> the mastodon, they cooked it and ate it to the bone over a period of several
>> days. Sort of like a Super Bowl party every two or three weeks or so.
>
>> If all people converted to the Caveman Diet -- extended periods of
>> vegetarianism between Cro-Magnon Pig-Outs (actually Mastodon-Outs, but work
>> with me here) -- the secret of perfect health will be achieved.
>
> Which is the motivation (although not quite the detail) behind the
> so-called paleolithic diet, the general idea of which is to pretend
> that farmers hadn't been invented and to shift back towards a
> hunter-gatherer type of diet. It does make some people feel a lot
> better and improves their health. But for best results it needs to be
> accompanied by the other important factor in the hunter-gatherer
> lifestyle -- acquiring your food took a great deal of physical
> exercise.
>
> The problem is we're not adapted to a lifestyle where tons of
> extremely tasty food can be acquired with very little physical
> effort. But it shouldn't take too many generations of obesity-related
> health problems for evolution to start adapting human physiology to
> our new lifestyle, and the more we eat the faster it will happen.
>
Wow! Brilliant! You are not me by any chance?. Don't overlook the
Darwinian input into obesity, people with massive amounts of gut and
bum would find it hard to get close enough to breed.
\ /
\ \
_ / |
_ o
--
greymaus
97.025% of statistics are wrong
Hugh Gibbons
fair...@gmail.com (Derek Lyons) wrote:
> Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> >If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
> >the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
> >without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
> >has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
> >tell us what to feed our babies with.
>
> When one notes the general malnutrition that pervaded the human race
> prior to the 20th century, one indeed does wonder how they survived.
> Thus does empirical evidence raise doubt about the experiment.
What makes you think they survived?
Hugh Gibbons
Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On 10 Dec 2004 10:22:35 GMT, Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
> >> I would think that her results could be the result of the random (1)
> >> grabs of a small child rather than any instinctive action on the part
> >> of the child. If a dog retrieves the red ball six out of ten times
> >> when a red and blue ball are thrown, we have not proved that there is
> >> a 60% probability that dogs can recognize color. Not that babies are
> >> dogs, of course.
> >
> >If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
> >the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
> >without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
> >has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
> >tell us what to feed our babies with.
>
> What's this?
>
> In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
> The parent chooses the food. For the first several months of life,
> the infant is incapable, physically, of doing more that accepting food
> that is fed to him or her.
>
> When you jump back to the pre-book times, the choices were based on
> acquired knowledge from the parent's parents. Adult reasoning was
> involved and the ability of the adult to recognize what could be
> harmful based on observation and experience.
Yes, but they didn't need a lot of information to figure out what to
feed their kids. For the most part, they fed them whatever they were
eating themselves. Up until modern times, most kids were breast fed
until such an age that they were capable of eating whatever Mommy ate.
There's another factor that should be stressed in this discussion.
Human beings are capable of thriving on any of a tremendous variety of
foods. If they eat whatever happens to be around that's edible, they
will do OK in most cases.
Or such is my belief. Funding for my experiment to determine whether
toddlers would die of nutrition if allowed to eat whatever they want at
any time was denied. Something about unethical experimentation on
humans.
Hugh Gibbons
"MonkeyHawk" <monke...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> "Chris Malcolm" <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote
>
> >>>>However,
> >>>>if you accept Dr Davis's theory that the baby will instinctively
> >>>>choose a healthful diet if given the opportunity, you need to apply
> >>>>the common sense dictum that anecdotal observation over-rules this
> >>>>particular theory.
> >
> >>>I hold no brief for Dr Davis, but, to be fair to her, she wasn't
> >>>demonstrating that babies offered chips, ice-cream and broccoli will
> >>>choose the broccoli, but that babies offered choices from a range of
> >>>foods *all of which are healthful* will over a period of time choose
> >>>enough different ones to give them a reasonably balanced intake of
> >>>necessary vitamins and minerals and so on. She offered only
> >>>whole-foods (strained or sieved), and nothing which contained sugars,
> >>>flavourings, etc. I'd be surprised if many people replicated this
> >>>particular experiment with their own children.
