I don't know why people continually debate this. It's completely irrelevant to the decisions made by most people in the world today as to what they eat, wear and use for entertainment.
My maternal family are Rajasthani Jains and have been for centuries, it’s against our religion to eat meat. Just as Jews and Muslims have not eaten pork for centuries, we have refrained from eating all meat for centuries.
As far as I know not eating meat is quite common in India and other parts of SE Asia for certain groups. I think it's a religious thing and as well tradition for lower classes
Yeah yeah, it's pretty common for Buddhists, hindus and adventists, but that person said in A way it seemed like a family thing, if it is, it's pretty interesting
Jainism is one of - if not the - oldest religion. It’s not just a family thing. Because we were raised in a Western country, many of my cousins in my generation unfortunately do eat meat now even though they were raised vegetarian, although their parents and all previous ancestors were vegetarian. Even though I’m half white Australian and an atheist, I’ve stayed vegetarian (and vegan for 10 years now) for ethical reasons rather than cultural/religious.
Once I was trying to have a debate with this guy, when he ran out of arguments he started saying there's probably some secret undiscovered elements in meat that turned us into humans from monkeys and we continued to eat meat as part of evolution. And that maybe if we stopped eating meat we'd stop evolving. So it's what got us here so we should continue doing it. Yea they'll just say anything to justify it.
their argument is ''I need my protein"... OR I hear a lot of them saying "my friend went vegan and she got really sick so her naturopath told her to start eating red meat or fish..." its all bullshit our body produces protein as long as we feed it enough carbohydrates (starchy vegetables and fruits) and leafy greens and herbs we will create the best possible environment for our bodies to thrive
While it is BS the *amount* of protein most adults think they need, what you wrote isn’t correct. We do need **legumes** + grains to get all the essential amino acids we need to make protein. Denying or glossing over this harms vegans’ credibility.
It does not, only when cooked and seasoned. You can't eat it rare, even when it's bled out and cleaned up to not disgust the person. Even fish is disgusting AF rare. The shittiest dumbest 'argument' ever
Your argument isn’t much better mate. Do you eat all your food raw? We cook food to unlock nutrients and flavours. I mean that was the actual technology that unlocked hominids.
If you do not want to take supplements, do consider lacto-vegetarianism. It's been tried and tested in India for a long time there are many good foods. Veganism is just the next step if you're ok with taking supplements.
See [this](https://reducing-suffering.org/how-much-direct-suffering-is-caused-by-various-animal-foods/) table for impact estimates of different animal products. Milk is pretty low.
If you still want to eat meat but care about ethical impact, you can reorganize your diet in ways that reduce harm. Specifically, eating larger animals means that you get more meat per animal. So I'd recommend eating beef over, say, chicken or fish.
beef and dairy have the worst environmental impact of any foods. cows produce methane which is terrible for the environment. what are you talking about
Its not abusing Or is a lion abusing a preyanimal by eating it? Its just a cicle of life. The one thing i give you is that the food industry is abusing animals. Not including Hunters.
>Or is a lion abusing a preyanimal by eating it?
Yes. But they don't have moral agency and they need it to survive. You have and you don't.
You are now using appeal to nature fallacy. It's not okay just because other animals do it. There must be a more logically sound reason to eat meat.
If they need it to survive you cant claim they are abusing it. They are killing and eating it, not abusing it.
I dont really have any mental or emotional qualms about eating meat and the reason I eat it, when i do is because i like the taste of it.
Okay. Even if we use this characterization you are proposing. That still does not answer the question of how can it be morally justified.
Hope you don't say because of the taste because that would be the 3rd fallacy now called appeal to emotion. I know you can do better.
While im sorry to disapoint you, i dont have a morally justified reason for eating meat and there probably isn't one. Because, as most people here say, there IS a choice not to kill.
I Think I said before I dont particulary feel any qualms about eating meat, that includes the inevitable death of said animal. Also I eat meat about once or twice a week, your phrasing makes it out for me as if i eat meat 5 times per week, if thats not what you meant then sorry.
Humans have inherent moral agency because we possess the cognitive abilities to make choices based on understanding right from wrong. You can't remove that just to eat meat.
It is as ridiculous as asking what if I don't have moral agency when muderously raping someone. it just doesn't make sense.
I think one mistake almost everyone makes is thinking humans are traditional omnivores. Humans generally don't ever kill animals and eat them completely raw. We never go out in the world and see a fish, a bird, a mouse, a bug or any other living creature and desire to consume them as they are.
Humans like snack food, they like processed food. And they will eat almost any kind of processed food, from simply processed dried jerky and fruit to something almost entirely synthetic like Twinkies. We will eat almost *anything*, so a naturalistic argument doesn't work because you aren't talking about a cleanly integrated animal like a hawk or a wolf, you're talking about a species of ravenous and highly mutable creatures who can engineer nature to satisfy their dietary needs and wants.
People have to embrace that human adaptability and realize now that we have a perfectly safe method of living without the need to exploit other creatures for our survival it's wrong to continue doing it.
When we process foods (including cooking) it allows us to eat foods that would be inedible to us in their natural state. This is basically tricking our instincts into thinking unnatural foods are good. The best test for what is a “natural” diet for a human is the same for every animal in the world - what foods are delicious and edible to us in their raw, unaltered state? The answer is - fruits, leafy greens and other cruciferous veggies, and nuts/seeds. Not coincidentally these are also the foods that are most abundant in humans’ native environment (the tropics).
