Humans have always eaten meat… right? No, actually we haven’t. The best evidence for what we’re optimized to eat is our digestive system, so let’s examine it.
Teeth
The teeth of a carnivore are long and pointed, for tearing raw flesh. Herbivores have flat teeth and flat back molars to grind their food. Carnivores do not have flat back molars at all. Some herbivores do have small, what we call “canine” teeth for biting into tough plants (like apples) but these are nothing compared to the size and shape of a carnivore’s teeth. True omnivores’ teeth are most similar to carnivore teeth.
Carnivores:
True Omnivores* (Bears eat fish and berries, Rats scavenge nearly everything from grains to veggies to meat):
Herbivores:
Which look most like yours?
*By “true omnivore” I mean animals that naturally eat both plants and animals. For example, cats eat vegetables (in their commercial cat food, or maybe it’s handed to them under the table) but cats are not true omnivores, they are carnivores. In the wild, cats would eat birds and rodents, not leaves and berries.
Jaws
The jaws of carnivores move up and down, but not side to side. The jaw motion of an omnivore is similar. They don’t chew. This is because carnivores tear off meat and swallow it whole. An herbivore’s jaw moves both up and down and side to side for grinding vegetation. Check your jaw and see what it does.
Saliva
A carnivore or omnivore has small salivary glands in their mouth and their saliva does not contain digestive enzymes. Herbivores’ saliva is alkaline, containing carbohydrate digestive enzymes to pre-digest plant food. Herbivores also have large, developed salivary glands in their mouth. Human saliva is alkaline and contains digestive enzymes. And our salivary glands are large.
Tongue
From an article by John A. McDougall, M.D.:
“Cats are obligate carnivores – they must live on a diet primarily of meat – and their taste buds reflect this by having abandoned the tongue sensors that respond to sweet-tasting carbohydrates. Dogs are omnivores – they have retained both kinds of taste buds – those enjoying carbohydrates and amino acids. Humans tongues respond pleasurably to sweet (carbohydrates), but have lost the taste for amino acids, placing us undeniably in the category of herbivores (plant eaters).”
Additionally, herbivores drink by sucking water up into their mouths as opposed to lapping it up with their tongue which all carnivores do.
Intestines
A carnivore’s or omnivore’s small intestine is 3 to 6 times the length of its trunk. This is designed for rapid elimination of food that rots quickly. An herbivore’s small intestine is 10 to 12 times the length of its trunk, and winds itself back and forth in random directions. This is designed for keeping food in it for long enough periods of time to extract all the valuable nutrients and minerals before the food enters the large intestine.
A carnivore’s or omnivore’s large intestine is relatively short and simple, like a pipe. This passage is also relatively smooth and runs fairly straight so that fatty wastes high in cholesterol can easily slide out before they start to putrefy. (This is why it’s impossible for carnivores to get cancer or heart disease from high cholesterol and clogged arteries.) An herbivore’s large intestine, or colon, is puckered and pouched, an apparatus that runs in three directions (ascending, traversing and descending), designed to hold wastes that originally were foods high in water content. This is so that the fluids can be extracted from these wastes, now that all the useful nutrients and minerals have been extracted. Substances high in fat and cholesterol that have been putrefying for hours during their long stay in the small intestine tend to get stuck in the pockets that line the large intestine. (Vegetarians have lower rates of colon cancer.)
Care to guess which type of intestines we have? (Hint: Human small intestines are about 10 times our torso length and our large intestines are puckered.)
Stomach
A carnivore can eat rotting, bacteria-ridden flesh completely raw without getting sick. They have stomach acids that kill the bad stuff and allow them to digest the rest without puking their guts up. Their stomach secretes powerful digestive enzymes with about 10 times the amount of hydrochloric acid than that of a human or herbivore. The pH is less than or equal to 1 with food in the stomach, for a carnivore or omnivore. For herbivores and humans, the pH ranges from 4 to 5 with food in the stomach. Hence, man must cook his meats. Ever try to eat road kill? Or a freshly dead chicken, completely raw? Give it a shot and let me know how it works out for you. E. Coli bacteria, salmonella, campylobacter, trichina worms, parasites, or other pathogens would not survive in the stomach of a lion.
