Are we designed or 'meant' to eat meat?

[cobweb]

i always say that we are omnivorous, like dogs, we can eat many different things - so, as its kinder, more hygenic, healthier, cheaper and better for the environment we may aswell eat plant foods! :cool:

[Tibetan Snake]

We have reason for every human action, inaction, reaction, everything can be reasond, one makes ones choises from ones owne reasonings.

[steven1222]

i always say that we are omnivorous, like dogs, we can eat many different things

Did you read the first post of this thread? Humans, unlike dogs, are clearly more similar to other herbivores.

[cobweb]

yes, but the fact is that we clearly can survive quite satisfactorily either way

[steven1222]

Humans being able to live the other way is a survival mechanism, left over from the times when food was scarce. Is following a diet that increases the risk of heart disease and kidney problems really surviving "quite satisfactorily"?

[cobweb]

obviously i don't advocate the eating of animal flesh but i'm sorry to say that vegetarians and even vegans (shock, horror! :eek:) can still get nasty, even life-threatening illnesses, so yes, i stand by what i said.

[Tibetan Snake]

We have reason for every human action, inaction, reaction, everything can be reasond, one makes ones choises from ones owne reasonings.
Me thinks so. No Need

[cobweb]

^ couldn't agree more

[steven1222]

Nonsense. Unnatural behavior, such as usage of meat or dairy products as 'food,' is determined entirely by environmental factors. Nobody chooses or uses reasoning to consume those things. When people do use them, it is because true reasoning is either absent or unable to overcome those things that promote their behavior.

[Tibetan Snake]

determined entirely by environmental factors.
Sounds like reasoning to me. hohum.
where to now?

[steven1222]

I said that reasoning does not cause unnatural behavior, not that it does not exist.
or
If you meant that environmental factors are a form of reasoning, that is wrong because they are external.
:confused:

[Korn]

Hi all,
as you know, this is a forum for vegans, so I just banned a new member called IEatBunnies (for obvious reasons!). Anyway, he wrote a message that may reflect how many non-vegans think, and since this is the 'Not A Vegan Yet'-section after all, I'll paste it in below, in case some of you want to comment....

I just registered here to educate you people, so that you may understand that Veganism and Vegetarianism is wrong and unnatural.

From the nature side of things, we are carnivorous. Our whole digestion system and metabolism is trough million years of evolution based on the idea to process meat.
The argument I often hear from you vegans that we don't have fangs or sharp teeth, hence our diet is plants. BUT the sole reason we don't have this is because we actually have the brainpower to prepare and cook our meat prior to eating. This has left us with the short and blunted teeth today, which may seem herbivorous.

You have to go alot earlier back than Homo Sapiens to find "humanlike" herbivorous creatures. I ask some of you to go out in the woods and try to survive solely on berries and roots for a month... exactly, how do you think early Homo Sapiens survived in Europe and Asia? Surely not from vegan food.
Even in the oldest findings of homo sapiens, they have found hunting tools

The introduction of a more plant diet based happened only when agriculture was understood and became widespread, hence, in modern times. Alot of todays health problems can be blamed on the introduction of these vegetarian carbohydrates.

It's really quite simple. Meat contains all the essential aminoacids. Buildingblocks that you won't find anywhere else. To not eat meat is unhealthy and against the very nature you're trying to protect.

So I ask you to stop this madness. I'm worried some you force your pets and kids to eat things which they can not process. Please let nature be nature.

[xrodolfox]

PS. The Title of the Thread, "Did Humans Always Eat Meat?" is what I wanted to respond to as well, even though it's not part of the thread.

I doesnt' matter what humans did as tradition or "naturally". What matters is that we don't need meat to thrive, and thus we are free to make a choice based on our ethics on the matter of whether to consume animals or not. Appealing to tradition is a well known logical fallacy, as is appealing to nature. Neither tradition nor what is en vogue as "natural" have any marker on what we "ought" to do. What is true is that we have a choice NOW.

It is clear that appealing soley to tradition as a sole reason is problematic and illogical. Some traditions, like slavery, or rape, or alcoholism in family, etc, are not traditions worth keeping. Some traditions are worth keeping. But the reason for a tradition is not the fact that it is a tradition; it is some other reason altogether. We do family traditions because we've decided that those bring identity and shared experience to our family, not just because we did it last year or even for the last millenea. Those traditions that make no sense or are harmful to others we've discarded. That's why we don't eat Thanksgiving turkey... even though at one time that was a "tradition".

