Are we designed or 'meant' to eat meat?

[Korn]

Some more links:

Were humans designed to eat meat? Why or why not? (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071028153001AARoCmi)

Are We Designed To Eat Meat? (http://www.hi5.com/friend/group/100968--9682230--Greenpeace--Are%2BWe%2BDesigned%2BTo%2BE--topic-html)

The Diet of Early Humans
Vegetarianism and Archaeology (http://www.ivu.org/history/early/archaeology.html)

MYTH: "Humans Were Designed to Eat Meat" (http://www.all-creatures.org/mfz/myths-humans-earlywere.html)


Meat eating & human evolution: a review of research into diet and evolution (http://veg.ca/content/view/285/113/)

John Robbins on "NeanderThin" and other "Paleolithic" diets (http://www.foodrevolution.org/askjohn/30.htm)

Human Physiology (http://www.geocities.com/mr.ego_banget/humanphysiology.html)

Body of evidence: were humans meant to eat meat? (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1594/is_1_13/ai_82352627)

[VeganDaze]

You are clever Korn. I agree with all the points you raise and I think about these things in my head but I can never explain them to others so eloquently!

[Zero]

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.


Exactly, meat eaters sometimes complain that a vegan diet is boring having never even tried it.

The funny thing is, I eat a wider variety of food now than I ever did and my diet is heavy on fruit!

There was a woman in front of me at the grocery store the other day and she had white bread, frozen meals (that were all really similar), frozen pizza, a couple of packages of meat, some pasta.

It all looked so boring and plain, then I looked at my medley of colours and shapes and thought "How can people call this boring?"

When I first became vegan I looked at cultures that are less focused on meat in their rural areas, chinese, lebanese, greek etc. I tried all kinds dishes I never knew existed and probably wouldn't know of now.

[VeganDaze]

Exactly, meat eaters sometimes complain that a vegan diet is boring having never even tried it.

The funny thing is, I eat a wider variety of food now than I ever did and my diet is heavy on fruit!

There was a woman in front of me at the grocery store the other day and she had white bread, frozen meals (that were all really similar), frozen pizza, a couple of packages of meat, some pasta.

It all looked so boring and plain, then I looked at my medley of colours and shapes and thought "How can people call this boring?"

When I first became vegan I looked at cultures that are less focused on meat in their rural areas, chinese, lebanese, greek etc. I tried all kinds dishes I never knew existed and probably wouldn't know of now.

So true. If you have ever watched 'you are what you eat' this is demonstrated really well. A table displaying someone's unhealthy diet is shown first and it is alway beige. Then they are presented with a table of new foods to eat (fruits and vegetables) and it is covered with beautiful colours and looks so appetising. My diet is so much more varied now that I am vegan :)

[Korn]

When I first became vegan I looked at cultures that are less focused on meat in their rural areas, chinese, lebanese, greek etc.
... which makes a lot of sense, as opposed to these people who look for plant based food traditions in the parts of the world that are known for not having long, rich traditions with a variety of veg*n meals, and then complain that they can't find what they're looking for.

In general the whole discussion about what we are designed to eat, what we our ancestors ate etc. often contain more absurdities than arguments. Those who claim that we should eat animal products because chimpanzees eat a small amount of animal products both forget that chimpanzees and humans actually are different - we may have the same ancestors, but were divided from chimpanzees millions of years ago.

A chimpanzee diet is at least 94% plants and fruit based. People who suggest that we should eat what chimpanzees do because they are our 'closest relatives' of course go quiet when you ask if they think we should eat insects as well, but they also live on a diet that contains a lot more animal products than our closest relatives ever used. They also forget that the reference they often ignore is the very period that made humans into what we are today, namely the last 5-7000 years; the 'civilization'. Why are they demonstrating this fanatic interest in arguments for a lifestyle from a periods where our ancestors were covered with hair, lived less than half as long as humans do today and lacked the knowledge, the raised consciousness humans today have about nutrition? We have moved on, so why should we start to move backwards in history?

I've wondered about the link between clothes and lack of fur - a topic I don't know anything about. Did we stop having hair all over our bodies because we started to use clothes - and therefore didn't need the fur anymore? And: if we didn't need any fur back when fur ancestors were a lot more hairy than we are today, why did they start to make clothes? Anyone?

Humans need tools today. We need clothes too. We can use clothes that aren't based on animal products, and we can eat food that is cruelty free. Do the people who claim that we should eat animal products because some of our ancestors used animal products also claim that we should use leather and fur as well, because some of our ancestors used these materials?