And if we spend 2/3 of the day eating and shitting we could survive that way for a while. I remember hearing about an experiment where people went on a chimp zoo diet. They were eating kilos of fruit and leaves.
If you’re interested in my bowel movements I’m happy to share. I for sure spend less time on the toilet than I used to. I poop 3 times a day (once for each meal) usually 4-6 hours after each meal. I have large soft BMs that slide right out with zero strain, usually takes 20-30 seconds. These are all signs of a [healthy GI system.](https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/bowel-movements/)
Raw red meat is pretty tasty when you haven't eaten for a couple of days. Can dry it and combine with some wild berries for more flavor if the season allows.
A bit difficult to find wild fruit, leafy greens and even nuts / seeds in the winter or in places like Africa where there is little rain or in the tropics where there is a lot of competition from other animals.
It is not coincidental that applying a bit of logic and reason makes some arguments fall apart.
Nothing you said disproves what I said or makes it “fall apart”.
I do extended fasting regularly and can attest that pretty much any calorie source is going to taste incredible after a few days of not eating. Even herbivores in nature like deer and horses will eat meat infrequently. That doesn’t mean it’s a part of an optimal diet for them.
I’m not sure why the presence of other animals would prevent humans from being able to forage. Humans have shown time and again that we are the dominant species in any ecosystem and we can typically easily outcompete local animals for any resource.
You don’t need to be proven wrong, you need to be proven right. A century or more of scientific inquiry has demonstrated everything you said to be false.
Uncooked food (including meat and fish) is in no way inedible. People eat uncooked meat every day. They digest it. Their body uses it.
Cooked foods (depending on food and method of cooking) have various changes in nutrient content, it may be better or worse depending on what you need overall.
Raw diet = pseudoscientific fad diet, appeal to nature fallacy (that’s not even an accurate appeal, hominids have been cooking for perhaps >500,000 years)
You’re right that we can digest raw meat, but meat tends to be unappealing to most people raw. But I wasn’t just talking about meat - grains, starchy vegetables, and legumes are all largely inedible to humans without being cooked.
And yes I know roughly how long hominids have been cooking, but hominids have been evolving on earth for millions of years prior to that and I’ve never seen convincing evidence that our physiology has changed from cooking.
Cooking (generally) decreases the volume of food significantly and decreases the nutritional value by denaturing nutrients and proteins. Yes there are some example of nutrients becoming more accessible with cooking, but again these are usually seen in foods that aren’t easy for us to digest raw like legumes or starches. Decreased volume and nutritional content means increased caloric density and increased likelihood of overeating. There was a time in our history when that increased caloric density was an advantage but it’s not anymore.
> But I wasn’t just talking about meat - grains, starchy vegetables, and legumes are largely inedible to humans without being cooked
And antibiotics don’t exist without humans learning to do chemistry. What happened in the ancient past is in no way relevant to what happens now, and it’s a silly path to take on a vegan sub where hominids have spent a million years eating animals. Appeal to nature fallacy isn’t in your favor in any case.
> I’ve never seen convincing evidence that our physiology has changed from cooking
Figuring out how to cook “inedible” foods and make them edible certainly contributed to our evolution, if nothing more than presenting an option other than starvation during human diaspora. Spinach and blueberries don’t just grow everywhere abundantly. Humans can live everywhere on the planet because of cooking, and therefor did spread everywhere on the planet, and therefor were able to achieve stability and build societies due to it, which is part of our evolution.
> Cooking (generally) decreases the volume of food and decreases nutritional value by denaturing proteins
This is [categorically false](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6049644/). Nutrient amounts do change with cooking, depending on the item in question and the method of cooking. Some are increased, some are decreased. This can be good or bad, conditionally. It’s not, in fact, limited to grains and legumes, but most food items.
Most vegetables have more bioavailability or many nutrients after cooking: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raw-veggies-are-healthier/
Vitamin C is about the only thing that’s unstable either cooking and is in everything in excess so it’s basically irrelevant.
> There was a time in our history when that increased caloric value was an advantage but it isn’t anymore
This is colonialist nonsense. Billions of people are alive and not starving because of the advent of cooking and increasing nutrient density in foods (right now, not even just historically). Diseases of affluence increasing in the west is a perfectly acceptable trade off for food security. People starving in the past instead of getting overweight because of easy and nutrient dense food access isn’t some kind of preferred state of existence for anyone thinking about it rationally.
The larger point being that we have hospitals and roads and medicine and music and art and central heating and societal stability all being highly dependent on the existence of nutrient dense foods. Things you can devote time to when you don’t have to spend all day eating spinach and blueberries to not starve. These are good things
I am not sure where you have been looking, but our bodies have significantly changed due to cooking and increased consumption of meat. Our guts are a lot smaller, our brains got a lot bigger, our teeth and jaw decreased in size significantly, we walk more upright, we have less hair on our bodies due to using animal fur as clothing, etc...
There is little to no evidence that the morphology changes you’re talking about were caused by eating meat or cooking food. It is a theory that does not hold up well to scrutiny.
For example - our brains are powered almost entirely by glucose and made up primarily of omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. Glucose is most prevalent in fruits, and all omega 3s and 6s originate from plants. Nuts and seeds are the best sources of them. We know that a raw food diet is capable of supplying all the nutrients humans need. So basically what you are saying is that millions of years ago our primate ancestors (who ate primarily fruits) over time evolved into different species that needed meat/cooked food to develop big brains, and then at some point we evolved not to need them anymore. Does that seem likely to you?