Liver
Animal flesh is composed of the most highly complex type of protein and requires vast amounts of uric acid to process. Uric acid is released into the system in amounts necessary to break proteins down into amino acids. Uric acid is a toxic substance responsible for the aging process and must be flushed out and dealt with. That is one of the jobs of the liver. In relative terms, a carnivore’s liver is a tool designed with the capacity to eliminate ten times as much uric acid as the liver of man or other plant eaters.
Our anatomy and digestive system clearly show that we must have evolved for millions of years living on fruits, nuts, grains, and vegetables.
Still skeptical?
Physical features
Carnivores and omnivores have physical characteristics which enable them to chase, trap, and kill. Speed, sharp teeth, and claws are tools meant to hunt, kill, and rend tough flesh. Examine your hand, fingers and fingernails. Is this an apparatus properly designed for catching, trapping, killing, and ripping apart cattle, hogs, chicken and fish? (How do they work for picking fruit from trees or harvesting vegetables?) Meat eaters have the speed and reflexes to catch prey. You do not. Try to catch an animal that doesn’t want to be caught (without tools or weapons) and you’ll get an idea of what type of hunter we naturally are.
Sweat
Meat-eating animals that hunt in the cool of the night and sleep during the day when it is hot do not need sweat glands to cool their bodies; they therefore do not perspire through their skin, but rather they sweat through their tongues. On the other hand, vegetarian animals, such as cows, horses, zebras, deer, etc., spend much of their time in the sun gathering their food, and they freely perspire through their skin to cool their bodies.
Sleep
Carnivores sleep the most, herbivores the least, and omnivores in the middle. Guess which group our own sleep correlates with.
Here are some charts from an article in Nature. They have stuck us (and other primates) in the omnivore group but notice that we’re at the extreme end of that chart, with nearly every other single omnivore sleeping more than we do. However, we fit nicely in the herbivore chart. A prominent dot for humans is added to the herbivore chart to show how we fit in at eight hours a night.
Carnivores (most sleep):
Omnivores:
Herbivores (least sleep):
Instincts
It is obvious that our natural instincts are non-carnivorous. Natural meat eaters find the smell of blood and dead animals attractive. How do you think they smell?
Carnivores kill without sympathy or remorse. Humans (obviously) do not.
One scientist explains it this way: “A cat will salivate with hungry desire at the smell of a piece of raw flesh but not at all at the smell of fruit. If man could delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still-living limbs apart with his teeth, and suck the warm blood, one might conclude that nature provided him with meat-eating instinct. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his mouth water, and even in the absence of hunger he will eat fruit because it tastes so good.”
Unlike other animals, humans can act outside of instinct. Other animals are programmed to know what food is. We are not. For us, it’s learned behavior. Or, in the beginning, guessed behavior. We can make choices about what we eat even if that’s contrary to good health (as millions prove every day when they eat at McDonald’s). When our ancestors ate meat, they were being human and making choices, rather than acting on instinct. Think about it: Do you really believe that cavemen were true experts about nutrition? If so, what other major decisions about your life would you like to put in the hands of a caveman?
Health
In general, plant-eating creatures have the longest lifespans. Elephants, horses, and chimpanzees are at the top of the list while lions, tigers, and wolves are about half that. Humans’ lifespans are even longer than the elephants (even before modern medicine), providing more evidence that we’re in the plant-eating camp.
Science and medical evidence overwhelmingly shows that the more meat we eat, the sicker we get - heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and every other major degenerative disease. If eating meat were so natural, it wouldn’t destroy our health.
Dean Ornish, M.D. was the first person to prove that heart disease can be reversed, and he did so by feeding his patients a vegetarian diet. John McDougall, M.D. has also written extensively about how animal foods cause disease, and how people can regain their health by eating vegan instead. The esteemed T. Colin Campbell oversaw the most massive study of the relationship between diet and disease, the China Study, which the New York Times called “the grand prix of epidemiology.” His conclusions are the same as the other experts: we’re not designed to eat animal foods, because we get sick when we do.
