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> There is massive anthropological and biological evidence to suggest that animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human diet. I

> There is massive anthropological and biological evidence to suggest that animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human diet. I feel like you should post some links to all that evidence. As far as I'm aware, we've been eating plants a lot longer than we've eaten animals, and the human body also suggests that being that we look (appearance and anatomically) much more like frugivores than carnivores. > On a personal note, I was a vegetarian and later a vegan for a decade and I am familiar with the sort of "I feel it must have been this way" appeals to emotion (like referencing a baby and a presumably cute little animal) of the sort you're making. Arguments like yours are simply not supported by science. It's a logical as well as scientifically agreed upon conclusion as far as I'm aware. Humans don't have an instinct for eating animals like carnivores do. A lion cub has the instinct, a human baby doesn't, it has to learn it. If you have relevant science, please link it.

metamet 9y ago
> I feel like you should post some links to all that evidence. This is pretty standard anthropological knowledge. A quick google search returned this Time article that lays it out nicely: http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ > As far as I'm aware, we've been eating plants a lot longer than we've eaten animals Of course we started off eating plants, and we still do to this day. But the evolution of humans really kicked off when we started consuming meat, and even more so when we were able to start leveraging fire to make accessing those calories and nutrients even easier. > Humans don't have an instinct for eating animals like carnivores do. If you're under no selection pressure, that becomes the case--especially when you have Oreos (which are vegan, of course) conveniently available at a super market. But when you're a hunter gatherer, or simply starving, you fathom ways to get energy. Hunting has the highest ROI, and you can find endless examples of this in the form of modern day tribes. Hunting is ritual. It's not instinct, but it's part of what humans are. You can choose to not partake in meat, and that's purely your choice, but to damn it as something that unnatural is purely, scientifically wrong.
- fredsir 9y ago
  > This is pretty standard anthropological knowledge. A quick google search returned this Time article that lays it out nicely: http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ I don't believe that article contradicts anything I said. > Of course we started off eating plants, and we still do to this day. But the evolution of humans really kicked off when we started consuming meat, and even more so when we were able to start leveraging fire to make accessing those calories and nutrients even easier. Indeed, more carbs were able to go to the brain instead of other parts of our body, which enabled the brain to develop. > You can choose to not partake in meat, and that's purely your choice, but to damn it as something that unnatural is purely, scientifically wrong. I didn't say it was unnatural. I said we have no instincts to do it. It made sense when we needed to, so we learned to, and taught our children the ways and so on to be better at survival. Today, we neither need to and it's also the single biggest contributor to climate change, animal suffering and the heart disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and (partly) cancer epidemic thats the number one human killer globally. For all the talk about how meat helped us develop our brain and become intelligent, it seems exceedingly unintelligent that we have not yet stopped when it's so damning to our existence.
  - metamet 9y ago
    > I don't believe that article contradicts anything I said. You were asking for evidence of this: > animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human diet That article directly supports the importance of meat as a foundation to the modern humans diet: "It was about 2.6 million years ago that meat first became a significant part of the pre-human diet." > Indeed, more carbs were able to go to the brain instead of other parts of our body, which enabled the brain to develop. No, not just carbs. Energy and nutrition are the prerequisites to the human brain--and saturated fats play a HUGE role in the health of mitochondria. Without an energy and nutritionally rich diet that is both diverse in micro and macro nutrients, the human brain wouldn't have developed. Not to mention how carbs were rare, and how the human brain can run on both glucose and ketones for a reason. > Today, we neither need to and it's also the single biggest contributor to [...] heart disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and (partly) cancer epidemic thats the number one human killer globally. This is just flat out wrong and based on outdated science. It's well known that stress, inflammation and insulin resistance due to our modern primarily processed diet are the culprits here. Blaming meat is ill informed and just not factual. > it seems exceedingly unintelligent that we have not yet stopped when it's so damning to our existence. If we're talking factory farming, yes, I agree with you. But to blame meat for the methods of supporting a ballooning population is not the solution.

metamet 9y ago

> I feel like you should post some links to all that evidence. This is pretty standard anthropological knowledge. A quick google search returned this Time article that lays it out nicely: http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ > As far as I'm aware, we've been eating plants a lot longer than we've eaten animals Of course we started off eating plants, and we still do to this day. But the evolution of humans really kicked off when we started consuming meat, and even more so when we were able to start leveraging fire to make accessing those calories and nutrients even easier. > Humans don't have an instinct for eating animals like carnivores do. If you're under no selection pressure, that becomes the case--especially when you have Oreos (which are vegan, of course) conveniently available at a super market. But when you're a hunter gatherer, or simply starving, you fathom ways to get energy. Hunting has the highest ROI, and you can find endless examples of this in the form of modern day tribes. Hunting is ritual. It's not instinct, but it's part of what humans are. You can choose to not partake in meat, and that's purely your choice, but to damn it as something that unnatural is purely, scientifically wrong.

fredsir 9y ago
> This is pretty standard anthropological knowledge. A quick google search returned this Time article that lays it out nicely: http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ I don't believe that article contradicts anything I said. > Of course we started off eating plants, and we still do to this day. But the evolution of humans really kicked off when we started consuming meat, and even more so when we were able to start leveraging fire to make accessing those calories and nutrients even easier. Indeed, more carbs were able to go to the brain instead of other parts of our body, which enabled the brain to develop. > You can choose to not partake in meat, and that's purely your choice, but to damn it as something that unnatural is purely, scientifically wrong. I didn't say it was unnatural. I said we have no instincts to do it. It made sense when we needed to, so we learned to, and taught our children the ways and so on to be better at survival. Today, we neither need to and it's also the single biggest contributor to climate change, animal suffering and the heart disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and (partly) cancer epidemic thats the number one human killer globally. For all the talk about how meat helped us develop our brain and become intelligent, it seems exceedingly unintelligent that we have not yet stopped when it's so damning to our existence.
- metamet 9y ago
  > I don't believe that article contradicts anything I said. You were asking for evidence of this: > animals and "stuff you pick up" (seeds and so forth) are the original human diet That article directly supports the importance of meat as a foundation to the modern humans diet: "It was about 2.6 million years ago that meat first became a significant part of the pre-human diet." > Indeed, more carbs were able to go to the brain instead of other parts of our body, which enabled the brain to develop. No, not just carbs. Energy and nutrition are the prerequisites to the human brain--and saturated fats play a HUGE role in the health of mitochondria. Without an energy and nutritionally rich diet that is both diverse in micro and macro nutrients, the human brain wouldn't have developed. Not to mention how carbs were rare, and how the human brain can run on both glucose and ketones for a reason. > Today, we neither need to and it's also the single biggest contributor to [...] heart disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and (partly) cancer epidemic thats the number one human killer globally. This is just flat out wrong and based on outdated science. It's well known that stress, inflammation and insulin resistance due to our modern primarily processed diet are the culprits here. Blaming meat is ill informed and just not factual. > it seems exceedingly unintelligent that we have not yet stopped when it's so damning to our existence. If we're talking factory farming, yes, I agree with you. But to blame meat for the methods of supporting a ballooning population is not the solution.