> >
> >> I would think that her results could be the result of the random (1)
> >> grabs of a small child rather than any instinctive action on the part
> >> of the child. If a dog retrieves the red ball six out of ten times
> >> when a red and blue ball are thrown, we have not proved that there is
> >> a 60% probability that dogs can recognize color. Not that babies are
> >> dogs, of course.
> >
> > If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
> > the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
> > without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
> > has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
> > tell us what to feed our babies with. Even more remarkable than that
> > is how animals manage to raise their offspring successfully,
> > considering that not only can they not read books, but they can't even
> > take professional advice.
> >
> > As I saw it, Clara Davis's research was simply intended as a mild
> > corrective to those silly people who had managed to forget that people
> > are animals, the result of uncountable millions of years of evolution
> > in which a creature which didn't instinctively eat the stuff it needed
> > simply died. The problems arise when you give an animal choices which
> > weren't on the evolutionary menu. That's why Davis omitted sugars,
> > sauces, etc., from her experiments.
> >
> > Of course the results would hold up today, because the experiments
> > specifically excluded the only thing that's changed -- we've got much
> > better at tarting up cheap food with stuff designed to fool the taste
> > buds because there are huge profits in it.
> >
> > IMHO the reason it's not replicated today is because nobody who
> > understands the science doubts the general conclusions, regardless of
> > how effective her methods were. It's only doubted by people who don't
> > understand and distrust science, and convincing them by doing
> > scientific experiments is a waste of time.
>
> What's more, the socialization of food on relative evolutionary terms has
> really screwed up the human diet. Compared to the millions of years of
> human evolution, we're just a wink of the eye away from our hunter/gatherer
> forebears. For most of our developmental journey, our bodies have been
> built to thrive of a largely vegetarian (i.e., gatherer, farmer) diet,
> punctuated by massive consumption of barbeque.
>
> The hunters went out every day to kill a mastodon or somesuch. But they
> certainly weren't successful every day. And then, once they brought back
> the mastodon, they cooked it and ate it to the bone over a period of several
> days. Sort of like a Super Bowl party every two or three weeks or so.
>
> If all people converted to the Caveman Diet -- extended periods of
> vegetarianism between Cro-Magnon Pig-Outs (actually Mastodon-Outs, but work
> with me here) -- the secret of perfect health will be achieved.
This is an appealing idea, I suppose, but in reality Caveman diet varied
a lot more than you're letting on. Depending on where Og lived, his
staples might be nuts, fish, hampsters...
Hugh Gibbons
Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> But for best results it needs to be
> accompanied by the other important factor in the hunter-gatherer
> lifestyle -- acquiring your food took a great deal of physical
> exercise.
>
> The problem is we're not adapted to a lifestyle where tons of
> extremely tasty food can be acquired with very little physical
> effort.
One lifestyle choice you could make to approach the caveman diet is to
steal all your food. That way, your diet is forced to be whatever's
available, just like the Caveman's. The other aspect, is this involves
a lot of exercise, which you get by running away from the guy with the
shotgun.
> But it shouldn't take too many generations of obesity-related
> health problems for evolution to start adapting human physiology to
> our new lifestyle, and the more we eat the faster it will happen.
It's just that it's a bummer to be de-selected for survival.
Hugh Gibbons
"Mike Lyle" <mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Chris Malcolm wrote:
> [...]
> > The problem is we're not adapted to a lifestyle where tons of
> > extremely tasty food can be acquired with very little physical
> > effort. But it shouldn't take too many generations of
> obesity-related
> > health problems for evolution to start adapting human physiology to
> > our new lifestyle, and the more we eat the faster it will happen.
>
> Except (and let it be clearly understood that I have no eugenic
> agenda, hidden or overt) that our society doesn't provide selective
> pressure. There are now, for us, rather few genetic factors which
> result in differential reproduction. Even low fertility itself is
> less of a barrier to producing the average number of children. Bad
> dietary habits, for our culture, probably have an insignificant
> effect on successful breeding.
>
> And evolution takes place over periods much longer than the mere
> lifespan of a civilisation.
>
I think in a few hundred years, cats, dogs and squirrels will no longer
run directly away from your car.