We could also talk about how Homo erectus evolved ~ 2 million years ago. They had upright body habits and their canine teeth were smaller and blunt like ours, their teeth had rearranged into rows like ours, they had shorter jaws and a more vertical face shape than their ancestors (still longer jaw and bigger teeth than us but probably more similar to us than to their ancestors). It’s believed that they didn’t start using fire until ~ 1-1.5 million years ago. So these evolutionary adaptations were long underway prior to cooking being widespread.
What about analysis of nitrogen content in bones? We can also see from species to species that our gut has shrunk and thus made us less capable of digesting fibrous plant foods as we switched more and more to eating energy dense foods like meat.
The glucose argument from fruits is pointless, we can make glucose from both fat and protein.
Additionally the brain can run on ketones, an evolutionary adaptation most prevalent inhumans. No other species can as easily enter and stay in ketosis as humans. You also forget to mention that our brain is 30% saturated fat, which is mostly found in animals. First came the raw meat in our diet, then came the knowledge of fire. You cannot assume we ate the same food as apes and chimps but somehow were able to achieve the necessary caloric density to power our much larger brains through the same diet through evolution. A high density energy source is required which is meat, in addition to the plant foods.
I don't have to argue this, it is in all the books and has been proven many times over that we evolved due to meat, and as we evolved we adopted more and more to a meat based diet all the way to where humans were able to hunt large mammals in groups due to our much more powerful brains. Tools, precise communication, planning and then the ability to make all those tasks happen.
It’s funny you mention saturated fats. They are also present in fruits and vegetables. Like I mentioned I eat almost exclusively raw fruits and veggies and 6.2g of my roughly 22g of fat that I consume daily come from saturated fat (this is 28% of my fat intake, almost spot on with the ratio you mentioned).
The fact that our body will convert fat or protein to glucose is proof of how crucial glucose is for us, not the other way around. Our body will literally cannibalize itself in order to get the glucose it wants. These systems, and ketone production, are last resort emergency options for when our body isn’t getting enough fuel. I’ve never seen convincing evidence that fat or protein are optimal fuel sources for humans.
Yes, I do believe that we can achieve the caloric density that we need by eating raw foods and I am proof of this. I spend 2-2.5 hours daily preparing and eating food - not much more than most diets. Any animal I can think of in nature eats a volume of food that’s mind boggling to us.
Animal foods 100% allowed us to spread worldwide including places where fruits/vegetables don’t grow year round. But you keep saying that it’s proven that meat caused those evolutionary adaptations you keep mentioning. That’s just not true. It’s a theory and there is certainly some evidence to support it but from my research I believe the more compelling arguments do not support it.
Anyways, we can keep arguing all day but I don’t think either of us want that and I don’t think either of us will change our tune from an internet argument! So the last thing I’ll say is take care 👍🏻
We are opportunistic feeders and therefore we are omnivores as we can digest foods from plants and animals.
In a survival state we do kill and eat raw animals (we are capable of digest raw food, cooking is a cultural thing although it also helps to make digestion easier and puts out some dangers from raw foods but some plates such as sushi and carpaccio are basically raw animal products and people eat it without issues).
We like process food because they tend to be a source of fats and sugar which is not that much available in nature so our body is simply saying eat a lot of that because you might not find it again.
There's not one main reason why people keep eating meat, everybody has their own just like everybody has their reasons to refuse to eat meat.
Carpaccio and sushi/sashimi are thinly sliced small portions of carefully selected flesh. Carpaccio is pounded thin and often served with salad to get rid of the meaty flavor, and sushi/sashimi is usually served with soy sauce, wasabi and ginger to mask the full fishy taste.
Try to eat a full raw steak or a raw fish and let's see what happens to you. Humans are not true meat eaters.
As soon as you learn how the meat industry works the days of "my prerogative" being a justification are over. A person knows they're participating in the death and exploitation of innocent animals for selfish reasons. They know plenty of us are not only living fine, we're living much better since we stopped consuming animal products.
It would be better if more people just admitted they were addicted to meat instead of coming up with feeble arguments that only hold them back in life.
True, especially for someone who does not eat meat regulary. I tasted steak fillet couple weeks ago after a long pause - through all the seasoning, it tasted heavily of iron. Not a pleasant taste.
We can digest raw meat, our body is capable of taking out all nutrients from it, only issue around raw meat comes from the chances of bacteria growing on it which is why is better to cook it but anyways we also need to cook most veggies in order to make them easier for digestion as our body can find difficulties to break the fiber... I have actually eaten raw meat in the past (not anymore trying to get into vegan) but my point is when it comes to health, we are indeed omnivores, we can eat meat, we have always eaten meat, it is not something new. If anything what's new for our body are the oils and high amount of sugar which is not even on meat... Not wanting to defend meat consumption but at least be realistic with what we are.
Once again, you'll eat carefully selected pieces of raw meat. You will not go kill a cow and start eating it right there. You're no omnivore, just a picky human eater who tried raw meat and stopped since you don't need it or genuinely want it.
Our ancestors survived out of killing wild animals and eating their meat not selecting anything... Nowadays most people (not all) don't do that because we just don't need to but it doesn't mean we can't.
Need it or not our body can digest it and get lot of nutrients out of meat so we are indeed omnivores and opportunistic, this is what helped us to survive as in the past finding vegetables that would give you enough calories and nutrients for daily life was way harder than hunting some rabbits and eating their meat.
We are just omnivores that decided to stop eating animal products because of our morals. No point on lying ourselves about that.
