For my first post after several years of lurking, I thought I would compile some of my thoughts on why the human body is not designed to consume meat. We should only look at how the human body is designed and not any other folklore. Anyone referring to "what our ancestors did" should be completely ignored for several reasons. First, our human ancestors were around for 200,000 years before us. Our evolutionary ancestors were around for 1,000,000+ years before that. In that amount of time, they did A LOT of things. Second, even if we gain real knowledge into what they did, it doesn't mean they were right. I'd love to hear your feedback on this. Bear in mind that I'm comparing the human body to pure carnivores and this is not to be confused with life or death situations.
I'll leave it at that as I'm a man of few words. I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback on this!
When I initially posted I didn't even realize how off the wall these arguments you make are.
1. Humans have no natural desire to consume meat.
We have no "taste" for it. When people think of eating meat, they immediately think of barbequed ribs or a filet mignon from Outback. Carnivores are primarily after the nutrient-rich organs. If someone were to put a bowl of cherries and a pig's pancreas side by side, which one are you going for?
This argument is just terrible. Let me put this another way, "If someone were to put a bowl of green algae grown in the waste treatment facility runoff or some salmon sashimi side by side, which one are you going for?
2. Humans have no natural capability to consume meat.
Leave your ripped up caveman theories at the door. In the wild, humans are epic fail in the carnivore arena. Comparatively speaking, we aren't strong, we aren't fast, we can't smell, we can't see at night, we can't jump high, we can't swim naturally, we can't stay quiet enough to hunt, we have no claws and our teeth and jaws are useless. And, most importantly, unlike all carnivores, we have no hunting or killing instinct. It's a different story when some cute waitress brings your kill to the table with a bottle of K.C. Masterpiece.
All carnivores are capable of killing at birth or shortly thereafter. For the first 13 years of life it is highly unlikely that a human male (much less, a female) could have a prayer of getting hold of a wild animal and killing it. And this is when you are growing the most!
Really?! Where's your scientific proof? Show me some studies that prove humans can't stay quiet enough to hunt and I'll point you to the wild game mounted on my wall at home. And if you're going to make the argument we have no claws or things other animals have to kill prey I'll re-butt with we have brains and opposable thumbs which have proven to be the deadliest natural weapons on the planet.
3. Our digestive tracts aren't designed for it.
I won't go too much into this one as there is tons of information on this. Just try swallowing fresh, raw meat whole. Better yet, give it to an infant.
Well if there is
tons of information on it would it have been so hard for you to cite something proving that we can't eat raw meat whole? I eat sushi and sashimi about 3 times a week and my bowel movements following are some of the most carefree and pleasant ones I have.
4. Meat is not nutritionally imperative to humans.
All ten essential amino acids as well as every other nutrient for optimum health are found in plants. You get your protein the same place the animals get it - from foods that grow out of the ground. There is a huge misconception about this as the vast majority of people have no understanding of how amino acids work. They believe that not eating meat cannot be "healthy" because of the flabby vegetarian with no energy they see at the office. It should be noted that most vegetarians eat like crap.
Oh there are 10 essential amino acids? Wikipedia says there are
8. See what I just did there? I cited a source. It's a good practice when you try to sway others to accept your argument.
Now this was my favorite argument of all the ones you made. Vegetarians need to really work to be able to get all their required nutrients. What nutrients am I talking about? Here's a list:
B-12, riboflavin, zinc, calcium, iron, and essential amino acids such as lysine and methionine. Search "Nutrients vegetarians lack", and you'll get several sources that tell you this.
Firstly, let's look at B-12, it's only found in meat products. What happens when you don't get any B-12?
Macrocytic AnemiaNext up, calcium,
Vegetarian guides suggest vegetarians supplement their diet with
soy yogurt, tofu, beans, almonds, and calcium- fortified foods to make sure they don't develop osteoporosis. Great right, wrong, explain to me how humans 100 thousand years ago obtained their calcium requirements while living a nomadic lifestyle? This is the question I'll present to you throughout this section.
Iron, Plant sources contain a significant amount of iron, but in nonheme form, which is more sensitive to inhibitors than iron that comes from animal products. You should do two things to increase your blood-iron levels:
1) consume more plant iron; and 2) avoid absorption inhibitors, such as tea, coffee, and fiber. So in this case our ancestors would have had to find and eat more plants that contained iron and avoided iron absorption inhibitors like fiber which is found in what, plants. So this argument really seems to just be a viscous cycle of eating more plants just to inhibit iron absorption which is why you're eating more plants in the first place?
Zinc, a vegetarian diet inhibits absorption of zinc whereas a carnivorous diet increases the absorption. It is recommended vegetarians consume more zinc rich plants like
soybeans, cashews, and sunflower seeds. Again we find ourselves in the situation where 100k years ago, while our ancestors were roving the earth, more time would have been consumed looking for specific plants and eating them in massive quantities.
And lastly we have protein, Is there anymore obvious argument as to why being a vegetarian is so much work? I think not. I saw you tried to make an argument that the protein amino acids can be gotten from plants and while that is true I ask you, At what cost?
Different types of protein are made up of different permutations of amino acid chains. In order to create a "complete protein" or a protein that can be assimilated into the human body as tissue, you must consume foods that contain complementary chains of amino acids. There are several foods that can be consumed by vegans to accomplish this such as nuts and beans and wheat. We'll discount wheat here because it has a low absorption rate in the human body and also wasn't viewed as a food source until recently in human history. Ohh, soy protein isolate is recommended as the best way for vegetarians to get their protein but I don't think our ancient ancestors were able to successfully isolate soy protein as a food source.
So looking at nuts and beans. Almonds have the highest protein source of any nut at
21g/100g. Aduki Beans have the highest protein source found in the bean family at
9g/100g.
An adult human requires about 56g of protein/day to not be malnourished. So an adult male would have to consume 266.67g(.58lbs) of almonds per day to not become malnourished or 622.2g of Aduki beans/day. Looking at our primitive ancestors, that's a lot of gathering!
Now let's take venison which has
34g of protein/100g. That means an adult male would only have to consume 164g of venison per day to not become malnourished. Now let's say a fully dressed deer (that means the meat has been removed) weighs about 60 lbs (I've gotten 100 lbs. of meat off a deer before but I'll make things interesting). 60lbs*453g/lb=27180g and 34g(protein)/100(g)*27180g = 9241.2 grams of protein per deer. 9241g(protein)/56g(protein required) means 1 deer could have given 165 men their minimum requirement of protein for the day. Going through similar calculations to feed 165 men with almonds brings us to 44000g (97 freakin' pounds) of almonds to feed a similar "tribe". You know how hard almonds are to grow?
Anyway point is, meat is a far more energy dense food than any plant you will find out there. That's why humans subsided so long in a nomadic lifestyle. They were walking all over the place and didn't have time to find each almond grove in the world to load up on protein rich foods at. Instead they'd see a deer and so "ohh look let's freakin' kill that and eat it", then they would. Ok maybe that's exaggerating a bit because it is believed our ancient ancestors ate constantly as they moved but it is also known that they hunted.
Edit: grammar
Edited by babcock, 29 July 2010 - 06:41 PM.