Appealing to nature is akin to apealing to tradition or G-d. The "natural" is held to such an ideal that whatever is claimed as "natural" is assumed to be "good" or "ethical" when no such connection exists. What is assumed as "natural" one decade may be completely unethical behavior. At one point, some biologists claimed that non-whites were "naturally" stupid, and thus were "naturally" to be dominated by whites. This was "natural" reasoning for something that is unethical. Who is to say that what is deemed "natural" today is not wrong, or more importantly, what would make something "natural" more ethical?

That's why a vegan diet being "natural" or "unnatural" has no ethical value. A vegan diet can be done in a way to allow humans to thrive in the current context, and that is what is important. That is why whether homosexuality is "natural" or "unnatural" has no context either, as we should treat people ethically regardless.

Be on the lookout for Appeals to Nature or Appeals to Tradition. You'll notice them everywhere as fallacial and flawed "reasoning" for so many unethical (and occasionally ethical) activities. It is not good footing to base your reasons for even an ethical activity on flawed reasoning. It is even worse when flawed reasoning is given for a harmful activity. Be on the lookout!

My response when people say, "it's natural" to do A or B or C is to say, "it isn't important as long as we have a choice".

Being healthy and vegan (as well as my kids and wife) is a clear living rebuttal of the "it's not possible and harmful" argument. Few omnivores (or vegans) are better swimmers than me, so that argument (of bad health) is rarely brought up around me.

Regardless, the whole idea of what is natural and what is not is a total excercise in futility. It just doesn't matter.

It's a leftover from the idea of "G-d" making us to eat animals... or not...

[Korn]

Our whole digestion system and metabolism is trough million years of evolution based on the idea to process meat.

We have some threads about this topic already...:
Was meat-eating essential for human evolution? (http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6537)
Eating meat isn't natural (http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14170)
B12: How natural is the vegan diet? (http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3763)
Did humans always eat meat? (http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16509)
There are also some interesting posts earlier in this thread. The short version is that whatever theories people have about what we should do, humans don't need animal products - and there's no reason to do what most people did a million year ago. Lots of health problems are associated with the intake of animal products.


The argument I often hear from you vegans that we don't have fangs or sharp teeth, hence our diet is plants. But the sole reason we don't have this is because we actually have the brainpower to prepare and cook our meat prior to eating. Well.... if we are so 'designed to' eat meat, why would we start to cook it? If humans and meat is such a good match, why do most people find eating raw meat disgusting? We have the brainpower to kill, harm and damage other humans, animals, and nature in general - but that doesn't mean that we are 'meant to' do it! 'Let's pollute the environment because we have the brainpower to do it'? Not.

There have been periods both in Europe and other parts of the world where hunger catastrophes or other circumstances have forced people to eat things they normally wouldn't have eaten just to save their lives. I doubt that a human drinking the mother's milk directly from a cow or horse would claim that it feels 'natural'. Before people had advanced weapons or hunting/fishing methods, catching an animal/fish/bird wasn't only difficult (we don't have wings or swim under water, have only two legs and aren't very fast runners) in the summer, but more or less impossible in the winter. 'IEatBunnies' logged in from Norway... how would a meat eater survive in the woods in Northern areas back then, with snow up to his knees - or elbows? If we go only 6000 years back, there were no domesticated cows in Norway at all, and Bos Primigenius, which our domesticated cows have developed from, didn't even exist in Europe in the past - they are of Indian origin.

The big misunderstanding seem to be that just because we are capable of make tools, we should make weapons, and use these weapons to kill animals - animals who get their nutrients from plants. If the Earth is still around in two million years, maybe someone will claim that it's natural to make nuclear bombs because it can be proved that humans made nuclear bombs two million years ago.


This has left us with the short and blunted teeth today, which may seem herbivorous. That's an interesting theory, and probably popular among people who like meat. ;)


You have to go alot earlier back than Homo Sapiens to find "humanlike" herbivorous creatures. So... Homo Sapiens' predecessor were herbivores, and some of our predecessors decided to ignore what their predecessors ate and did and decided to start eating animals? If this is correct, and someone would have an discussion back then based on the same kind of thinking that some meat eaters represent today ('but we always ate meat, so we have to do it!' - our earliest forefathers would never have started to eat meat, based on the same kind of thinking ('Wait, we can't eat meat because our forefather's didn't do it! I know this must be true because I just met a gut called 'IEatCarrots' and he told me that our predecessors only ate carrots, and no rabbits!'