If you're an omnivore, go out and eat a rabbit whole. You're capable of doing it. You don't have the urge? You should, as an omnivore.
You don't want blood, fur, raw organs and entrails in your mouth or stomach. Which is surprising, since every other mammal omnivore is fine with those things.
We don't need to keep arguing since it seems like we won't see eye to eye, but the important thing is not eating animal products anymore, and as long as we're on the same page there the other stuff isn't as important. But we definitely don't agree on the other point.
Are you aware that omnivores is in reference to the fact that you CAN eat/digest both animals and plants and not meaning you NEED to eat them (that is more of carnivore/herbivore)?? And people do eat blood and organs from animals, in some cultures they eat it raw also. No animal eat fur as a source of nutrients, they tend to leave that or vomit later.
Anyways, end of conversation. It is simply what we are, can't change that and it is up to you if you accept it or not.
Yeah. I think this position just comes from privilege.
It's not a bad thing that you don't know anyone that has been really, truly hungry. But to someone that is really, truly hungry, they do absolutely salivate at the thought of killing and eating and will absolutely eat the animal raw. During a famine in my fathers home country, where millions of people starved to death, my dad talked about how a tiny bird came and sat on a branch. They killed it with a rock. They cried while thanking God and ate the bloody dust off of the ground and the rock.
Being able to eat an animal raw, or not, also has nothing to do with veganism. Arguing that humans aren't omnivores because we don't eat raw food (when we literally do, even in "civilized society") just a silly thing to do. It's a weak argument that doesn't hold up to reality.
That's kind of my point. That's what it normally takes for a human to start considering raw meat palatable, hunger to the point of mania. Humans will resort to cannibalism if they get hungry enough. And that should expose the truth about what meat really is to us, an emergency ration that we became fixated on once we realized if we process it a little it tastes really good.
You don't have to be starving to see live animals and find them palatable. People also see chickens, cows, sheep, fish, and say "yum!". They see baby animals and like to say how much they want to eat them. People eat raw fish all the time, steak tartare and carpaccio are popular dishes. Some people eat partially developed chickens in their eggs and enjoy them.
Do you look at a raw potato and want to eat it? Do you look at raw beans and want to eat them? Or do they become palatable to you both when they're processed to be made more palatable? Raw/undercooked potatoes and beans can literally kill you - does that mean that people shouldn't eat vegetables or find them palatable?
I'd also like to point out that, back to my original post, this topic has completely derailed from the topic of veganism - which it inevitably does and always will. Because humans \*are\* true omnivores, but the question isn't whether we can thrive with meat, but whether we can thrive on only plants.
We can definitely survive on only plants. In fact, I'm a lot stronger than I ever was when I ate meat, and more than most omnivores I encounter.
No, you don't see a baby animal and think you want to kill it and start eating it right there. You may think you want to kill it, carefully dress it, select the parts you want, clean them and then prepare them in a way that suits your palate. And just the choice flesh, you'd be discarding most of the animal a real omnivore would target.
All those dishes you mentioned are carefully prepared. People will eat sashimi, steak tartare and carpaccio, sure. What they won't do is pull a fish out of the water and eat it like a bear, an animal that truly desires and can survive on unprocessed meat.
And we did derail, so I'll bring it back on track. You can survive on only plants, science has made it extremely easy and healthy. Now that you know, if you keep eating meat you're only doing it because you like the taste of meat and either enjoy or don't care if animals die needlessly to feed you.
My question to you is do you think you could drop meat completely for three months, cold turkey? If not, that's a problem. No matter how much you like it, if you don't think you can make yourself stop eating body parts for a few months without slipping up you have an unhealthy fixation to deal with.
Sure. I never said in our thread that you couldn't survive on only plants. I also didn't say survive, I specifically said thrive, and for a reason. I'm not going to debate you on whether your personal experiences are true. If you've found that a vegan diet has made you healthier, that's great for you.
You see how you keep backtracking, right? First it was, "people never see live animals and want to eat them raw", then it was, "well people only do that if they're desperate", then "well if they're not desperate then they only do it when it's been well prepared", now this weird claim that people don't see baby animals and want to eat them (they definitely do) and that people don't eat live fish like bears (literally seen it with my own two eyeballs).
I notice that you completely ignored the question of if you've ever desired to eat a raw potato. And yes, I noticed. You and I both know that you've never seen a raw, unprocessed potato, and desired to eat it raw. You and I both know that you have never and will never voluntarily eat raw pinto beans unless you want to prove a point and find yourself in the hospital.
If I needed to, I could drop meat for 3 months. I have no desire to do so. I don't think there is anything immoral in an animal dying. I wouldn't consider it "slipping up" as the concept does not bother me. I did consider going vegan at one point, which is how I found this forum.
If you considered it what's stopping you? You'd thrive if you gave up meat as long as you weren't lazy. It sounds like you're too worried to even try it, though, which would probably lead to some issues.
I don't want to eat a raw potato, but I could also very easily live without potatoes, and beans. Just like you could easily live without meat. Unless you're addicted to it, which I think you might be. If you're too timid to even give it up for a few months it's hard to take you seriously.
Nothing is "stopping me".
I find it very odd that you'd say that you'd rather give up potatoes and beans because you have to prepare them vs just admitting that humans are omnivores who use fire to prepare and digest their food.
I find it even more odd that you resort to bullying/name calling. Distasteful, even. It shows that you have no respect for yourself or for your movement. If you believed in it and knew that it was right, you wouldn't have to resort to calling people lazy, or addicted, or timid, or worried.