The fact that health can be regained by laying off meat and dairy is powerful evidence that we shouldn’t have been eating those foods in the first place.
By now, the meat-eating reader already has objections.
Let me try to address some of these.
Objection 1: We’re capable of eating meat, therefore we’re omnivores.
Cats are also capable of eating both plants and meat. In fact, some people feed their cats a purely vegan diet. But cats are not omnivores, they are carnivores (as previously explained). True omnivores are not just capable of eating both plants and animals, but their bodies are optimized for it. Just because we can digest meat doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to. We can digest cardboard, but that doesn’t mean that we should.
Objection 2: Vitamin B12 is only obtained from meat, dairy, and eggs.
B12 isn’t made by animals, it’s made by bacteria. It’s found where things are unclean (and rotting flesh is dirty). This easily explains why historically it’s been easy to get B12, because until recently we didn’t live in a sanitized environment. Pull a carrot out of the ground and don’t wash it properly, and there’s almost certainly some B12 there. Vegans should take a B12 supplement, not because veganism is unnatural, but because the modern diet is too clean to contain reliable natural sources of dirty B12.
Incidentally, our need for B12 is tiny: 3 micograms a day (not milligrams, micrograms). The amount of B12 you need for your entire life is smaller than four grains of rice.
Objection 3: Other primates eat meat.
Hardly. A chimp’s diet is 95-99% plant foods, and the non-plant food isn’t meat, it’s termites. We also have to remember that primates are intelligent and can make choices outside of instinct, just like humans do, so the tiny amount of non-vegetarian food they might eat could simply be due to choice, not instinct.
Others? Leave a comment.
____________________
Breakfast: An awesome smoothie! Banana, pear, kale, and hemp milk.
Lunch: Leftover vegan pizza, blueberries, and an orange
Dinner: Mexican food! Enchilada, vegan beef taquito, soy chorizo taco, and vegan queso (I add salsa to this recipe)
30 comments
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Molly says:
Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 1:34 am (UTC -4)
I love this post, and would like to share it with some omnivorous friends, but (as a vegan friend pointed out), as vegans, we’re expected to be walking encyclopedias of reference information. So, do you have reference or bibliography information for your post? Thank you!
The objections I keep hearing from others are of the “high-protein diets are good for weight loss” variety. Nonsense – and unhealthy.
Powered By Produce says:
Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 10:56 am (UTC -4)
Molly – First of all, thanks so much for sharing this! And I know exactly what you mean about vegans/vegetarians having to prove and reference everything. (The protein discussions are the worst!) Yet, the only proof omnis give for the reason to eat meat is “that’s what we’ve always done.” (Which, hopefully this post proves is incorrect!)
Anyhow… All of my sources are websites. I’m not sure that I can recall where I got each piece of information, but here are a few sites that corroborate my claims (and I’m specifically avoiding the hundreds of vegetarian websites that echo this as well):
http://www.examiner.com/x-42573-Allentown-Healthy-Living-Examiner~y2010m4d30-Are-humans-carnivores-herbivores-or-omnivores
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1594/is_1_13/ai_82352627/
http://microbiology.suite101.com/article.cfm/are_humans_omnivores
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/09/are-humans-carnivores-or-herbivores-2/
Oh, and the high-protein diet thing…
I touched on that here: http://www.powered-by-produce.com/2009/04/30/the-great-protein-myth/
and here: http://www.powered-by-produce.com/2009/09/24/carb-crazy/
And here are some additional references:
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=11234
http://life.familyeducation.com/nutrition-and-diet/weight/35884.html
http://www.pioneerthinking.com/gl_lowcarb.html
Hope that helps!
Molly says:
Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 1:38 am (UTC -4)
Oh, great links! That second article is especially helpful. Thank you for providing those, and for going to all the extra effort! :) I really appreciate it.