Do they think it's unethical/wrong/unnatural to use clothes made of cotton and other plant materials because some ancestors in the past at some point used only leather/fur and not plant materials?

This is different from the classical "We shouldn't wear clothes because we are born naked"-thing... because we all agree that we aren't meant to rely on 100% uncultivated nature. The most important change in the human evolution IMO isn't walking on two legs, starting to use tools, loss of body hair or the size of our brain; it's the introduction of awareness and the ability to make conscious decisions. Birds sing, but humans can both sing and compose. Due to the existence of increased/raised consciousness we know that we can make clothes and food from plants, and humans have known this for at least 2-3000 out of the 5-7000 years that we could consider human civilization. Since we don't have fur anymore, we need clothes, and since we don't have the teeth, speed and claws we would need in order to catch, kill and tear and rip other animals flesh, we need another solution... The difference is that even 'Lucy' - often considered 'the first human' - was hairy, she lived on a plant centered, and not meat based diet.

Some people aren't interested in the 'natural' aspect, the 'what are we designed to eat' aspect at all, which is understandable. We should use what's best for us, what makes us perform best and keeps us heathy... and if we are freezing, it's better to wear clothes. This doesn't mean that we need to kill an animal and use it's skin. If we are hungry, we need food. That doesn't mean that we should kill an animal for it's meat.

Sometimes I feel that it's getting more and more difficult to understand how I were thinking about these things before I became a vegan, because I think it's so obvious that we aren't designed to kill. I also think it's obvious that when using tools, we should use tools according to what we feel is best for us and others. I simply don't understand the 'We should use tools to kill because someone else used tools to kill a long time'-"argument at all.

Why should we use tools for unethical, unhealthy, unnecessary purposes? I don't get it. I have an old classmate who defends using tools for killing animals, who also mentions that humans forced animals to fall into traps by collectively surrounding them and using fire to scare them into traps or falling outside a mountain hill - already before we had tools. This may be correct, so I invited him to try to survive a week in the wilderness - he could collect a group of people who caught animals without tools, and I collected a group of people with knowledge about edible plants... I said we could do this and compare the two lifestyles afterwards, discuss which group who had the best time out in the woods, the hygienic aspects of tearing apart animals' skin and so forth, but he wasn't interested. :)

I doubt that most people who use animal products for clothes or food actually ever have made a conscious decision to use these products. Their habits are normally based on an un-conscious decision, and therefore not based on a decision at all. Just like some of our furry ancestors that hadn't accumulated knowledge about plant nutrition and only became 30-40 years old, they don't know enough (yet) to accept that we don't need meat. However - unlike some of their ancestors, they don't have to kill (or pay someone else for killing an animal for them) in order to survive. They can get what they need in the local stores, and are definitely struggling with finding arguments for continuing to eat what their ancestors at some point maybe had to eat in order to survive.

[End of preaching-to-the choir-mode]. :)

[erfoud]

Neat preaching, Korn!
If people care so much about our natural tracts, they should be prepared to accept interhuman cruelty, welcome war, cannibalism and so on...Let´s face it, our species has strayed from nature, and has created, is created, and will create artificial worlds, societies and what matters now is to decide whether this model we concoct has something to do with ethics or not. As you noted, it´s utterly ludicrous to show the chimpanzee´s way of life as a model for us only when it suits the carnivores.
But your clothes-fur quandary might keep me awake the whole night, spoilsport!

[Korn]

Here's what Viva! (http://www.viva.org.uk) writes about this topic:
Chapter 15 – But We’re Meant to Eat Meat (http://www.viva.org.uk/books/goingveggie/ch15.html):

"Juliet Gellatley:
Chapter 15 – But We’re Meant to Eat Meat
The most reply in the world when you tell someone you’re a vegetarian is, ‘But we’re meant to eat meat!’ Let’s get it straight right now, we are not meant to eat meat. Humans are not carnivores like cats; we’re not even omnivores like a pig or a bear.

If you really think you’re meant to eat meat, try running into a field, jumping on the back of a cow and biting it! You wouldn’t even be able to get your teeth or fingernails through its skin. Or try picking up a dead chicken and chomping on it; we just don’t have the teeth for eating meat without cooking it first.