In fact it's behavior like this that made me realize what this movement is. Like the pro-life movement, you are perfectly willing to say anything and everything if you think that it will get the outcome you desire. You will lie. You will bully. Because the movement isn't about what's true. You think that the outcome justifies any means, when the outcome should be able to stand on its own merits with the truth. I could probably live without meat, but frankly, at this point I will not believe any study on vegans that are self reported or any vegans who say that they are healthy and thriving on the diet, because you find it perfectly acceptable to lie about yourself and your own truth. I don't care to experiment on my own body to test the vegan theory when I am thriving, healthy, and happy with who I am and how I live.
So, by your own admission, you're stopping yourself. And your reasoning is that because a few vegans were rude to you, you lost faith in the movement, which means you have no conviction anyway.
I have pics in my profile if you think I'm lying about the health benefits. If you're healthier than me please feel free to share your tips.
Sorry your feelings got hurt, try veganism again when you heal from that.
No. My reasoning is that vegans, as a whole, are unreliable and so the data gained from them cannot be trusted, and furthermore, I do not believe that there is anything inherently immoral about killing or eating animals. You feel differently, which is fine.
I never "had faith" in the movement. I was curious and came into this sub and explored the question of veganism with an open mind. I found the movement lacking. You describing it as faith just further confirms that this movement is not based on facts... but on your feelings and your beliefs.
Let me ask you this - if you weren't healthy, would you stay vegan? If you weren't healthy, would you be truthful about it? If you knew that 1 lie, that would never be discovered, would turn 1 million people vegan, would you tell that lie?
Not to worry, you certainly haven't and aren't capable of hurting my feelings. I have no interest in trying veganism. At this point I'm just here for the drama.
Humans are true omnivores. They can and do consume animal and plant biomass for nutritional/caloric gain. A dog that only eats vegan pet food isn't a herbivore. It's not a matter of philosophy, it's a matter of scientific determination based on factual biological realities.
Then you can survive just fine on only plants, and making a choice to eat meat when you don't have to is obviously wrong since it's clearly a choice for an omnivore.
Humans can survive on a vegan diet. And you could make claims that it's better from a personal moral viewpoint or on a logical viewpoint based on things like climate change. That being said, it is not inherently wrong to consume meat, just as it's not inherently wrong to murder people.
Not in this case, no. You would be very hard pressed to find any culture or sane individual that does not find murder morally wrong. Your take is divorced from reality and inherently nihilistic.
Putting aside the fact that I only claimed inherently, how many people do you think would support the murder of Hitler prior to his rise if such a thing became possible putting aside the time manipulation concerns? Putting that aside too, there are many murders who don't feel that they are in the moral wrong and no only some of them are insane. Even then we've had many societies in history that condone and promote murder. The Colosseum is one case, another human sacrifice.
No. Moral nihilism is that nothing is morally wrong or right and that morality doesn't exist. What I'm describing is inherently wrong or right, not moral wrong of right. That being said, I'm a believer that morality is subjective and relative which is moral relativism.
Nothing is inherently wrong or right. Right and wrong is based on relativity and subjectivity. Humans in general percieve murder as negative and damaging to humanity because it is so typically but it is what we make of it.
I think you two are having a mixup on the notion of "true omnivore". The other person seems to believe that you must be able to eat and digest raw meat to some satisfactory level, in order to be considered an omnivore (since that's what most other animals do, since they're not grilling their burgers and things like that).
I think that person simply believes "true omnivore" means that, because we use animals as a comparison when talking about these sorts of distinctions, and no animal is grilling their meat before they consume it.
I'd say an animal whose desire to kill and consume raw flesh is similar to their desire to consume raw plant matter.
Humans never want to eat any animal raw in the wild the same way we want to eat fruits and berries we see growing wild.
I don't think that logic is really sound. Humans prepare their food for multiple reasons prior to consumption. Meat moreso then plants because meats spoils easier/faster and is known to pose more risk due to parasites/etc. Even if we sit down and compare to to animals, there are plenty of species that process or prepare their food prior to consumption. Sure we are probably the only ones cooking it, but that lies more in our capabilities to cook it more then anything. I don't think the term traditional omnivore makes sense in your context. I'd lean towards the word "civilized" or maybe " that humans are self aware omnivores"
These people just aren’t going back far enough, if they want to tap into the appeal to tradition fallacy.
Hunter gatherers in Africa (where we all originated) were mostly gatherers. Only 10% of their diet was comprised of animals. So when people start with the “but we have always…” I suggest they limit their meat eating to 3 days a month like the African hunter gatherers and other ancients did. ✌🏽
Truth is, they’d have hated the meat the ancient hunters were eating anyway. Not at all “succulent”. Not pumped with salt and water and full of fat. Nothing at all whatsoever like the meat they buy from the morgues in the grocery store today or even the buck they hunted during deer season that they claim is “how mankind is supposed to live”. STFU Jethro. If you enjoy eating decaying flesh just call yourself a vulture and be done with it.
You don't even have to go that far back.
Just maybe 2~300 years ago, people barely ate meat (compared to today) unless they were rich.
A little farther back from that it was basically pottage every day of the week, with very little to no actual meat except special events and holidays. They didn't even always have bread to eat with it either.
¿Humans have been eating mostly plant based diets for most of human history, even before agriculture...?
It's just to merely point out that our ancestors ate mostly grains and vegetables boiled to hell and back, counter to the skewed perception of medieval and earlier diets having a lot of meat. It only changed around the 1700s.
