anyone for a glass of milk?

[Cue Reese]

Well what have thou to say about Inuits who survive mainly on whale blubber and fermented fish heads and no vegetables and no fruits and ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT and have been loving it for like thousands of years??

I think if you leave ethnicity/DNA out of the question then you are leaving a lot out of it...what about Native Americans who survived largely on bison?? They were doing that much longer ago than a few hundred years and they were doing just fine.

I actually think people in general should eat LESS meat, that is very good advice IMO...I just don't think we are made to live on zero animal protein, sorry. Vegetarianism is livable, veganism seems just cruel and unusual to me.

You are an idiot.

[Vieira151]

You state that we have developed to be omniverous and thus, in keeping with that development consume both animals and plants? Is the breakdown 50/50 or, say, 60/40....or maybe 90/10 - meat/plant? From a paleontology, evolutionary perspective, human physiology has developed, yes - for what all evidence suggests is a majority plant diet. Our dentition is an important evidence-set but so also, more critically is how our gastrointestinal tracts compare to 'older' carnivores, such as lions and tigers.

I wonder why so many of us assume that just because we eat so much meat now, and in the last few hundred years, that it has always been thus......practically all of the evidence suggests otherwise.....what say thee to this!?

Im not really sure what the ratio is, I suppose that will depend on where you live.

Those differences will be because I believe we were never full out carnivores. If anything, I'd imagine we evolved from being herbivorous, hence the difference in dentition and gastric system to plain carnivores(plus we learned to cook, meaning we didn't need any really big sharp teeth to rip raw flesh/meat). That, I would say, can be seen by looking at monkeys(apes, whatever ) as evidence
Why we developed into being omnivorous, I'm not sure. But I suspect we would have moved to meat because of energy, as I mentioned last post. Meat simply gave us much more energy/protein than plants did.


I think I answered that last part here

[VillaJ100]

I think (very basically) from a anthropological standpoint the earliest humans lived on a diet of carrion and fruits/nuts/natural vegetables. As we evolved and learned to hunt for ourselves we ate more of a meat based diet (see: human related megafauna extinctions), however day to day it would still be plants mainly. by the end of the last ice age large hunts were a ritual activity and provided a reasonable amount of calorific intake but not enough to survive solely on. By the early mesolithic humans would scavange whatever food was available from the land in their location, and travel maybe a 50 mile radius to obtain it, examples of this are following herds of deer, and living a generally nomadic lifesytle. The earliest true 'settlers' were those who lived near large rivers or the sea, and thier diet would have been nearly 100% fish and seafood. By the late mesolithic farming had begun, but interestingly the first farmers were less healthy than their hunter-gatherer relations and it took the bith of fully intensified agriculture until it was widely adopted (why people adopted farming as a source of food even though they were worse off is a major mystery in anthropology)

So basically we have always had a omnivorous diet. Of course thousands of years ago you would probably die of fear and old age at the age of 27. if i could be bothered i would find some shit backing me up, but im an archaeologist so i know these things!

[Vieira151]

By the late mesolithic farming had begun, but interestingly the first farmers were less healthy than their hunter-gatherer relations and it took the bith of fully intensified agriculture until it was widely adopted (why people adopted farming as a source of food even though they were worse off is a major mystery in anthropology)

YAY! i knew that

The farmers were totally not as healthy cause they just sat and harvested(like nowadays) while the hunters did some exercise

[Q. Reese]

good to hear from ya Q and nice one! Animal protein, be it from milk or meat....well, have a look at the video at the start of this link : )

all best

I am watching it now. Thanks for the link. It seems to be very interesting. I love the research into the presentation. The guy knows his stuff and am looking forward to learn from the vid!

i'd be interested in your perspective having watched the video bro - let me know!!!

Yeah. Sure. I told my mother about it. I am very educated on the thread. He really talked about possible collusion with the department that deals with the nutrition facts label.

I see that the larger amounts of protein taken-in correlates to the "turning off" or "turning on" of cancer.

Wow. This research is super powerful. I guess I will not be purchasing any soy milk any time soon.

I am not sure if I am I willing to be a vegetarian though.

[tigerofintegrity]

I'm not saying we can decide what certain animals are 'for' but millions of years of evolution and competition have kinda worked it out for us....

What's your source that people haven't always been meat eaters where meat was readily available (which is what I specified).

These two contradict each other. Humans haven't been around millions of years and therefore we haven't been eating lots of meat and all the kinds of meat that we do eat these days for millions of years. Humans haven't really been eating meat several times a day, every day for long at all and certainly not on an evolutionary timescale.

Without significant evolutionary changes to our digestive system, we still pretty much operate on a model closely resembling out nearest cousins, the chimpanzees. Now yes chimps are omnivorous but barely so. They largely consume fruits and leaves and only occasionally gather together to hunt other monkeys for meat. It makes up a very, very small percentage of their diet.

We share a lot of digestive traits with chimps and with current society the way it is, we've broken a lot of those trends. For example, we're more equipped to eat small amounts and frequently as opposed to one large meal (dinner). I'm not saying we should all degenerate to chimps because we're biologically akin to them but our bodies have evolved to cope with certain things and it definitely wasn't ready for the magnitude of lifestyle change we've had over the last few thousand years. Deviating from what our bodies were originally meant to handle can have consequences.

It's this point that also argues against refraining from all meat consumption. The fact that there's evidence pointing to animal protein ingestion hampering our bodies' wellbeing, that might have more to do with the frequency of meat consumption. By chimp standards, we shouldn't be eating it all that often, maybe a couple of times a month. So all these studies are presumably done on normal trend which is to eat meat everyday. Has anyone looked at whether it would be beneficial to reduce meat consumption to a much lower frequency?