I ask some of you to go out in the woods and try to survive solely on berries and roots for a month... Why only berries and roots? Why not herbs, vegetables, legumes, spices, nuts, grains, fruit etc? ;) But I'll take the challenge. If someone wants to live in the nature for a month trying to survive on catching birds, fish, moose, rats, mice, squirrels and deer with their bare hands, I'll spend a month in the woods catching plants with my bare hands. Let's take some blood tests afterwards and check our nutrient levels. Let's also have a chat afterwards about how enjoyable life is for people who choose to constantly kill, prepare and eat dead animals, birds, fish, snails, worms and insects (humans have been eating all this stuff in the past, so we should do it now, right? ;) ) - compared with people who collect and prepare plants.


exactly, how do you think early Homo Sapiens survived in Europe and Asia?
There have been cultures not eating meat for thousands of years, and more interesting: there are millions of people today who don't eat meat/animal products, so there's no reason to speculate about what people did two or four million years ago. We don't need to go back to pre-Homo Sapiens to find plant eating humans - we have a few thousand people in this very forum alone who are herbivores.

This thread - 5000 year old tribe still on a vegan diet (http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4013) - may also interest you.


Even in the oldest findings of homo sapiens, they have found hunting tools

I don't think there's any doubt that humans have killed animals (and each other) for a long time. From a vegan point of view, we don't see a reason to kill animals or rape humans or do anything else that our forefathers did in the past just because they did it - and again, there are lots of people who have not been eating meat in the past as well.

This 'discussion' can go on forever between meat eaters and vegans: a meat eater can say that ' X years ago our forefathers are meat', a vegan can reply either 'So what?' or 'X years ago, these humans did not eat meat'... but the point is that we can choose, and that not only is there no reason to eat meat, but there are so many humans around that there isn't enough animals in nature to allow humans to keep eating meat (we are talking about 'natural', right?), and: we don't want to eat meat!

Even if some meat eater would tell me that one million years ago our forefathers - or most of them - ate meat, and I would reply that even the shape the jaws of Australopithecus Africanus (who preceeded Homo Sapiens) were similar to human jaws today, and that Australopithecus Africanus were herbivores, we would be wasting out time (in terms of what is natural and not).

It's natural to have sex and get children, and we are so many humans today that the hunting tools found in the past don't have any relevance. Weapons (meant to kill humans) have been found too, and that doesn't tell us that we are meant to kill humans. The only way to get enough meat today is to do something very unnatural: keep animals captivated in a geographical area and in an environment they weren't 'meant to' live in. Hunting tools and cages aren't 'natural - they are man made, and when a human makes a tool, he can decide what kind of tool he wants to make and what it shall be used for.

Every 6th second a child is dying of hunger, and when looking at how much land there is on earth and how many humans that exist, and knowing that these people wouldn't need to die from hunger if all this soil wouldn't have been used to grow food for livestock.... there's no excuse for eating meat.

Why is it so hard for meat eaters to admit that they eat meat just because they like it? Their habits are indirectly part of the reason that hundreds of children are dying every hour. If meat eaters think that our brains are so highly developed due to our meat eating in the past, why not start using that developed brain to realize that it's time to stop eating that meat. We do not need meat for nutritional reasons.



Alot of todays health problems can be blamed on the introduction of these vegetarian carbohydrates. If you don't want to eat a high carbohydrate vegan diet, just eat a low carbohydrate diet instead. No reason to eat a lot of bread and pasta just because it's available.


It's really quite simple. Meat contains all the essential aminoacids. Buildingblocks that you won't find anywhere else.
If these building blocks can't be found anywhere else, why do cows, sheep, pigs and all other animals humans eat only eat plants then? Where do they get their building blocks from? Please have a look at our subforum called The Protein Myth. (http://www.veganforum.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=102)



I'm worried some you force your pets and kids to eat things which they can not process.

It's natural for cats (etc) to eat meat (eg. from birds and mice), sure... and we have discussions about this topic in another subforum called Companion Animals. But do you really believe that kids 'can not process' vegan food? They sure can!


Please let nature be nature.
Now, this makes sense! :)

[Tibetan Snake]

Sweet Korn.

Every 6th second a child is dying of hunger, and when looking at how much land there is on earth and how many humans that exist, and knowing that these people wouldn't need to die from hunger if all this soil wouldn't have been used to grow food for livestock.... there's no excuse for eating meat.

One of the meny reasons that ment that I had to stop eating meat. The utterly selfish use of land.