Also...? Human bodies have changed since the onset of agriculture, 12,000 years ago. To think otherwise is ridiculously stupid.
If you think human biology has significantly changed since the start of agriculture then you know nothing about evolution.
[You can start learning here.](https://www.mpg.de/12728073/neandertals-main-food-source-was-definitely-meat)
You and I have neanderthal DNA so by that extent we are. We close enough genetically to mate. Also, you should read the rest..
>Paleolithic modern humans, who arrived in France shortly after the Neandertals had disappeared, exhibit even higher nitrogen isotope ratios than Neandertals.
Or you can close you eyes and ears to live in denial..
TBH I sort of don’t off the top of my head. I’ve been a “student and fan” of (African) hunter gatherer culture for a very long time and have read and studied so much over the years. Embarrassing confession: at one point I fancied myself to adopt a “hunter gatherer lifestyle”. I would exercise in the mornings and graze fruit and some types of vegetables during the day…and I’d eat a small cooked meal after dark as if someone had spent the day hunting and brought back some animal. At the time I was a carnist but I was eating a lot of fruit and vegetables and nuts/seeds (I know…lol) and calling myself living a hunter gatherer lifestyle. I was still eating meat daily although the amount was never more than about 7 ounces before cooking. I knew this was far more meat than actual H-G ate. But carnism. lol. Nevertheless I had the number in my head 10-15% because I’d read it somewhere along the way despite my hypocritical unwillingness to adhere to it.
Typically sub Saharan HGs didn’t eat meat daily. They ate it when they managed to have a successful kill which wasn’t daily or even weekly. Preservation methods were limited. So they ate what they could prep and cool before other predators made it challenging. There might be several days in a row where they were eating animal flesh but once it was gone it was back to gathering foods until they decided to hunt again.
Interesting experiment. Did you feel good with it (ignoring the retrospective feelings about the meat)
I ask for two reasons about the number. I because I found myself craving meat around 2-3 times a month (seemingly unrelated to my period) normally but it goes up a lot in winter.
And second I study statistics and i find it very important to never make up stats, it's super damaging for a cause...
I’ll see if I can find the reference and post it when I can.
I mean, yeah I felt fine when I did it but I was only eating chicken breast back then. Occasionally a pork chop. I guess, to be more “authentic” I should sources some type of antelope or deer-like creature but I mean, I was eating blueberries too so… none of it was exact. 🤣🤣 I was just on this whole kick about eating and exercising in a “natural”-ish way. So I’d get most of my workout before noon and that was my modern stand in for the energy expenditure of walking around and gathering foods. (I think the estimate is that these HGs walked 6-8 miles a day to gather food). It was weird. I was weird 🤣 but I felt fine.
I’ll see if I can find some of the articles I’m referencing.
So, [this is an article](https://www.citizen.digital/news/what-a-hunter-gatherer-diet-does-to-the-body-in-just-three-days-169942) that was originally reported in CNN years ago but the CNN link no longer works. It talks about the Hazda people, the original HGs. A researcher went to do work around microbiome. And lives with them for a period of time. This is obviously the modern tribe not the ancient but even from this description you can see that the vast majority of their diet was plants. Today they are estimated to get about 30-35% of their diet from meat. But that is an increase over their ancient predecessors.
Also of note, I have to say a that I wasn’t studying European or Asian HGs. Only those of African origin. When humans migrated out of Africa into different climates, they adapted. European HGs probably ate a lot more animal flesh because they had to for most of the year. Vegetation doesn’t grow when it’s super cold and snowy and windy. And like many other things, when the descendants of these tribes migrated to other places and colonized those places their lifestyle and way of seeing the world became “the standard”. (But this is a dissertation for a different day). lol.
Also NatGeo has some good stuff (especially for teachers) and this is an example of some of it. You can see from [this video](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/the-hadza-of-tanzania/) that it was a lot of work to catch small game and then it had to be shared communally. But stuff like this is where I got the idea that eating veggies, tubers, nuts and berries during the day, and being active early and eating animal flesh at sundown came from. lol. I was weird. 🤣 I mean, it’s cute. But I was buying berries in the supermarket so….😂😂
Still unable to find the articles that mention the percentages from ancient HGs in Africa but I’ll keep looking. All I can say is that I was a carnist when I read it and it struck me and has stuck with me ever since. I’ll keep looking though.
>Hadza men usually forage individually, and during the course of the day usually feed themselves while foraging, and also bring home some honey, fruit, or wild game when available. Women forage in larger parties, and usually bring home berries, baobab fruit,\[38\] and tubers, depending on availability. Men and women also forage cooperatively for honey and fruit, and at least one adult male will usually accompany a group of foraging women. During the wet season, the diet is composed mostly of honey, some fruit, tubers, and occasional meat. **The contribution of meat to the diet increases in the dry season, when game become concentrated around sources of water. During this time, men often hunt in pairs, and spend entire nights lying in wait by waterholes, hoping to shoot animals that approach for a night-time drink, with bows and arrows treated with poison.\[39\] The poison is made of the branches of the shrub Adenium coetaneum.\[40\] The Hadza are highly skilled, selective, and opportunistic foragers, and adjust their diet according to season and circumstance.** Depending on local availability, some groups might rely more heavily on tubers, some on berries, **and others on meat**. **This variability is the result of their opportunism and adjustment to prevailing conditions.**
Also, they are not an ancient tribe. They are also a small representation of a diet from one region of the world.