[Rob ITST]

You can find all kinds of evidence that when man began eating meat, it allowed us to develop larger brains (mostly due to the fat content):

One reason is that the higher energy density in fat allowed our bodies to devote more resources to developing larger brains - our brain needs a LOT of calories, so without those extra calories our bodies must use what it has to keep the vital systems running.

Then there's the whole aspect of social bonding that came out of hunting and eating meat. We couldn't go out alone and kill large prey - we had to do it in groups, forcing us to work together. Also, there's the whole "sitting by the camp fire" scenario - one person wouldn't eat an entire animal, so we sat together and shared.

But, most people do eat way too much meat - in the US, I've seen estimations that we eat as much as 7 times what we should. There's almost certainly a link between excessive protein consumption and osteoporosis: When you eat large amount of protein, you produce large amounts of acid to digest it. Then, your body must neutralize that acid, which it does by pulling calcium from your bones. One thing I always try to keep in mind from a nutrition class I took in college: According to the instructor in that class, with the exception of elite athletes (basically, professional and Olympic athletes), you really only need about 4 ounces of meat each day to meet your protein requirements - which is about what you get from a hamburger or a chicken breast.

Personally, I feel it's a bit dangerous for the everyday person to completely, or even significantly, eliminate meat from their diets. Mostly because meat is the most reliable way to ensure that you consume all of the essential amino acids. There's a few exceptions (soy is probably the most well-known), but most plant food does not contain adequate amounts. If you are careful, you can eat the right combinations of plant foods, but I'm just not confident that most people are educated enough in specifically what plant foods must be eaten to ensure they meet their daily requirements.

[beltic caldy]

Tiger, do yourself a huge favour and watch this video clip - tear holes in it where/if you can, then grab a copy of his book - 'the china study' - read it and study his data - you asked 'Has anyone looked at whether it would be beneficial to reduce meat consumption to a much lower frequency?' - the answer is yes.

Animal Protein -- Meat and Dairy -- Cause Cancer


Rob - well, i agree with some of what you say, and disagree with much of this - i've been living as a vegan for 9 months now and have never, ever felt healthier in my life - in that time (and i know this is as unscientific as it gets, and statistically insignificant, nonetheless...) have not suffered in the slightest from any kind of malnutrition - quite the opposite - i have also not had a single instance of head-cold, 'flu or any of a range of these common things that i have seen co-workers and colleagues lose all kinds of time over.

the evidence you suggest about meat-consumption being linked to large-brain development...well...i find it wanting, to be perfectly honest - I agree with what Tiger said above - the evidence i've studied suggests strongly that meat consumption, in our early evolution, was the exception and quite sporadic - it seems more likely that our predominant diet was plants/seeds/vegetation based, meat, and regular high-quantities of meat being a very very late entry into the game.

you CAN actually get all the protein/calcium, amino acids (essential and non-essential) from a simple-to-follow vegan diet - no danger involved at all - well, the only danger in evidence to me is that the almost immeasurably costly meat-industry would slowly disappear, making the whole planet richer in just about everything (don't know if you've been following the other thread lately, which kinda got side-tracked - http://www.intertopspintour.net/forum/v ... 831#192831)

[beltic caldy]

Wow. This research is super powerful. I guess I will not be purchasing any soy milk any time soon.

I am not sure if I am I willing to be a vegetarian though.

not sure if you got slightly the wrong end of the stick with this one Q....there's no problem at all with Soy milk man....it's animal protein (milk, cheese, meat) that's the problem for humans - plant protein is absolutely fine and dandy!

[Rob ITST]

Here's one article about how eating meat allowed us to get smarter:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2 ... er-brains/

And regarding whether or not we have been eating meat for millions of years:

"What we think is that this dietary change around 2.3 million years ago was one of the major significant factors in the evolution of our own species,"..... "That period is when cut marks on animal bones appeared — not a predator's tooth marks, but incisions that could have been made only by a sharp tool."

BTW: I don't doubt that you are healthier since you became a vegan. I also don't doubt that before that, you were eating too much meat and too little plant foods. I imagine that if you kept the same diet you have now, and added a small amount of meat, then you'd be even healthier.

BTW2: I hope you don't think that I'm suggesting that modern man still needs meat for large brains, or that not eating meat will somehow make your brain smaller. Our caloric needs are nowhere near as high as primitive man's. Hell, most of us could cut meat out of our diets and still manage to consume enough calories to be fat asses.

[tigerofintegrity]

Even if switching to a larger meat diet allowed our brains to grow bigger, that doesn't necessarily mean it's healthier for us at all. Evolution doesn't work on the same timescale with everything. It all depends on how easy the selection for that mutation is (evolution is basically just mutation). Expanding of the brain could have been an easy selection process since all it basically required was sufficient energy to support it. It just makes something already there larger which is a very simple process.

However, changing our metabolism towards a certain type of diet would be a much more drastic change and requires a much longer time to select for (especially since we still eat a lot of the food we used to like fruit and vegetables and seeds and nuts). Our brains expanded far faster than our digestive system and metabolism could. I'm sure they are both constantly evolving now to our new diets but it would have to be a far lengthier process than simply enlargement of an organ.

So right now in time, it's likely that our bodies are still geared towards a largely vegetarian diet.

[Rob ITST]

You really think we're still evolving to adapt to our diets?

Even if switching to a larger meat diet allowed our brains to grow bigger, that doesn't necessarily mean it's healthier for us at all.

That's true. But, it does show that we have indeed been eating meat for millions of years, as Jaylove suggested, so it's likely that our bodies have fully adapted to include at least some meat in our diets. Of course, we've been doing lots of unhealthy things for millions of years.

Really, we don't know what is the absolute best diet. I encourage people to read this, which is probably the most comprehensive study on diets so far:

Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating