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You can get protein from other sources than large mammals feeding on grass. In fact, they’re one of the less efficient ways to produce proteins if that’s what y

You can get protein from other sources than large mammals feeding on grass. In fact, they’re one of the less efficient ways to produce proteins if that’s what you are worried about.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
Knowing what I know these days, a bigger reason for eating meat is that it is hard to get adequate B vitamins from a vegetarian diet. In most cases, it's not that hard to get adequate protein from a vegetarian diet. I don't remember the book very well. I read it around 30 years ago. Back then, protein was generally considered to be The Big Issue. It was the basis for Diet for a Small Planet. When the book first came out, it emphasized protein complementarity to solve this issue for vegetarians. It was a political tome. Half of the book was about civil wars and the like (causing starvation). The other half was vegetarian recipes. The follow up book indicated the author had since concluded that it wasn't as challenging as she once thought to get adequate protein from a vegetarian diet. So it is possible this book I read was basing its hypothesis on the dominant thought of that era that protein was some big limiter. Perhaps protein per se was not the critical detail. We (probably) won't ever really know. What we do know is that the Aztecs were a very warlike people, human sacrifice was very widely practiced and they also routinely ate their victims, not solely as some barbaric religious ritual, but for dinner.
- achamayou 8y ago
  Sure, but even so they seem to have had domesticated turkeys and even chickens. It’s not immediately obvious to me that the average pre-Columbian South American would have had less meat (or protein) in their diet than the equivalent European of the same era.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  > ... hard to get adequate B vitamins from a vegetarian diet in particular, B12 OTOH, a quantity of other B vitamins can be made for us, in the gut, by intestinal flora as byproducts of their work on the food we've ingested. and properly prepared whole grain products can be a direct source of some b-vitamins (e.g. maize prepared with lime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization) a reasonably large supply of B12 can be stored in the liver for future use by the body during lean times (perhaps multiple years' worth).
lardo 8y ago
I imagine that in a sparsly populated pre-industrial society human_labor/protein would dominate hectare_of_grass/protein in which case larger animals make sense.
deleted 8y ago
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You can get protein from other sources than large mammals feeding on grass. In fact, they’re one of the less efficient ways to produce proteins if that’s what you are worried about.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Knowing what I know these days, a bigger reason for eating meat is that it is hard to get adequate B vitamins from a vegetarian diet. In most cases, it's not that hard to get adequate protein from a vegetarian diet. I don't remember the book very well. I read it around 30 years ago. Back then, protein was generally considered to be The Big Issue. It was the basis for Diet for a Small Planet. When the book first came out, it emphasized protein complementarity to solve this issue for vegetarians. It was a political tome. Half of the book was about civil wars and the like (causing starvation). The other half was vegetarian recipes. The follow up book indicated the author had since concluded that it wasn't as challenging as she once thought to get adequate protein from a vegetarian diet. So it is possible this book I read was basing its hypothesis on the dominant thought of that era that protein was some big limiter. Perhaps protein per se was not the critical detail. We (probably) won't ever really know. What we do know is that the Aztecs were a very warlike people, human sacrifice was very widely practiced and they also routinely ate their victims, not solely as some barbaric religious ritual, but for dinner.

achamayou 8y ago
Sure, but even so they seem to have had domesticated turkeys and even chickens. It’s not immediately obvious to me that the average pre-Columbian South American would have had less meat (or protein) in their diet than the equivalent European of the same era.
HillaryBriss 8y ago
> ... hard to get adequate B vitamins from a vegetarian diet in particular, B12 OTOH, a quantity of other B vitamins can be made for us, in the gut, by intestinal flora as byproducts of their work on the food we've ingested. and properly prepared whole grain products can be a direct source of some b-vitamins (e.g. maize prepared with lime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization) a reasonably large supply of B12 can be stored in the liver for future use by the body during lean times (perhaps multiple years' worth).

lardo 8y ago

I imagine that in a sparsly populated pre-industrial society human_labor/protein would dominate hectare_of_grass/protein in which case larger animals make sense.

deleted 8y ago

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