[village-idiot]

Bzzzt, no.

Individuals do not evolve new genetic features after birth. You will not change your teeth structure genetically in your lifetime, unless if you take up hockey or bare knuckle boxing. Your kids might have a mutation from you that’ll change their teeth, but statistically they won’t.

There’s also an ongoing debate about to what degree humans face evolutionary pressures anymore. Without some selection to pick one mutation over the other, it’s unclear which direction we will evolve.

Teeth are a good record of how the individual evolved to eat, which is indeed in the past. But you have no idea where the evolution will take us, and that’ll take thousands of years, and again individuals do not evolve. So yes, teeth still matter.

I’m glad you have good teeth, but I’ll remind you that anecdotes are not data.

[gnosis89]

Now you're hopping from evolution to genetic features as though they are the same thing. I never mentioned that I have good teeth or that I was vegetarian, nor is it anecdotal that vegetarians have better dental hygiene. I highly doubt our teeth will change at all because people don't die from lack of a certain tooth. Teeth don't matter when you can literally have all fake teeth and get by eating just fine. In fact, we often remove teeth because we have too many. Again, individuals do evolve, which is not the same as suddenly getting new distinct physical features half way through your life, which actually can happen so you're also wrong about that.

[village-idiot]

You keep asserting, sans proof, that individuals evolve. Unfortunately for you, the experts disagree[0-2]. Evolution is something that happens to a population, not an individual.

> I highly doubt our teeth will change at all because people don't die from lack of a certain tooth.

Yes, I made this point. But that was not true when humans evolved into our current form, right around when the rest of us evolved. Until relatively recently, humans did die from dental cavities, and we haven't changed significantly in 1,000 years, so the point stands.

> nor is it anecdotal that vegetarians have better dental hygiene.

Which would be a good point if I was trying to claim that. I said they had worse health, which is diet and behavior related.

The big one for me is K2. There is only one vegan source of K2, natto, all other sources are either animal or meat based. K2 is critical for a lot of things, including tooth cells.

Vegans and vegetarians are showing higher rates of tooth decay (not cavities, I misread) than the rest of the population[3]. Doesn't really matter how much they're brushing, it's diet driven.

> Again, individuals do evolve

[Citation needed]

> which is not the same as suddenly getting new distinct physical features half way through your life

You're right that meaningful mutations might be at the protein level, but you're not going to start synthesizing brand new proteins either.

0. http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/l...

1. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq...

2. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/53371/what-is-me...

3. https://www.deltadentalwa.com/blog/entry/2018/07/vegan-diet-...

[gnosis89]

Okay, you're merely arguing semantics with me on evolution. You can call it adaptation or a catalyst for evolution, whatever word you want, but it's still evolution. When applying the theory of evolution to humans, you can't use such a simple definition because we have technology. Additionally, our minds are powerful enough to decide to do things that will cause physiological changes beyond those that one might say would have been caused by natural selection. And how do our minds evolve? Thought, experience, brain processes that we have yet to understand fully which are also directly linked/affected with the rest of our bodies. The evolution of our collective consciousness and knowledge base is the where the real evolution is occurring.

Honestly have no idea what you're saying about teeth anymore, your whole point was that our teeth prove we are meant to have omnivorous diets, which I was arguing against because our teeth are relics just like our nails, they do not matter anymore, so I still don't know how your point stands. They are merely links to our past evolution and what we used to eat 100's of thousands of years ago, long before we discovered cooking which some have linked to a spike in our evolution to our current status.

You literally said "Coincidentally, vegetarians have a higher rate of cavities than the population at large." Cavities are tooth decay btw...not sure why you think they are two different things.

Sorry, but they really don't, and the study you're pushing trying to claim that shit was done on isolated indigenous populations which has nothing to do with vegetarians in the rest of the world who are able to get K2 from plenty of non meat foods like cheese or eggs. More than likely, those isolated tribes are vegan more-so than vegetarian without access to milk-based products or soy beans. Also you get K2 from your gut as well.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1492156

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/changing-our-dna-...

[village-idiot]

There’s no point in continuing this thread, you’re literally making up your own definition for every subject we’re talking about.

[gnosis89]

Refusing to even admit you're completely wrong about vegetarians having more cavities because you know I'm right. :)