[Korn]

Are You Human? Stop Eating Meat! (http://wer1family.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/are-you-human-stop-eating-meat/)

Are We Natural Carnivores? (http://www.veganviews.org.uk/vv80/vv80carnivores.html)

Human Physiology (http://www.goveg.com/naturalhumandiet_physiology.asp)

Plant Eaters vs. Meat Eaters (http://www.jtcwd.com/vegie/plant_or_meat_eaters.html)


Another chart comparing humans, plant eaters and meat eaters. (http://www.jtcwd.com/vegie/chart.html)

[Korn]

It's much the same as the argument that dairy is essential because it's full of calcium...when most vegans learn that calcium is easily found in many plant sources, but they say "the calcium in dairy makes strong bones and teeth!" (yeah right)

If only elephants could talk...

http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/elephant/picteeth.jpg

[Sarah_]

You ever notice that the more you're right the more angry people get. It's like inside they're going "shit, I'm wrong! They're right! They're disrupting my whole outlook on life!"
This always happens when I discuss veganism-people always get mad at me and I'm never rude about it.

[Korn]

You ever notice that the more you're right the more angry people get.
Sure - some people really are provoked by having their habits and lifestyle questioned!




One interesting thing about people who claim to have a full overview of the human evolution is that unlike those who are involved in the actually research that's still is going on about this topic, the 'humans-are-meant-to-eat-meat' guys are always 100% sure that they are right. There have been various theories about the human evolution, and while the 'official' truth has changed several times during the last 100 years, based on various findings (some bones here, a skull here, 'Lucy' etc.), the 'official truth' at the moment seem to be that we don't know enough about the human evolution and that there have been several, parallel hominoid and pre-hominoid species/subspecies existing in parallel. Until we know 'enough' about what our ancestors ate - and when - there's of course no reason to copy their diet or not select the least cruel diet.

It seems to be a wide agreement that our ancestors originally didn't kill animals to get meat, they ate leftovers from animals that had been killed and (partially) eaten by other animals. I've recently heard that many meat eating animals don't really go for the meat, but for the more watery parts of their victims' bodies, like eg. the stomach.

The theory about human evolution was even based on some fake 'discoveries' for a few decades, around the 1920-1930s, and lots of the speculations were at some points based on assumptions and an extremely small amount of skulls and bones. New findings that question what we have thought up to now keep popping up almost every decade.

It apparently took circa one million years from our ancestors used a simple tool (a sharpened stone) until they realized that they could attach that stone to a piece of wood and get a more useful tool. With all due respect, they couldn't have been [I]that superior back then, but still - we were 'superior' enough (before we had developed weapons) to be able to come up with something that other species didn't come up with. Even before we ate more than a few leftovers from animals that were naturally equipped to hunt and kill others, we had some capabilities that finally made us capable of attaching a stone to a piece of wood. Some will say that this superior intelligence is derived from the nutrients we got from eating small amounts of meat, but if 'eating meat' = 'intelligence', what about those animals that ate a lot more meat than us? Why wouldn't they develop the same kind of intelligence that humans are so proud of?

I guess there are several answers to this. One is that "eating meat = 'superior development of the brain" is plain wrong. The brain responds to nutrients, not to pieces of meat or fish. Don't forget that lots of the theories and assumptions about the human development were generated by people who falsely assumed that humans need meat for protein etc. They were anthropologists or were studying history, not nutritionalists.

Another thing is that already before our ancestors started to eat meat, we were obviously different from other species in that we had the potential to develop into much more intellectual beings than other animals, otherwise all meat eating animals would develop into tool makers, or: if it's the meat we ate that made us capable of making tools, and if it is so much better to be a tool making species than a non-tool-making species, and if it's the meat that gave us these abilities, lions and tigers would have had iPods today, because they eat a lot more meat than humans ever have done. The point is of course that we must have been different than other animals already before we started to make tools and before we started to hunt, otherwise we wouldn't have been capable of making the tools needed for hunting.

I guess a main reason pre-humans developed primitive tools that could be used to kill animals was to protect themselves from faster and stronger species - of which there were a lot more back then. Even an eagle can catch a human baby. And of course, in periods of drought, hunger, during the ice age etc. our ancestors were desperate for food, and used whatever means they had to survive. They didn't have Google, and probably knew little about all the nutrients in plants, and had seen animals kill other animals: that was their main source of information. It's like Google with only one match if you search for nutrition: "Animals can be eaten if you are hungry". If there would have one more line in that text, it would probably have been: "The nutrients found in the predators' victims come from plants, because their victims are more or exclusively herbivores". A third hint would be "Do yourself a favor and go straight to the source. Don't eat food (plants) that already have been eaten once". Too bad Google didn't exists back then:)

Humans and pre-humans are/were also pretty good at communication. The were able to catch and kill animals they otherwise wouldn't be able to hunt by operating in groups, just like wolves. This, combined with our ability to accumulate knowledge is what many people think is both the reason humans are superior, and also a main reason why we were capable of killing others animals in spite of our physical shortcomings.