We are in fact herbivores - and that doesn’t mean a creature like a cow with four stomachs that spends all day munching grass. Cows are ruminants; herbivores eat a whole range of vegetable foods, like nuts, seeds, roots, shoots, fruits and berries. How do I know this? Because numerous studies have been done on what apes eat. The gorilla, for example, is entirely vegan.

An eminent doctor, David Ryde, one-time medical adviser to the British Olympic Association, once tried a little experiment. He displayed two pictures at a medical exhibition. One was of a human’s intestines; the other of a gorilla’s intestines. He then asked his colleagues to look at them and make any comments. All the doctors present thought both pictures were of human beings and not one identified the gorilla.

I know it doesn’t go with Nike trainers, Benetton jumpers and Oxy-10 spot remover, but that’s what we are – apes. Over 98 per cent of our genes are the same as a chimpanzee’s and any visitor from space trying to work out what type of animal we are would immediately classify us as a type of chimp. They’re our nearest relative. Terrible that, when you think of the disgusting things we do to them in laboratories.

A good indicator of what our diet would naturally be is to watch our ape relatives in the wild. They are almost entirely vegan. Some eat a little meat in the form of termites or maggots (very tasty) but this accounts for a tiny part of their overall diet. A scientist called Jane Goodall lived in the jungle alongside chimps and studied them for ten years. She made a note of everything they ate and was able to show exactly how much of it was meat – it was the equivalent amount to a pea a day. So little, in fact, that their teeth and gut are those of a vegan.

However, the ‘we’re meant to eat meat’ brigade got very excited when naturalist David Attenborough showed a film on TV of one particular group of chimpanzees hunting and eating colobus monkeys. They said this was proof that we’re natural meat eaters.

There is no real explanation for this group of chimps but they do seem to be the exception. Most chimpanzees don’t go looking for meat and never pick up frogs and lizards or other small creatures from the forest floor, although they are there for taking. It’s thought that their liking for termites and maggots is because of their sweet taste.

A good way of telling what an animal is supposed to eat is by looking at its body. An ape’s teeth, like ours, is made up mostly of flat surfaces for crushing and grinding. Our jaws are also designed to move from side to side to help this process. Both these characteristics are the signs of a mouth designed to cope with tough, vegetable foods full of fibre.

Because foods of this type are difficult to digest, the process starts as soon as the food is in the mouth when it’s mixed with saliva. The chewed up mass then passes through the body very slowly, snaking its way through the long intestines so all the nutrients can be absorbed.

Meat eaters, like cats, are built completely differently. Not only does a cat have claws to grab hols of its prey but its teeth are sharp, with no flat surfaces. Its jaw can only move up and down in a chopping motion and the animal bolts its food down in big chunks. It doesn’t need a cookery book and British Gas to help digest it either.

The inside of a carnivore’s stomach is a bubbling mass of acid that would take the paint off a car. It’s designed to break the meat down quickly so the poisons released by the meat as it decays don’t hang around too long. Its intestines are short, about three times the length of its body when stretched out in one line, and are designed to get the waste out of the body as quick as possible.

Imagine what would happen to a piece of meat if you left it on a window sill on a sunny day. It wouldn’t take long before it began to rot and produce poisonous toxins. This process can also happen inside the body which is why animals which are meant to eat meat get rid of waste as quickly as possible. Human digestion is much slower because our intestines are about 12 times the length of our bodies. This is thought to be one reason why colon cancer is much higher in meat eaters than in vegetarians.

Obviously humans did start eating meat at some time in history, but for the majority of people in the world right up into this century, meat was a comparatively rare food and most people ate it only three or four times a year, usually at big religious festivals. It’s only really since the Second World War that people started eating meat in such huge amounts – which may explain why heart disease and cancers have suddenly become the biggest killers of all known diseases. One by one, all the excuses used by meat eaters to justify their diet have been demolished. The weakest one of all is that we’re meant to eat meat!"

[Korn]

Here's another article about the same topic:

Are Humans Designed to Eat Meat? (by Milton Mills, MD) (http://www.all-creatures.org/mhvs/nl-2003-wi-meat.html)

ETA: here's a link to a YouTube clip where Milton Mills discusses this topic (found at The Human Herbivore (http://donuts56.umwblogs.org/2009/04/17/the-human-herbivore/))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFROlwe-m3Y

[Korn]

The topic seem to be discussed everywhere these days.

