Did humans always eat meat?

[Jippia]

To read it from a different angle you could check http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v5/i2/diet.asp. I only came across it recently myself and I found it quite fascinating.

[Klytemnest]

To read it from a different angle you could check http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v5/i2/diet.asp. I only came across it recently myself and I found it quite fascinating.

Fascinating? Yes, it is indeed fascinating how people can use pseudologic, logical fallacies, blatant disregard of logic to rationalize their beliefs. The whole thing ends with this:



One must, in humble obedience, simply believe God at His word. God, through His Word, clearly shows that the original, created creatures were to eat only plants.


One MUST believe the Bible. Fine. Believe the literal truth of folk tales all you want. But then one should not pretend to be searching for true answers, if one does not accept answers that contradict the mythology with which one choose to delude oneself.

Thanks for posting this link. It is yet another example of how faith derails conversation and our honest search for what is true. If we are going to simply act as if the Bible is a literal account of what happened, then let's not act as if we are honest in our quest for answers. If we insist that we are honestly interested in what is true, then all a-prori assumptions about God, the creation, the Garden of Eden, the Fall, Noah and the Ark, must be abolished from the conversation. Because they are not information. They are mythology masked as history.

The answer to the question "Did humans always eat meat" cannot be found in the mythology of a barbaric, uneducated, largely illiterate shepherds from 3000 years ago. If we want answers, let us look for evidence, let us look for them in science - not in Genesis. Genesis has no answers. It only pretends to, in order to establish a foundation for the fear necessary to control the masses.

Amen.

[Korn]

Dr. McDougall: Meat in the Human Diet (http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/030700pumeatinthehumandiet.htm)


Some excerpts:


Many scientists use the diet of our ancestors as the justification for what we should eat today. That may be a useful approach, but which ancestors are we to follow? Differences of opinion arise because throughout human history people have consumed a wide variety of foods. The early ancestors of modern humans, from at least 4 million years ago, followed diets almost exclusively of plant-foods. Beginning at least 250,000 years ago, many of the hunter-gatherer societies consumed meat as a large part of their diet.1 However, more recently, over the past 12,000 years of agricultural development, people’s diets have been mostly based upon starches, like rice in Asia, corn in North America, potatoes in western parts of South America, wheat in Europe and Northern Africa. In terms of the time line of evolution, 12,000 years, and even 250,000 years, is only a brief moment.

Because many hunter-gatherer societies obtained most of their calories from the fat of meat does not mean meat is the ideal diet for modern people. Almost every scientist readily admits that the composition of wild game available to our ancestors was far different from the grain-fed domesticated high-fat meat people eat these days. Furthermore, even if humans have been eating meat for centuries, it has not been with the ease that wealthy Westerners acquire it today. Without refrigeration and other means of preserving meat in a near fresh state, consumption was limited to within a few days of the kill – until the meat spoiled. (With the advent of fire people learned to preserve meat by smoking it.)

During difficult times meat provided more benefits than harms, but in a society where food is plentiful and life is physically easy, meat can become a serious health hazard. A traditional Arctic Eskimo, living in a subfreezing climate, could expend 6000 calories and more a day just to keep warm and hunt for food. The high-fat animal food sources – fish, walrus, whale, and seal – from his local environment were the most practical means of meeting the demands of those rigorous surroundings. Modern Eskimos living in heated houses and driving around in their climate-controlled SUVs, still consuming a high-meat diet, have become some of the fattest and sickest people on earth. Of course, they now use a “green lure” (a $10 bill) to catch their fish (sandwich).


Our dentition evolved for processing starches, fruits, and vegetables, not tearing and masticating flesh. Our oft-cited "canine" teeth are not at all comparable to the sharp teeth of true carnivores. I lecture to over 10,000 dentists, dental hygienists, and oral specialists every year, and I always ask them to show me the “canine” teeth in a person’s mouth – those that resemble a cat’s or dog’s teeth – I am still waiting to be shown the first example of a sharply pointed canine tooth.