Justin says:
Friday, June 11, 2010 at 9:00 pm (UTC -4)
Lemme just say this – you rule! Thanks for putting together such a wonderfully organized and well presented list. I’ve read these things before in various places and it always has an impact and inspires me to not give up on encouraging other people to minimize their meat consumption. I am constantly blown away by how the facts are twisted by the food industry to make people think that eating meat (and large quantities of it!) is natural, healthy, and not harmful to the planet. Would you mind if I repost a link to your post? It is really something that people need to read, and I’d love for my friends and fam to check it out… CHEERS
Justin´s last blog ..Salad with Homemade Vinaigrette & Field Roast
Powered By Produce says:
Monday, June 14, 2010 at 9:39 am (UTC -4)
Of course I don’t mind you linking to this! With so much science backing the veg diet, it baffles me that some people STILL aren’t convinced!
Heather says:
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 12:06 pm (UTC -4)
Thanks for posting this! I’ve posted it to my blog (linked) so more folks can read it as well. This is great!
Powered By Produce says:
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 12:17 pm (UTC -4)
Heather thanks for sharing this with others! I’m excited to check out your blog as well!
Heather says:
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 4:21 pm (UTC -4)
You’re very welcome.. I’d love to print it out & hand it to folks!! :)
Heather´s last blog ..Forks Over Knives- Movie Trailer
Benjamin says:
Sunday, September 12, 2010 at 1:24 am (UTC -4)
As a vegetarian and health care practitioner working with the public, I’ve been searching for an answer to the proverbial question, “Why should I consume less (or avoid) animal products.” Most people have a “mob mentality” when it comes to food and this group-think has led to Americans eating an additional 78 lbs of meat per year than we did in 1950 (because, sadly, this has become the norm). No wonder we’re so diseased!! Your article was incredibly thorough and I thank you for the time it must have taken to assemble this work. I’ve read similar information on diet before, but never this complete…
Benjamin´s last blog ..10 Ways to Decrease Inflammation Naturally
Chuck P says:
Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 3:14 pm (UTC -4)
how do you explain the huge increase in size of the human brain and the decrease in the gut when humans started consuming meat millions of years ago? had we not started consuming nutrient dense animal flesh, we would still be at the intellectual level of chimpanzees.
should we ignore evolution?
Powered By Produce says:
Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 4:26 pm (UTC -4)
I assume this is what you are referring to? http://current.com/15e684c
The interesting part, for me, was the end of the article, in which the anthropologist pretty much dismisses the whole meat-made-us-smarter theory. He states that it wasn’t the meat that made us smarter, it was the cooking of food that made us smarter. Cooked food, be it meat or vegetable, made the food easier to digest, which allowed less energy to be spent on digestion and more energy to be spent on thinking.
If meat is solely responsible for our intelligence, then why haven’t lions, bears, and and chimpanzees (which eat meat: http://www.janegoodall.org/blogs/janes-first-big-discovery-chimps-eat-meat) reached the same intelligence level as humans?
I’m sure that a combination of factors contributed to human intelligence, and even if meat was one factor, it certainly wasn’t the only factor. But the fact remains that our digestive system evolved to eat plants. To this day, our bodies can not properly digest raw meat, which is why it is necessary for us to cook it and break it down before eating. And it is shown many times over that vegetarians and vegans live longer than omnis (could it be survival of the fittest?!): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/13/benefits-of-vegetarianism_n_112431.html.