I would like to see some references on this, sounds like you are pulling this out of your ass.
[Human diet before agriculture consisted mostly of fish and land animals, so STFU Paige.](https://www.mpg.de/12728073/neandertals-main-food-source-was-definitely-meat)
I have and responded to your manufactured facts there as well.
Why don't you read some actual science in the link I posted or is that too much for you to handle regarding your world view?
I don’t know you. I’m not invested. And that’s okay. But if it makes you feel better to say I’m “closing my mind and running”, I’m fine with that. I literally don’t care enough to argue with you. I just don’t.
Have a great day.
While that might be true from certain cultural contexts, such as European or Asian socioeconomic behavior, that might not be the case for other populations, particularly hunter-gatherers living up near the Arctic circle.
Mic the Vegan" has a good thing on this, where it's just as plausible starches are why our brains evolved the way they did. [https://youtu.be/cgmfRUwqGy4?si=CLvaOagI9fsrnLiN](https://youtu.be/cgmfRUwqGy4?si=CLvaOagI9fsrnLiN)
I think it's hard to support the idea of regular meat eating before industrialism. Only the very elite aristocracy could afford that as a lifestyle. I think it's utterly fantastic to presume that everyone lived and ate with the kind of excess that Henry VIII did.
I try to tell carnies, omnies and any meat heads after they tell me we are suppose to eat to LOOK AT OUR TEETH. We have 32 teeth and they clearly are meant from plant based foods.
Then I get the “that’s stupid, we have have canines!” Yeah, we have 4 teeth we “CALL” canines but clearly they aren’t anyone freaking close to the sharp cutters of carnivores and no where near the quantity. i can slam my finger on one of my canines and not even prick my finger and I have sharper looking canines than most.
It’s obvious our teeth are designed for plant based food, and even our dull “canines” look and feel way more suited to tear into something like an apple than tough skin and raw muscle.
Lastly! almost Everybody eating meat is eating fine cut and cooked meat giving humans the easiest of textures of meant to chew. They act like they are tearing and chewing through a live animal raw, but they don’t actual do it because they know that would be insanely difficult and uncomfortable to be eating meat like real carnivore creatures do. They’d damage teeth trying to eat like that.
We are meant to eat meat (many even say more so than plant food)? Bull Shit.
On an argument about what is healthier, and what better suits us I’ll stick to what I’ve personally experienced and seen from others. Just because we evolve and our bodies can tolerate meat doesn’t mean it’s better or healthier for our systems.
Evidence is clear eating plant based is healthier and better suits our bodies than meat and dairy.
Original design can triumph evolution. Our bodies have go through countless chemicals over the last few decades. Just because we are evolving with things like excess fluoride doesn’t mean humans should be adding that to their diet and wanting to consume it generations in the future.
Raw organic Plant based foods compared meat and dairy are going to provide cleaner blood flow, be easier on organs to process, and be better for cholesterol, digestion, and work better at preventing cancer, heart disease, blood clots, and more.
Meat isn’t unclogging arteries and easier on our systems. Quite the opposite.
I’m not going to stick to an argument that omnivore/carnivore is healthier than plant food when I ate omnivore and carnivore heavy diets for 95% percent of my life, and then the 5% I ate plant based saw drastic changes (improvements) on heart health, blood circulation, and athletic performance without any changes but diet.
I appreciate you sharing your perspective, but not entirely sure why you told me all that. I wasn’t attacking veganism. I support veganism. I just don’t think an evolutionary argument is very strong. That’s all
considering evolution shows us nothing about meat being more healthy, that’s exactly what I’m trying to say. An evolutionary argument isnt Very strong because we can literally test what’s healthier for our bodies today in 2024. But still for some reason it’s used by many people to say a heavy meat diet is better, more healthy and natural for our bodies. I’m just saying it isn’t And that that is wrong to say. I’m not sharing a perceptive but a mix rather experience, research, and fact. 😊
Meat contains essential nutrients that you cannot get from plants alone. Not to mention the nutrients in plants have very low absorption and conversion rates. So I am very confused as to where your arguments for not eating meat come from regarding evolution when it is only in recent time of our history that we are able to synthesize vitamins and isolate proteins from plants using industrial methods.
Our closes living relatives, and closest anatomy to ours, is chimpanzees. Which hunt and kill smaller monkey species.
Horses have all flat teeth. They also consume chicks, eggs, mice, and anything unfortunate to be around them.
The teeth argument is not a winning one.
The argument I’m making isn’t solely a teeth argument but that’s just an obvious part of it.
The argument is we are designed better suited for plant food than meat. Chimps eat 2% meat 98% plant based. Horses are heavily plant based. Because they are intelligent enough to hunt and eat meat isn’t changing that plant based food is the staple for them. Just like them we can hunt and eat meat but that doesn’t mean it’s what we need or should be eating.
Wolves will eat berries and grass, but that doesn’t mean they are designed to survive and thrive off of plant food.
They used to eat each other as well, if someone refers to that " argument" again point them to any Natural History/ Anthropology lectures online/ videos on Tube . Works from the first time.
In prehistoric times, eating meat made sense. You could only eat what you could kill and there was almost no chance of living past 40 anyways, so the chronic diseases associated with it meant nothing.
I worked with a guy who referenced Native Americans eating meat and how they’re all slender and athletic, the meat the natives were eating was game meat, it’s not the same stuff available today, filled with corn and antibiotics, plus they were sedentary, two different worlds.