Derek Lyons
If they didn't, we would not be here to have this discussion.
Chris Malcolm
> On 10 Dec 2004 17:04:12 GMT, Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>>>>If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
>>>>the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
>>>>without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
>>>>has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
>>>>tell us what to feed our babies with.
>>> In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
>>> The parent chooses the food. For the first several months of life,
>>> the infant is incapable, physically, of doing more that accepting food
>>> that is fed to him or her.
>>That's why the experiment was performed on children of an age where
>>they were capable of making the choices.
> I don't know what experience you've had with 8 to 10 month old
> infants, but I would hardly say they are capable of making (reasoned)
> choices.
You seem to be missing the entire point, which was that these weren't
meant to be reasoned choices, they were meant to be instinctive.
> Further, Davis placed six to eight dishes of wholesome, unrefined food
> in front of the wee ones, and then came to the startling conclusion
> that their choices would not harm their development. Hah! Add one
> bowl of high lead-content paint into the mix and see how they do.
She was trying to test them with the kind of stuff one might
reasonably suppose to have been present in their environment of
evolutionary adaptation. High lead content paint is generally supposed
to have been difficult for prehistoric hunter-gatherers to find.
You seem to be making up your responses to this thread without even
thinking.
--
Chris Malcolm c...@infirmatics.ed.ac.uk +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]
Chris Malcolm
> "Sara Lorimer" <que.sara....@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1gokzma.qv4hchn56362N%que.sara....@gmail.com...
>> Tony Cooper wrote:
>>> In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
>> Well, they do have an instinct to breastfeed.
> Which a majority of the male ones never seem to lose.
Only in some cultures. I've always supposed it was due to the same
thing that leaves adult cats still sucking jerseys: unnaturally early
termination of breast feeding.
Chris Malcolm
> Chris Malcolm wrote:
>> The problem is we're not adapted to a lifestyle where tons of
>> extremely tasty food can be acquired with very little physical
>> effort. But it shouldn't take too many generations of
> obesity-related
>> health problems for evolution to start adapting human physiology to
>> our new lifestyle, and the more we eat the faster it will happen.
> Except (and let it be clearly understood that I have no eugenic
> agenda, hidden or overt) that our society doesn't provide selective
> pressure. There are now, for us, rather few genetic factors which
> result in differential reproduction.
Surprisingly low differentials work suprisingly well. The major killer
of pre-reproductive people is traffic accidents. The overweight have
slower reaction speeds, get injured more seriously, and recover more
slowly and poorly from serious injuries.
> Even low fertility itself is
> less of a barrier to producing the average number of children.
Nut it is still a barrier, and the endocrine consequences of obesity
reduce fertility.
> Bad
> dietary habits, for our culture, probably have an insignificant
> effect on successful breeding.
The mathematical models of the effects of selective pressure, whcih
are backed up empirical studies, show that surprisingly small changes
in fitness have surprisingly large effects over many generations,
rather like compound interest.
> And evolution takes place over periods much longer than the mere
> lifespan of a civilisation.
I agree, I was thinming in evolutionary timescales. The size of the
obesity problem isn't today's size, it's what it will be like in
another few generations, given the magnitude and multitude of the
effects which are pushing our civilisation that way. I suspect obesity
is much more likely to end our civilisation than vice versa. Too many
people are making too much money out of things which make us fat, and
now that many parents are overweight by the time they have kids, it's
entered a vicious cycle of positive feedback.
Chris Malcolm
>> Chris Malcolm wrote:
It didn't take that long for hedgehogs threatened by a car to stop
curling up into a ball and run for cover instead.
Chris Malcolm
> All sound. There's no selective pressure on physically unfit people
> in advanced urban societies.
Except for their slower reaction speeds, greater susceptibility to
injury in traffic accidents, and poorer recovery from serious
injuries.
Paul Blay
> In alt.usage.english Mike Lyle <mike_l...@removethisyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> All sound. There's no selective pressure on physically unfit people
>> in advanced urban societies.
>
> Except for their slower reaction speeds, greater susceptibility to
> injury in traffic accidents, and poorer recovery from serious
> injuries.