If you have any doubt of the truth of this observation then go look in the mirror right now – you may have learned to call your 4 corner front teeth, “canine teeth” – but in no way do they resemble the sharp, jagged, blades of a true carnivore – your corner teeth are short, blunted, and flat on top (or slightly rounded at most). Nor do they ever function in the manner of true canine teeth. Have you ever observed someone purposely favoring these teeth while tearing off a piece of steak or chewing it? Nor have I. The lower jaw of a meat-eating animal has very little side-to-side motion – it is fixed to open and close, which adds strength and stability to its powerful bite. Like other plant-eating animals our jaw can move forwards and backwards, and side-to-side, as well as open and close, for biting off pieces of plant matter, and then grinding them into smaller pieces with our flat molars.

In a failed attempt to chew and swallow pieces of food, usually meat, approximately 4,000 people die each year in the U.S.14 They choke on inadequately masticated chunks that become stuck in their throats. The Heimlich maneuver was specifically designed to save the lives of people dying from these “café coronaries.”14.



Cholesterol is only found in animal foods – no plant contains cholesterol. The liver and biliary system of a meat-eating animal has an unlimited capacity to process and excrete cholesterol from its body – it goes out, in the bile, passing through the bile ducts and gallbladder, into the intestine, and finally, out with the stool. For example, you can feed a dog or cat pure egg yolks all day long and they will easily get rid of all of it and never suffer from a backup of cholesterol. Humans, like other plant-eating animals, have livers with very limited capacities for cholesterol removal – they can remove only a little more than they make for themselves for their own bodies – and as a result, most people have great difficulty eliminating the extra cholesterol they take in from eating animal products. This apparent “inefficiency” is because humans have evolved on a diet of mostly plant foods (containing no cholesterol), and therefore, they never required a highly efficient cholesterol-eliminating biliary system. The resulting cholesterol buildup, when people eat meat, causes deposits in the arteries (atherosclerosis), in the skin under the eyes (xanthelasma), and in the tendons. Bile supersaturated with cholesterol forms gallstones (over 90% of gallstones are made of cholesterol). About half of all middle-aged women who live on the Western diet have cholesterol gallstones. (See my April and May 2002 Newsletters.)




When plants have been for eons a plentiful and reliable part of the diet, an animal can become dependent upon specific nutrients found in these foods. For example, ascorbic acid – found preformed and ready to use in plant foods – is called vitamin C in the diet of people. Insufficient amounts of this vitamin cause scurvy. Vitamins are essential micronutrients that cannot be synthesized by the body; and therefore, must be in the food. Because ascorbic acid has not been reliably available to them, meat-eating animals have retained the ability to synthesize ascorbic acid from basic raw materials found in their meat diet – therefore, it is not a vitamin for them. (In other words it is not “vital” or essential to be preformed in their food supply.)

Because humans have lived throughout most of their evolution on diets with very little animal matter, they have had to develop or retain the ability to synthesize some substances they need that are abundantly found in meat. For example, humans, and other plant-eating animals, have the ability to make vitamin A from a precursor found in large quantities in plants, called beta-carotene. Carnivores cannot utilize beta-carotene as a precursor of vitamin A. They have no need to; throughout their evolution they have always had a plentiful supply of preformed vitamin A (Retinol) found in the meat.





Our Instincts Are for Plants

For most enlightened people in modern Western nations, the idea of chasing down and killing an animal is revolting; and the thought of consuming that freshly killed flesh is repulsive. (And to eat decaying flesh, as a vulture does, would be next to impossible.) Even when meat is cooked, most people are disgusted by the thought of eating a slice of horse, kangaroo, rat, or cat. Cows, chickens and pigs are acceptable to most Westerners only because we have eaten them all of our lives. Yet even then, to make meat palatable, its true nature must be covered up with a strong flavored sauce made with salt, sugar, and/or spices – like sweet and sour, marinara, barbecue, or steak sauce.


People do not have a negative reaction to unfamiliar fruits and vegetables. Consider, I could ask you to try an unfamiliar “star fruit” from the tropics for the first time and you would eat and enjoy it without hesitation. Why? Because your natural instincts are to eat fruits and vegetables.