Here are a couple of interesting comment - first, one from one who has "have absolutely nothing against" eating meat: Are Homo sapiens Herbivores? (http://ivar.in/Site/Blog/Entries/2008/9/14_Homo_Sapiens_Are_Herbivores.html)


And here, from one of our forum members, Gary L. Francione: No, It’s Not Natural (http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/no-its-not-natural/):


To the extent that anything is natural, it is veganism. And veganism is the only choice that respects the moral personhood of nonhuman animals.

[Korn]

I almost fall out laughing when a person says that we have omnivorous canine teeth. Oh really? Our teeth resemble that of a dog? Dogs are omnivores and our teeth are nothing like theirs.
Not only that, but there are also herbivores with 'canine teeth' like teeth. In the article New Fossil Primate Suggests Common Asian Ancestor, Challenges Primates Such As 'Ida' (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090630202125.htm), it is also suggested that (about Ganlea megacanina) that it "used its enlarged canine teeth to pry open the hard exteriors of tough tropical fruits in order to extract the nutritious seeds contained inside".

[whalespace]

...it is also suggested that (about Ganlea megacanina) that it "used its enlarged canine teeth to pry open the hard exteriors of tough tropical fruits in order to extract the nutritious seeds contained inside".

Absolutely. Use the tool, not the fool.

I wonder if preying on other animals, or escaping from predators leads to the most intelligence?

[masurabi]

Doesn't the fact that humans have to cook their meat prove that we are herbivores, what kind of carnivore cooks their meat!?! We would be able to easily eat it raw if we were carnivores.

[Korn]

Doesn't the fact that humans have to cook their meat prove that we are herbivores I'm not sure if it proves it, but there are lots of differences between humans and animals which usually eat meat. This is one of them.

[Risker]

To play devils advocate, humans don't need to cook meat before they eat it, for example with steak tartare.

[harpy]

Cooking itself is arguably "natural" for humans as there is some evidence that it pre-dates the emergence of modern humans:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=molars-say-cooking-is-almost-2-mill-11-08-22

Historically and prehistorically, I think humans have been helped by their ability to survive on any old rubbish, but that doesn't mean we need to do it now :)

[odizzido]

Humans can live off either meat or plants exclusively. This is a fact so no matter what evidence is given people are omnivores end of.

Being an omnivore doesn't mean that we should or need to eat both though, it means that we have a choice.

Fish is another kind of meat we can eat raw just fine in addition to the one risker mentioned. I also imagine that since people have been cooking their food for a long time we have lost a lot of our tolerance to certain things. Take polar bears out of the arctic for a million years and then put them back.....how well do you think they would do?

[Crusty Rat]

^ I've never heard of any human living exclusively off flesh without serious health implications. On farms cows are fed chicken shit and the remains of other animals, does that make them omnivorous? I'd say humans are behaviourally omnivorous but biologically herbivorous/fruitivorous.

[odizzido]

there are examples of people who have done a proper all meat diet and after a full year were examined by doctors and found to have no health issues. Don't ask me to find the article though, I read about it quite some time ago.

As to the cows I can't say. If they can live just fine eating pretty much nothing but meat then yes. They would be the definition of omnivore then. But just because they are fed some meat doesn't mean they can actually live on it.

Biologically humans fit the english definition of omnivores. Maybe you disagree with/don't like our definition. I think the term you want invented is something like "A species that can survive by eating either meat or plants but is generally healthiest when eating plants". As far as I know there isn't a word for this in english. We could start using homnivore? Heromnivore?


edit----------------

I think one of the big reasons why an all meat diet is generally unhealthy is because western countries tend to only eat a few types of meat. If you could only eat tomatos, corn, and peas you might have health trouble from that too.

[Maître]

Humans can live off either meat or plants exclusively. This is a fact so no matter what evidence is given people are omnivores end of.

Scurvy? :-)

Edit: Nevermind, apparently you can get enough vitamin C from meat as long as you eat the right parts (organs) and don't over cook it.

[leedsveg]

Humans can live off either meat or plants exclusively. This is a fact so no matter what evidence is given people are omnivores end of.Thanks odizzido. Nothing like an incontrovertible fact.

Leedsveg:-)

[Crusty Rat]

there are examples of people who have done a proper all meat diet and after a full year were examined by doctors and found to have no health issues. Don't ask me to find the article though, I read about it quite some time ago.
So an unknown, uncited source involving a study undertaken for a single year - versus countless studies of people over lifetimes, biological comparisons between humans and other animals plus what I know about my own body?

Yup, think I'll stick to biologically herbivorous. :)