Inability to get a date is probably a bigger selective factor ...
Harvey Van Sickle
Nah: if that was true, there'd be no ugly or smelly people by now.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 22 years.
(for e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van)
Paul Blay
> On 12 Dec 2004, Paul Blay wrote
>
> Nah: if that was true, there'd be no ugly or smelly people by now.
But being ugly or smelly isn't the decisive factor in date gettingness.
The three magic ingredients seem to be
1. A complete lack of shame.
2. Stubbornness.
3. Energy.
David Brodbeck
> On 9 Dec 2004 14:40:36 GMT, "M. J. Freeman"
> <mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> posted in
>>alt.folklore.urban:
>>
>>
>>>On 9 Dec 2004 13:54:45 GMT, "M. J. Freeman"
>>><mjf_new...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I have no experience with babies or education in child
>>>>development, so, on the whole, I really don't think I should
>>>>venture an opinion.
>>>
>>>Right. That explains why you give more weight to "scientific"
>>>conclusions than you do to anecdote-based observations.
>>
>>No, I give more weight to science because I understand how and why it
>>works.
>
>
> That's the comfortable part about science. It can be logical,
> precise, and consistent. Unfortunately, babies don't work that way.
Now, I will say that I know nothing of the original study mentioned
here. However, because individual subjects are different does not mean
that there cannot be overall patterns in data. Indeed, the
interpretation of such patterns through the use of proper design and
inferrential statistics allow one to make (eventually) causal claims.
>
> One of the first things done by first-time mothers-to-be is buy some
> books on child-raising. Books written by people with "M.D" or "PhD"
> after their names. The first book is fine and offers all the answers.
> Reading second book, though, the expectant parent will come across
> some conflicting advice and conclusions. By the time the parent reads
> the fourth book of "scientifically" arrived at information, the parent
> will be thoroughly confused and conflicted.
People with PhDs should never be trusted.
David 'CLT' Brodbeck
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>In alt.usage.english Tony Cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> On 10 Dec 2004 17:04:12 GMT, Chris Malcolm <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
>
>>>>>If babies can't choose the proper foods for themselves, when offered
>>>>>the kind of choice of edibles available to a hunter-gatherer or farmer
>>>>>without benefit of the modern food manufacturing industry, then one
>>>>>has to wonder how the human race survived before there were books to
>>>>>tell us what to feed our babies with.
>
>>>> In my experience, babies do not choose foods for themselves at all.
>>>> The parent chooses the food. For the first several months of life,
>>>> the infant is incapable, physically, of doing more that accepting food
>>>> that is fed to him or her.
>
>>>That's why the experiment was performed on children of an age where
>>>they were capable of making the choices.
>
>> I don't know what experience you've had with 8 to 10 month old
>> infants, but I would hardly say they are capable of making (reasoned)
>> choices.
>
>You seem to be missing the entire point, which was that these weren't
>meant to be reasoned choices, they were meant to be instinctive.
Aue's voice of reason, Donna R., has pointed out that I am deducing
too much from a single paragraph that is not even the work of the
investigator being discussed. You've capped me, though. You've
discovered Davis's "entire point".
In fact, the paragraph doesn't tell us if Davis is reporting choices
based on pure instinct or on some type of reasoning. I read the
paragraph and came away with the impression that she felt the infants
were making a choice based on some form of reasoning that I don't feel
is possible or natural.
Donna is correct in pointing out that we really don't have enough to
go on to know what was being discovered. If anything. I've based my
premise on what was written, but you seem to base your premise on what
was intended.
>> Further, Davis placed six to eight dishes of wholesome, unrefined food
>> in front of the wee ones, and then came to the startling conclusion
>> that their choices would not harm their development. Hah! Add one
>> bowl of high lead-content paint into the mix and see how they do.
>
>She was trying to test them with the kind of stuff one might
>reasonably suppose to have been present in their environment of
>evolutionary adaptation. High lead content paint is generally supposed
>to have been difficult for prehistoric hunter-gatherers to find.
I may be wrong in my premise, but you have also fabricated a premise.