Plus, studies also show that today vegetarians are more intelligent than meat eaters ;) http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23378331-vegetarians-are-more-intelligent-says-study.do
Benjamin says:
Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 4:37 pm (UTC -4)
I hear this argument a lot–however, I question whether it was meat that led to our evolution of the mind or if it was evolutionary stresses which led to our prefrontal cortex and our ability to use our minds to overcome our environment. Like the giraffe, who grew long necks in response to a dearth of low-hanging foliage, perhaps we grew intellectually as a response to our environment outside of simple meat consumption. Consider that each evolutionary process of man, which has brought us to age we enjoy, currently has come with advances in tools, technology, and culture. Chicken and cow–the meat we typically eat the most as Americans, have come from the continent of Asia; these meats are not something that have been with us through the evolution of man–however, fish has. Fish, however, is not the only source of omega-3 in our diets and there are many plant-based forms of omega-3, which could (very well) also explain our cognitive prowess outside of meat. To say that eating meat is equated to intelligence is an untenable argument as there are too innumerable factors to link meat with the mind. Why, then, do carnivores not rank higher than man?
Benjamin´s last blog ..10 Ways to Decrease Inflammation Naturally
Sheena Ogle says:
Friday, September 17, 2010 at 12:36 am (UTC -4)
This post was great. I am writing a paper in my philosophy class about how humans were not made to eat meat, and why I think being a vegetarian is better. This information really helped me out ALOT. Thanks so much!
Chuck P says:
Friday, September 17, 2010 at 9:18 am (UTC -4)
why aren’t there herbivores that ranking higher than humans in intelligence? yes, cooking does make absorption of calories easier.
i guess i would ask at what point in the last million years or so did humans evolve to become herbivores? when did they survive as only herbivores during that same period?
admittedly, i am not super familiar with being a vegan or vegetarian. can you get all the nutrients you need by eating whole, unprocessed foods?
Powered By Produce says:
Friday, September 17, 2010 at 1:13 pm (UTC -4)
Chuck,
I’m not entirely sure when humans started eating meat, but this is the best answer I could find (from http://www.alive.com/1338a4a2.php?subject_bread_cramb=463):
“Humans began eating small amounts of meat during the Stone Age. During the last ice age, when the plant-based foods of the past became unavailable, humans turned to meat to survive. And humans aren’t like carnivores in another way: we have to cook our meat, fry it, bake it–you name it, as opposed to the lion, which tears away at the flesh with his mighty caninus teeth. And here we are! In countries where much meat is consumed, you will find disease and degeneration. The last century has ushered in a drastically different style of eating in comparison to our grandparents, great grandparents and as far back as human history. We have become consumers of mass-marketed highly refined and processed foods. This is one of the primary reasons our health has also suffered.”
Yes, you can most definitely get all the nutrients you need on a vegan diet! So long as you are eating a well-balanced vegan diet (a diet of potato chips and soy ice cream isn’t gonna cut it), you will not only obtain all of the nutrients you need, but you’ll get MORE of the good stuff (vitamins, antioxidants, fiber) and LESS of the bad stuff (fat, cholesterol).
The one supplement a vegan will want to take is B12. I wrote about this at the very end of this post.
As I mentioned before, it’s been proven over and over again that veganism is the healthiest diet. Vegans have a longer lifespan and much lower rates cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke – the largest killers in the US. The China Study (http://www.thechinastudy.com/about.html) is often called the most comprehensive study on this issue – you should check it out!
Also, here are some other posts I’ve written related to this:
Protein:
http://www.powered-by-produce.com/2009/04/30/the-great-protein-myth/
http://www.powered-by-produce.com/2010/09/08/animal-based-high-protein-diets-increase-mortality-rate/
Fat:
http://www.powered-by-produce.com/2010/06/25/what-the-heck-is-saturated-fat/
Cancer:
http://www.powered-by-produce.com/2010/01/06/reduce-your-risk-of-cancer/
http://www.powered-by-produce.com/2010/02/17/how-much-is-too-much/
Heart Disease:
http://www.powered-by-produce.com/2009/09/30/for-your-heart/
Kidney & Gallstones:
http://www.powered-by-produce.com/2010/02/04/stones/
Chuck P says:
Friday, September 17, 2010 at 2:33 pm (UTC -4)
How Do You Explain Inuits? Their diet consisted almost solely on animal protein and fat. Can you name any primitive tribes today that don’t eat animals? Or any primitive civilization in the last million years that didn’t eat animals?
