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!
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!
We have reason for every human action, inaction, reaction, everything can be reasond, one makes ones choises from ones owne reasonings.
DON'T BEEMOAN THE DARK. LIGHT A CANDLE AND SHOW THE WAY.
yes, but the fact is that we clearly can survive quite satisfactorily either way
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"?
Last edited by steven1222; Jul 24th, 2007 at 08:01 PM. Reason: to clarify
obviously i don't advocate the eating of animal flesh but i'm sorry to say that vegetarians and even vegans (shock, horror! ) can still get nasty, even life-threatening illnesses, so yes, i stand by what i said.
^ couldn't agree more
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.
determined entirely by environmental factors.
Sounds like reasoning to me. hohum.
where to now?
DON'T BEEMOAN THE DARK. LIGHT A CANDLE AND SHOW THE WAY.
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.
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.
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...
context is everything
We have some threads about this topic already...:IEatBunnies
Was meat-eating essential for human evolution?
Eating meat isn't natural
B12: How natural is the vegan diet?
Did humans always eat meat?
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.
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.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.
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.
That's an interesting theory, and probably popular among people who like meat.This has left us with the short and blunted teeth today, which may seem herbivorous.
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!'You have to go alot earlier back than Homo Sapiens to find "humanlike" herbivorous creatures.
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.I ask some of you to go out in the woods and try to survive solely on berries and roots for a month...
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.exactly, how do you think early Homo Sapiens survived in Europe and Asia?
This thread - 5000 year old tribe still on a vegan diet - may also interest you.
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.Even in the oldest findings of homo sapiens, they have found hunting tools
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.
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.Alot of todays health problems can be blamed on the introduction of these vegetarian carbohydrates.
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.It's really quite simple. Meat contains all the essential aminoacids. Buildingblocks that you won't find anywhere else.
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!I'm worried some you force your pets and kids to eat things which they can not process.
Now, this makes sense!Please let nature be nature.
Sweet Korn.
One of the meny reasons that ment that I had to stop eating meat. The utterly selfish use of land.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.
DON'T BEEMOAN THE DARK. LIGHT A CANDLE AND SHOW THE WAY.
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.
Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.
Sure - some people really are provoked by having their habits and lifestyle questioned!You ever notice that the more you're right the more angry people get.
[If you're already a vegan, you won't need to read the following - I don't want to be accused for preaching to the choir ]
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 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.
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?
Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.
You can lead a horse to water... etc.
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.
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.
Some more links:
Were humans designed to eat meat? Why or why not?
Are We Designed To Eat Meat?
The Diet of Early Humans
Vegetarianism and Archaeology
MYTH: "Humans Were Designed to Eat Meat"
Meat eating & human evolution: a review of research into diet and evolution
John Robbins on "NeanderThin" and other "Paleolithic" diets
Human Physiology
Body of evidence: were humans meant to eat meat?
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!
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
... 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].
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!
Here's what Viva! writes about this topic:
Chapter 15 – But We’re Meant to Eat Meat:
"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!"
Here's another article about the same topic:
Are Humans Designed to Eat Meat? (by Milton Mills, MD)
ETA: here's a link to a YouTube clip where Milton Mills discusses this topic (found at The Human Herbivore)
Last edited by Korn; May 20th, 2009 at 11:37 AM. Reason: Added video clip
I will not eat anything that walks, swims, flies, runs, skips, hops or crawls.
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?
And here, from one of our forum members, Gary L. Francione: No, It’s 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.
I will not eat anything that walks, swims, flies, runs, skips, hops or crawls.
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', 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".
I will not eat anything that walks, swims, flies, runs, skips, hops or crawls.
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.
To play devils advocate, humans don't need to cook meat before they eat it, for example with steak tartare.
"I don't want to live on this planet any more" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
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/po...-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
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?
^ 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.
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?
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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.
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