Your premise is an elaborate one that brings in evolutionary
environment and hunter-gatherers.
If you want to take my reference to lead-paint as a serious objection,
then I have to counter with "bowls". Weren't the hunter-gatherers
shoving berries directly into their mouths without benefit of the
stage of table settings?
>You seem to be making up your responses to this thread without even
>thinking.
Not quite ad hominem, but well on the path. Not thinking and not
thinking the way you think are not the same thing. I'm more impressed
with the debater that presents an alternative point of view and makes
an effort to legitimize that point of view than I am with the debater
who impugns the other party. But, hey!, do what you're comfortable
with and feel you can handle.
Doug Anderson
> This is an appealing idea, I suppose, but in reality Caveman diet varied
> a lot more than you're letting on. Depending on where Og lived, his
> staples might be nuts, fish, hampsters...
How did they get the laundry taste off of those?
JLB
You missed out the greatest of them all, money/power.
--
Joe * If I cannot be free I'll be cheap
JLB
Without access to the actual paper or information on Davis's background
all this is so much hand-waving, but I'll put in my tuppence worth
anyway. Davis was working in 1928. By that time behaviourist psychology
was fifteen years old, having been launched in 1913 by John Watson.
"Psychology as the behaviorist views it," Watson wrote, "is a purely
objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal
is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no
essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data
dependent on the readiness with which they lend themselves to
interpretation in terms of consciousness."
It is entirely possible that Davis, as a good scientist of her time,
would know the difference between reporting an observable fact (such as
which food(s) the child selected) and attempting some metaphysical
speculation about what, if anything, was going on in the child's
brain/mind. Her point, it seems, was concerned with what the child
chose. Whatever lay behind that choice, be it instinct, reason or
anything else, is utterly irrelevant.
Mike Lyle
> In alt.usage.english Mike Lyle <mike_l...@removethisyahoo.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> All sound. There's no selective pressure on physically unfit
people
>> in advanced urban societies.
>
> Except for their slower reaction speeds, greater susceptibility to
> injury in traffic accidents, and poorer recovery from serious
> injuries.
OK, so I don't know and you do. Can you point me to the figures on
unfit people's failure to reproduce as often as fit people? Then to
the figures on unfit people's great-grandchildren being themselves
unfit. And, while we're at it, what percentage of the human
population is overweight and lacking exercise.
Mike.
Mike Lyle
No, not that kind: the kind you eat come from Fortnum and Mason at
Christmas. They found a lot of empties in the Olduvai Gorge, or had
you forgotten?
Mike.
grey...@yahoo.com
> feed their kids. For the most part, they fed them whatever they were
> eating themselves. Up until modern times, most kids were breast fed
> until such an age that they were capable of eating whatever Mommy ate.
> There's another factor that should be stressed in this discussion.
> Human beings are capable of thriving on any of a tremendous variety of
> foods. If they eat whatever happens to be around that's edible, they
> will do OK in most cases.
>
> Or such is my belief. Funding for my experiment to determine whether
> toddlers would die of nutrition if allowed to eat whatever they want at
> any time was denied. Something about unethical experimentation on
> humans.
>
>
In a recent politically-inspired row in Dublin, one of the rowers was
hauled off to the 'Joy (prison). She complained that she was
breastfeeding a child. The child was 2 years + old.
Ladies, is this usual?
Tony Cooper
wrote:
Certainly, but hand-waving is an authorized sport in newsgroups. It
can be an interesting exercise.
>It is entirely possible that Davis, as a good scientist of her time,
>would know the difference between reporting an observable fact (such as
>which food(s) the child selected) and attempting some metaphysical
>speculation about what, if anything, was going on in the child's
>brain/mind. Her point, it seems, was concerned with what the child
>chose. Whatever lay behind that choice, be it instinct, reason or
>anything else, is utterly irrelevant.
That's a good enough explanation and does reduce it to basics. What
we have doing here is assigning relevancy to what may have been
irrelevant to the original study (or at least what has been reported
of the original study).
TeaLady (Mari C.)
news:slrncroa3a....@darkstar.example.net:
>
> In a recent politically-inspired row in Dublin, one of the
> rowers was hauled off to the 'Joy (prison). She complained
> that she was breastfeeding a child. The child was 2 years +
> old.
>
> Ladies, is this usual?
>
>
Don't know - but it is covered by a variety of sites, and
doesn't seem to be unheard of.
<http://www.babycenter.com/refcap/toddler/toddlerbreastfeed/84
96.html> (http://tinyurl.com/6a57)
<http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/8148/toddler.html>
(http://tinyurl.com/4jdxq)
<http://www.parentingweb.com/lounge/ext_nursepage.htm>
(http://tinyurl.com/5xwfa)
<http://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/bfinfo/toddler.html>
(http://tinyurl.com/64f23)
--
TeaLady (mari)
"I keep telling you, chew with your mouth closed!" Kell the
coach offers advice on keeping that elusive prey caught.
peachy ashie passion
In Ireland? Unusual.
according to the National Committee on Breastfeeding:
http://www.healthpromotion.ie/pdf/Breastfeeding_Report.pdf
Ireland has the lowest rates of breastfeeding in Europe. This is
the latest data I can find, and it says that only 36% of Irish
infants are still being breastfed at the time of their release from
the hospital.
--
"Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of
scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams."
~ Mary Ellen Kelly
AFPslave to Mistress Stacie
ashes...@verizon.net
Doug Anderson
Oh. I didn't think those were hamsters, but some kind of marsupial as
commonly found at other Austrian sites.
Dave Kuhlman
Actually, you do not need to date in order to reproduce. Mostly,
you need (1) to screw and (2) to eschew contraceptive precautions.
In some countries and societies and times, partners do not even
meet before marriage. My grandparents, according to family lore,
were matched by their parents, then produced five children, who
produced grandchildren, who ...
I believe there are other date-less human reproduction strategies.
The term "one-night stand" comes to mind. "Third Rate Romance,
Low Rent Rondevous" (... and she said, I'll even tell you I love
you if you want me too ...)
Other factors that influence reproductive success:
- Willingness to use contraception.
- Education -- I've read that more highly educated women reproduce
less successfully than less educated women.
- Boredom.
- Religion -- "Go forth and multiply."
- Closing time at bars and pubs -- "All the girls get prettier
near closing time".
And, there is always influence of "Nine months after the power
failure and all the elevators stopped".
By the way, reproducing alone is not enough. You have to
reproduce *and* what you produce has to live long enough to
reproduce. That's just a word of caution for any of you who were
about to grab your coat and the Viagra on the way out the door to
try to take over the world.
Dave
--
Dave Kuhlman
http://www.rexx.com/~dkuhlman
Dave Kuhlman
[snip]
>
> I agree, I was thinming in evolutionary timescales. The size of
> the obesity problem isn't today's size, it's what it will be like
> in another few generations, given the magnitude and multitude of
> the effects which are pushing our civilisation that way. I suspect
> obesity is much more likely to end our civilisation than vice
> versa. Too many people are making too much money out of things
> which make us fat, and now that many parents are overweight by the
> time they have kids, it's entered a vicious cycle of positive
> feedback.
>
Aren't we confounding things here? Evolution works by increasing
the prevalence of genes in a population. You can't increase the
percentage of fat offspring by eating potato chips before you
reproduce. Also, try this experiment: You and your honey both get
tatoos, then try to produce babies born with tatoos.
Mike Lyle
Ach so, mate! Put another knoedel on se barbie, nein? Such a fun are
we making!
Meik.
Karen J. Cravens
news:slrncroa3a....@darkstar.example.net:
> Ladies, is this usual?
Um, in many newsgroups this would be a blatant troll. I'm just saying.
--
Karen J. Cravens
Greg Locock
>
> It didn't take that long for hedgehogs threatened by a car to stop
> curling up into a ball and run for cover instead.
>
I was expecting a loud chorus, instead I shall sing solo:
CITE!
Cheers
Greg "Why didn't they evolve really sharp spines to puncture tires
instead?" Locock
Ross Howard
<mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrought:
Can I make my Adelaiderhosen pun now?
Ah. Okay. Thought not.
--
Ross Howard