Are you aware that there is no correlation between saturated fat and heart disease? http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2009.27725v1
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2009.29146v1
http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowPDF&ArtikelNr=229002&Ausgabe=250361&ProduktNr=223977&filename=229002.pdf
Chuck P says:
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 2:33 pm (UTC -4)
“The theory of raw veganism is steeped in fanciful and delusional thinking. There has never been a group of human beings in the entire evolution of our species that were 100% raw vegans — or even vegan for that matter. During Price’s travels he was always on the lookout for a primitive population that subsisted solely off of vegetable foods. He never found one. Not only did every group utilize animal foods, they also made great efforts to obtain these foods and held them in very high regard — particularly for child-rearing. Anthropologists and archaeologists have determined that meat and animal fat consumption (in some cases full-on carnivory) have been a mainstay in the human diet for several million years. Today, healthy traditional cultures all over the world eat cooked plant and animal foods and stay healthy from generation to generation.”
http://ryan-koch.blogspot.com/2009/03/storm-family-degenerating-raw-foodists.html
Anonymous says:
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 11:40 pm (UTC -4)
studies have linked vegetarianism and eating disorders.
“The study found that 19.6% of the current vegetarians and 20.9% of former vegetarians used some form of extreme, unhealthy weight-control behaviors (such as using a diet pill or laxatives or inducing vomiting), and 21.2% and 16%, respectively, said they had binged on food with a loss of control. In comparison, 9.4% of the never-vegetarian group had used extreme, unhealthy weight-control behaviors and only 4.4% said they had lost control while eating and binged.”
The study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Assn., was conducted by researchers from the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, the University of Minnesota and the University of Texas, Austin.
Roan, Shari, et al. “Perils of Meat-Free Teen Diet.” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA). 05 Apr 2009: A2. SIRS Researcher. Web. 19 Oct 2010.
Anonymous says:
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 11:42 pm (UTC -4)
Is it possible that vegitarianism is used as another exterme, unhealthy weight-control hehavior for some people?
Powered By Produce says:
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 at 6:46 pm (UTC -4)
In general, vegetarians are thinner and have a lower BMI than meat-eaters. I’ve often seen vegetarianism advertised as a weight loss diet because many people do in fact lose weight when they go vegetarian. A diet that emphasizes fruits and veggies is often lower in calories and fat than one that focuses on meat and dairy.
So, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if those who have eating disorders, and/or mental disorders that cause extreme dieting, took up vegetarianism as a weight loss tactic. But it is not the vegetarianism that is the problem. A vegetarian diet has been proven many times over to be an extremely healthy diet if you eat a sufficient amount of calories and get enough food variety to consume all the necessary vitamins and minerals. People who already have unhealthy weight-loss behaviors may be drawn to the low calorie, low fat vegetarian diet, but realize that ANY diet (whether veg or omni) in which one is not eating the proper amount of calories is unhealthy and extreme.
Down Under says:
Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 9:58 am (UTC -4)
Fantastic reading. Well done author. Well done commenters. Thanks for all the links.
Aaron says:
Monday, April 4, 2011 at 8:21 pm (UTC -4)
I’ve read claims in many more credible scientific sources (e.g., peer-reviewed texts by noteworthy scientists) that directly contradict this. Humans are omnivores, and have been for at least as long as Homo sapiens has existed.
Orangutans are not herbivores; they eat insects, eggs, and sometimes even small animals.
The claims about omnivore jaws, saliva, intestines, and sweat glands are all just plain false.
Human tongues DO have taste receptors for proteins, and humans are actually quite adept at hunting and killing prey – we’re better than most carnivores at it.
If you actually LOOK at the sleep charts, humans clearly fall CLOSER to the omnivore range than the herbivore one.
Humans have to be taught to feel remorse over killing – it is not an instinct – and many humans do find the smell of blood and raw flesh appetizing.
Powered By Produce says:
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 10:46 am (UTC -4)
Aaron, I’d be interested in reading these sources. Could you point me to their url’s or give me their titles?