Our hands are made for gathering plants, not ripping flesh. We cool ourselves by sweating, like most other plant-eating animals. Carnivores cool their bodies by panting. We drink our beverages by sipping, not lapping like a dog or cat. The exhaustive factual comparisons of our body traits with that of other animals prove we have evolved over eons in an environment of plant-based foods – the only real contradiction is our behavior.

[Korn]

Did human always eat meat? Friedrich Engels wrote in 1844 that only the best paid workers could afford meat, and if we look at the planet as a whole, today, 'developing' countries have a much lower rate of meat consumption than the 'developed' countries (47 g per person/day, vs. 224 g per person/day). In Africa, the average daily meat consumption is only 31 g per person/day.

http://www.animalfreedom.org/pics/global-meat-consumption.jpg

It's pretty safe to assume that the overall African population generally lives closer to how humans and our ancestors used to live than the population in eg. USA.

Not that there's any reason to copy the lifestyle of our ancestors as such, but it's interesting that those who claim that we should meat because 'humans always ate meat' probably never consider using the low intake of meat in the past as a reason to cut down drastically on their meat consumption.

They often seem obsessed with copying what our ancestors did, or copying what 'our closest relatives' do, but I wonder if these people stop using toilets if they are reminded that our ancestors didn't have WCs? :)

Where does the obsession with copying another species come from? Is it derived from the human over-imitation tendency, seen here...

pIAoJsS9Ix8

...or are they simply fascinated with our closest relatives' live style in general?

Don't watch this if you're in the middle of your breakfast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot6cGSoCizo&playnext_from=TL&videos=5-IyzsaO74M&feature=feedrec

[IslandVegan]

As I said before, I love The Renagade Health Show and this may not necessarily be true, but it was interesting. Definitely, food for thought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyOZb2gh-cc&feature=PlayList&p=64B07842EA80F5B6&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=26

Enjoy!
Bethany

[xrodolfox]

I'm not going to read this thread...

...but it is RIDICULOUS that anyone points to protein as a need for brain growth.

The brain is mostly FAT. At least 60% of the brain is fat. Brain size is NOT due to eating meat (or else lions would be geniuses), but more IMPORTANTLY, due to environmental selection.

Brains are big in humans because of our CULTURE. We grew large brains to deal with the complex society and network needed to thrive. We have large brains so that we can gossip, create society, and deal with other humans. It matters not what we ate, but rather how stimulating our social lives were as "cave people".

IMO, the folks who argue that we changed due to diet don't really understand natural selection.

[Tiffany]

Humans CAN eat meat (cooked I might add... how many other omni animals need to cook their meat... and have you seen THEIR teeth?) however they shouldn't. Humans SHOULD use their capacity for compassion and moral reasoning and CHOOSE to evolve past mindless and unnecessary slaughtering. Just my opinion.

[PaleoVeganologist]

It doesn't really matter if we've always eaten meat. We've always done lots of stuff that's now considered unethical. The questions are whether we need to eat meat (the evidence says we don't), and if not, whether there are other compelling circumstances restricting our choices (for most people, the answer is no).

As vegans, we ought first to focus on the fact that it's a choice, not an obligation, regardless of what our ancestors did or didn't do.

[TXvegan]

I wish his book was required reading for all nutrionists and dieticians.

[Korn]

From http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/why-be-vegan-when-nature-is-predatory/ :

Link: "Why Be Vegan When Nature Is Predatory?" (http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/why-be-vegan-when-nature-is-predatory/) (by Dr. Will Tuttle, educator and author)

A short-ish excerpt:



Now, moving to consider flesh eating, it’s important to note several important points.

First, the overwhelming majority of land animals are herbivores, with a relatively small number of carnivores that prey upon them. So carnivorism is the exception rather than the rule.

Second, the percentage of non-carnivorous animals who actually die by being eaten alive is relatively small. Most live out their natural life cycles, contrary to the made-for-TV “nature” shows that glorify the kill-and-eat scenes that are popular viewing fare for human meat-eaters.