There are many questions out there: How many hominoid subspecies existed in parallel? When did pre-humans start to eat meat? How large part of their diet consisted of meat? When did the diet of each of these subspecies change? Whatever future scientists will agree and disagree in in the future, they can't deny that...

• We don't need meat - we need nutrients that we can get without eating meat.

• Whatever proof that can be found about periods of meat eating and periods of not eating meat in our predecessors history, there are hundreds of millions of people living on the earth today that don't eat meat. Non-meat eating civilizations have existed for thousands of years. We're all part of the evolution, and therefore part of what humans (post-humans?) will read about in thousands of years from now. Various religious/spiritual communities and philosophers have communities abandoned meat eating over the last 2-3 thousands of years; we aren't starting a new area of the human evolution.... and we definitely don't want to be a part of the human evolution that prohibits the continued move towards a non-meat based diet.

• We can use the communication and intellectual skills - the same abilities to communicate and accumulate/exchange information that at some point may have made us capable of surviving as a species - to save the environment, save animals and save our own health by letting people know that we don't need to cause suffering in order to survive.


We don't only know that vegans and vegetarians survive well without meat, but it has never been a better time to communicate these facts to others. The Ice Age and Stone Age is over, this is the Information Age. We are more capable than ever to combine our intuitive unwillingness to kill and harm others with facts documenting that not only do we not need to cause suffering, the suffering gets back to us in the shape of reduced health and an environmental damage. The planet just isn't designed to feed 6,5 billion people on a meat based diet.

[Sarah_]

Hey, all of that information was new to me, so you go ahead and post away my friend.
The problem, and I mean the real hangup, where I just have to stop and just walk away is that one sentence that the omnis ALWAYS end up uttering to end the conversation:
"I LIKE meat."
That sentence alone actually just proves everything that I had previously discussed. They won't change because they like meat. Because they don't want to, and therefore "Because they don't CARE."
The question is, how to get people to care?

[Risker]

You can lead a horse to water... etc.

[Korn]

They won't change because they like meat.

Lots of meat eaters actually have changed to a vegan diet - so it's possible, even for people who like meat.
There's a lot of delicious food on this planet, but if people realize that they don't have to eat everything they like, even people who like meat may be willing to try something new.

What people do and don't often isn't as dependent on what they like, think or believe they need as on what they focus on. If people get sick, fall in love with a vegan or start trying out vegan gourmet food that they'd like to eat even if it wouldn't be more ethical, environmental friendly or healthier, they'll be much more willing to change.

I know people who eats a lot of vegan food only for it's taste and because it makes the body feel better than if they would have filled their bellies up with blood, muscles and mother's milk from another species. It just feels better, on several levels. Most people just don't know this - yet.

[Sarah_]

You can lead a horse to water... etc.
Well said.

[Sarah_]

Lots of meat eaters actually have changed to a vegan diet - so it's possible, even for people who like meat.
There's a lot of delicious food on this planet, but if people realize that they don't have to eat everything they like, even people who like meat may be willing to try something new.

What people do and don't often isn't as dependent on what they like, think or believe they need as on what they focus on. If people get sick, fall in love with a vegan or start trying out vegan gourmet food that they'd like to eat even if it wouldn't be more ethical, environmental friendly or healthier, they'll be much more willing to change.

I know people who eats a lot of vegan food only for it's taste and because it makes the body feel better than if they would have filled their bellies up with blood, muscles and mother's milk from another species. It just feels better, on several levels. Most people just don't know this - yet.
Agreed. I'm sorry, I should have elaborated. I meant that sentence as something that comes out of their mouths, not mine.

[Korn]

I meant that sentence as something that comes out of their mouths, not mine.

I understood that. :) What I wrote was meant to to be read by them (most of our readers aren't members, they are probably people thinking just like those you referred to, possible with some interest in veganism, since they are here...).


I think your point is extremely valid. If they would know that they simply can replace one meal they like with another meal they like, they wouldn't be so stubborn. As I've suggested earlier, there's a fatal flaw in the design of (some) humans: they only enjoy discovering new, exotic meals when they're on vacation. :)