To address your issues:
While it’s true that orangutans will eat termites, their diet is 90% fruit and much of the rest is leaves. The orangutan diet, according to orangutan.com: “although it consists mainly of fruit, in times of scarcity orangutans will shift their eating habits to lower quality food, such as bark, leaves & termites.”
This source corroborates the claims about omnivore jaws, saliva, and intestines: http://www.scribd.com/doc/94656/The-Comparative-Anatomy-of-Eating
When you say “human tongues DO have taste receptors for proteins” are you referring to umami? I understand that umami is officially the fifth taste sensation and corresponds to amino acids, which are in meat as well as vegetables. If this is what you are referring to, then I stand corrected on this point.
I disagree with you that humans are better at hunting and killing prey than most carnivores. In this context, I’m discussing our biological capabilities created by evolution, not our “technological” ones like weapons. Without weapons, humans certainly would not be able to hunt down and kill wild prey.
I took another look at the sleep charts and humans clearly fall in the middle of the herbivore range, but are on the very end of the omnivore range, so I’m unsure what you’re pointing out on those.
I’m also unsure about your claims that humans must be taught to feel remorse over killing and that they find the smell of blood and raw flesh appetizing. Consider the famous quote by Harvey Diamond: “You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car.”
chuck says:
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 11:01 am (UTC -4)
Put a full grown human in the wild and they will instinctively seek out animal flesh or die. No tribe living a primitive lifestyle today is 100% herbivore nor are they 100% carnivore. Humans are omnivores. That cannot be rationally argued against. The ratio of animal verse plant matter consumed can certainly be argued.
Reinventing the human diet after millions of years of being omnivore will be a long, slow process that will be very unhealthy for many until we evolve to thrive on a herbivore only diet.
Trish says:
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 10:46 am (UTC -4)
I don’t condemn anyone for their eating preferences (to each their own!), but as a (Christian) meat-lover, I will say that the Bible says to “kill and eat,” and you can’t take blood from a cucumber. *smile*
And please, no nasty replies, I’m just offering a little light-hearted humor.
Powered By Produce says:
Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 1:39 pm (UTC -4)
Trish, the Bible also says, “Don’t wear clothes made of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19),” “Any person who curseth his mother or father, must be killed. (Leviticus 20:9),” and “Kill anyone with a different religion. (Deuteronomy 17:2-7).” I prefer to follow “Have compassion as God has compassion (Matthew 5:48).” :)
Rik says:
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 7:37 am (UTC -4)
Great read, thanks.
I really, really hope that all you anti
veggie/vegan flesh chompers, live long enough
(doubtful) to see the change that has long been
coming, sooner or later, undeniable ethical,
scientific and environmental factors will speed
up an ever-increasing vegan way of life, leading
to an historical movement, ending senseless
slaughter, suffering and ill health, and if not
then we are all as doomed as the animal we raise
for food, which in my opinion, would be for the best.
Oh, and please do not bring religion in to this, our beliefs are based on ethics and facts, not on the views of delusional charlatans, from an ancient gullible time.
brianna jackson says:
Monday, October 31, 2011 at 10:51 am (UTC -4)
I really, really hope that all you anti veggie/vegan flesh chompers, live long enough (doubtful) to see the change that has been long coming, sonner or later, undeniable ethical,
Barry N. Taylor, DVM says:
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 7:08 pm (UTC -4)
Thank you thank you thank you!! As a vegan veterinarian, I have many (but not all) of these facts at hand, as we tend to get a LOT of comparative biology in school, but to find it here, all neatly laid out, is a real treat. All I can say is BRAVO, for the well researched information and logical conclusions contained within this article!
Michael says:
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at 1:16 pm (UTC -4)
This article and the documentary “forks over knives” is what got me to go vegan two months ago. Best thing i have ever done (except for marrying my wife!). I had high blood pressure and high cholesterol, my previous BP was 148 over 99, crazy high! two months later after going vegan its at 119 over 67! I don’t think I’ll ever look back again. Vegan for Life!