Third, animals that are designed to eat the flesh of other animals are very different from us physiologically in terms of dentition, jaw structure and strength, taste buds, salivary and digestive enzymes, gastric acidity, intestinal length and structure, and circulatory system fat tolerance, as well as psychologically. We are the only animal with a decidedly non-carnivorous physiology that consumes animal flesh, and not just in small amounts, but in the case of the wealthy industrialized cultures, voraciously.

Finally, our appetite for flesh and dairy products is destroying habitat for other nonhuman animals at a completely unsustainable rate. We are destroying an acre of Amazonian rainforest every second, and the primary driving force behind this activity is grazing cattle and growing soybeans as feed for hyperconfined cows, pigs, chickens, and factory-farmed fish. We are also severely overfishing the oceans for fish, not just for human consumption but even more for fishmeal to feed livestock who are not naturally fish-eaters, or even carnivores.

All this is causing the largest mass extinction of species in 65 million years as habitat is eliminated, with biologists estimating that about we’re losing about 200,000 species annually from our Earth. This loss of genetic diversity, along with the climate devastation linked conclusively with animal agriculture, threaten not only the survival of birds, mammals, fish, and other animals, as well as entire ecosystems, but also our own survival as well.


http://www.onegreenplanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10//2012/09/Predatory-Lamb-child-Vegan.jpeg

[Clueless Git]

Something that occured to me on the old 'eating meat is natural' (i.e. veganism is not natural so must be the work of Satan) front ..

Not much else in the lives of people who fall back on that old chestnut is even remotely naturaly. Is it?

Like walking instead of driving is natural. Having to see people to talk them instead of phoning/texting is natural. Not being able to 'bump uglies' like barbary chimps without having 24 children is natural and near freezing to death every winter is entirely natural too.

Logical conclusions:

1. These flightless turkeys clearly and demonstrably have absolutely ZERO genuine interest in what is natural for humans and what isn't.

Ergo ..

2. Anyone who presents facts about what is natural, and what isn't, to such people is simply swallowing more 'red herrings' than a whole troupe of performing circus seals.

[Korn]

I think that neophobia (the fear of new experiences or things) may be the reason why some people are skeptical about living on a plant based diet, not the diet itself. They simply don't like change. This makes it comfortable for them to assume not eating meat is something 'new', while the problem actually is only is that it's new for them.

[Andy_T]

I guess eating a balanced omnivorous hunting / foraging diet is fine ...





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... if you run 20 miles a day through the savanne with your spear and hunt/forage it all yourself, and it is the only way to get your calory requirements fulfilled :-)

Everybody else can eat tofu and vegan hamburgers.

Best regards,
Andy

[harpy]

Quite, Andy.

What allowed humans to evolve IMO was being able to adapt to different circumstances, not keeping on doing the same thing because "we've always done it this way" (in fact there's a school of thought that says that's what wiped out Neanderthal humans). So it shouldn't be so hard to "adapt" to not eating animal products now :rolleyes:

[acrosstheaether]

Hunting wasn't even natural. Just because we've done it for millions of years doesn't make it what we're meant to do.

"Natural" hunting is done for survival and the predator uses solely their natural weapons e.g. claws to chase down their prey and tear apart the flesh, eating it raw including fur and eyeballs.

Predators are not better than prey, they rely on them, and it is a fair system.

By the time humans invented manmade weapons out of wood and stone, such as spears, we were already exercising a sense of superiority.

[Cristoforopal]

Excellent in depth explanation. It's funny how blindly obvious it is that we are designed as herbivores from our flat teeth. Even still, that is the power of how we have been marketed. As bloody carnivores, lol.

I am sickened by the fact this kind of basic biology is not taught on a grade 5 level. If it was how many carnivore humans would we have?

[yo-yo]

Interesting, thanks for this.

[prudence]

How would of they been able to think about the design of a primitive fire and cooking the meat to get that protein that makes them smarter? Unless all the meat was raw. And if we did evolve from apes why wouldn't we of eaten bananas and fruit like the monkeys and apes, everyone thinks they were meat eating apes

[Wraithling]

Well, some chimpanzees occasionally sharpen sticks with their teeth to spear smaller mammals, so it may have happened before humans could be said to have 'evolved' moral agency - unless chimapanzees are moral agents (can there be degrees of moral agency)? Rival troupes of chimps also engage in behaviour that resembles ethnic warfare.

Neither of which justifies humans carrying on these practices, of course, since we can't extrapolate norms from nature.

[Peabrain]

Wouldn't it be great if we had national holidays to honor all the fallen animals in our past? They would be our heroes. We could have statues of them in public places and chapters about them in history...

Lovely! :) :) :)

.............................

I must say, I'm heartened to see that I'm not the only one who has had changing views, or even uncertainty about this, but has since decided that forward evolution is more important than past evolution... I was actually holding a secret worry that I wasn't 'vegan enough' if I didn't automatically condemn the whole of human existence for eating meat when it 'wasn't supposed to' and therefore project an image of evil upon every person, including my previous non-vegan self, and any/all of my loved ones who eat meat.

I think the reason the question of past human consumption of meat comes up, is because it's inextricably linked with the question of perceived need, rather than simply being about tradition. It seems the biggest reason given by far for meat eaters to eat meat is that most genuinely think we need it. Who knows? Maybe we did need it at some point in our evolution? But now, that I can see that my conclusion that the past doesn't have to predict the future, is the right way to address this particular conversation piece...

I think in future, I'd say to non-vegans; however we reached this point in our development, we should take full advantage of our present advanced intelligence, capacity for compassion, and manual dexterity to carry on our cruelty free diets and lifestyles... Ie. we can fortify foods with vitamins (and B12 in this form does not need to be converted for absorption by our stomach acids and therefore we utilise it better this way), we can make non animal derived food, clothing, toiletries etc, so it's no longer important or even relevant to say we need/needed any type of food that came from another being suffering.

It may explain why "we've always done it this way", but it doesn't mean we must continue to.

[Hedi]

I recently watched this video about the 'paleo diet', it's very interesting http://www.drmcdougall.com/video/diet_wars.htm

[harpy]

It may explain why "we've always done it this way", but it doesn't mean we must continue to.

I think the idea that "we've always done it" is sometimes just an excuse for not changing: a variant of what they sometimes call the "golden rationalisation" - it must be OK because everyone does it.

However I think there is often a genuine fear that there may be some health risk to not eating animal products, so reassurance on that front might be what's needed for a lot of people.

[Clueless Git]

Nods to all those who have pointed out that intelligence must have preceded meat.

One possible flaw in that though: It may take a degree of intelligence to be a hunter/predator but it takes little to no intelligence to be the carrion eating type of carnivore.

To this day carrion is all that, in any significant quantity, the human body has evolved to be able to eat.


Not, imho, the pinnacle of highly evolved intelligence when the vultures think they're lions.

[Hedi]

The argument 'but our ancestors ate meat' makes no sense. Our ancestors probably flung feces at each other and dragged women into their caves by the hair to rape them repeatedly. Our ancestors ate their children sometimes. We've evolved, and so should our diet.

I posted that link because it shows that our ancestors actually ate mostly starches (grains, potatoes) rather than anything else. Besides this, we know some of our ancestors ate meat, but you can't be sure they all did. In cold areas it makes sense to eat meat because there isn't much else. People lived on cardboard for weeks because there wasn't anything else, some people live on crisps and energy drinks, that doesn't make it an ideal source of nourishment. The human body is just very adaptable.

[prudence]

the argument 'but our ancestors ate meat' makes no sense. Our ancestors probably flung feces at each other and dragged women into their caves by the hair to rape them repeatedly. Our ancestors ate their children sometimes. We've evolved, and so should our diet.

I posted that link because it shows that our ancestors actually ate mostly starches (grains, potatoes) rather than anything else. Besides this, we know some of our ancestors ate meat, but you can't be sure they all did. In cold areas it makes sense to eat meat because there isn't much else. People lived on cardboard for weeks because there wasn't anything else, some people live on crisps and energy drinks, that doesn't make it an ideal source of nourishment. The human body is just very adaptable.
correct!