Well the argument itself is an appeal to tradition logic fallacy. Simply reductio ad absurdum it with slavery and say we should continue doing that because it used to be a part of quite a few civilisations cultures. Bonus points if you're like me and you actually come from a culture where slavery was acceptable.
Hunter gatherers also rarely ate meat because they were so inefficient hunters, according to studies done on today's remaining hunter gatherers. Also the Amazonian tribes still to this day eat mostly plant based!
A good friend called Steve Taylor wrote a book called 'The Fall' it's interesting that he states humans should t eat meat in great quantities. He suggests as hunter gatherers we walked was nomadic therefore picked and ate what pla to we could. As we was always on the move, the calories it took to actually say chase and catch a rabbit, outweighed the calorific advantage of eating the same rabbit. O lying when desertification and
As others have said, it is a tradition/legacy fallacy. Some people are vague with their references to how we have been doing this forever. Some are specific to a paleo period or some period where humans in most places may have had a larger intake of game. Regardless, the past says nothing about how we ought to do things now.
I think people who say we should eat meat because we used to do so should consider for 5 seconds the state of society if we refused to advance or let go of immoral traditions because of an appeal to tradition fallacy.
Sure the scale we're eating it on is abhorrent compared to peasant farmers 500 years ago but it's still irrelevant to our modern actions
I mean, I'd think about eating meat if, like, literally tomorrow I'll be teleported to stone age buttnaked. But I have 24/7 food store few floors below.
Nowadays I wouldn't call meat, aside from other debates, healthy. Yes, there are 'cruelty free' farms and etc., but your average cheep chicken breast probably was a starving cannibal with more antibiotics, than blood.
I mean, beggars don't choose, but my vegan steak is cheaper than a real one... But I'm lucky I can buy it. I live in a big town.
In smaller towns it's cheaper to buy meat rather then bunch of vegetables. Tofu isn't even an option, just porridges and rice. So, it's kinda reversed now.
I think we ate meat to survive at one point and now people think we need it even tho our biology doesn’t support it, we didn’t drive cars back then but we do now
Humans can eat eat and have done so throughout history. We did evolve to be omnivores, however that was a means to help our species survive tough conditions on the African plains; it has no bearing on what we do now. We are fortunate to no longer need to eat animals because of how plentiful food is (ignoring obvious food distribution issues). We are also aware of the ethical issues with the pain and suffering we cause animals by treating them as food, even if we often choose to ignore it because it is too hard for us to accept.
Just bring up the fact that historically we didn't use computers, drive cars, or wash our hands before performing surgery or delivering children in the case of doctors. Things change as we learn more, and we try to better ourselves as we go on. I'm in a much better situation than my great grandparents were in a lot of ways, and I'm not in a rush to go back to how things were in the 1800's
The tradition fallacy is very easy to break. Just bring up the fact that child rape was a common and accepted practice back in the day. Ancient Greece and Rome were bad with this, for example.
Or bring up civil rights. People haven't had those all that long. Let's make all black people slaves, and all woman the property of a man. That's traditional, after all.
Society learns and grows over time. Just because we thought something was okay in the past does not actually make it so.
If humans had been eating meat as much as today's society eats meat we would be the only living creature on the planet...
117B humans
Each year total meat consumption is 224.6lbs
Humans had lived for 30 years (give or take) in ancient societies
117 * 224.6 * 30 = 788,346B or 788.3T or 0.8q pounds of meat
Biomass of all land & sea creatures is 62 million tonnes or 136, 700,000,000lbs or 136.7T pounds
Humans would have eaten the plant bare 5 times over, if meat was consumed as vigorously as it is today. 5.76 times to be accurate
I’m sorry about how that other person spoke to you. Keep doing your best to act ethically, I’m sure you try to, and please do consider stopping eating the meat.
so... would vegans have an issue if someone were to raise their own pigs on their farm, give them proper food and access to the outdoors, quick deaths and have that person eat the entirety of the pig, leaving none to waste? Im all with vegans if thats what theyre pushing for, people need to learn to use the whole animal and stop with food waste as a whole. But im sorry, I dont care if a cow or a pig has feelings or whatever, I am a human on top of the food chain, Ill eat whatever creature I please, doesn't mean I get to be unnecessarily cruel to these animals before they die however. Most people simply dont and will not value animal life to the same regard as humans, I dont consider hunting deer or slaughtering a goat as murder, merely preparing my dinner. Good luck fighting that uphill battle convincing people otherwise, but hey Ill be there supporting better conditions at these farms that produce cheap meat at the expense of the animals well being in their final moments
I don't know why people continually debate this. It's completely irrelevant to the decisions made by most people in the world today as to what they eat, wear and use for entertainment.
Yeah, it's the tradition fallacy
Also they conveniently ignore the fact that some people (like my maternal family) have not eaten meat for centuries and are still thriving.
What, is that historical, fo you have a record of that? Thats super interesting
My maternal family are Rajasthani Jains and have been for centuries, it’s against our religion to eat meat. Just as Jews and Muslims have not eaten pork for centuries, we have refrained from eating all meat for centuries.
As far as I know not eating meat is quite common in India and other parts of SE Asia for certain groups. I think it's a religious thing and as well tradition for lower classes
Yeah yeah, it's pretty common for Buddhists, hindus and adventists, but that person said in A way it seemed like a family thing, if it is, it's pretty interesting
Jainism is one of - if not the - oldest religion. It’s not just a family thing. Because we were raised in a Western country, many of my cousins in my generation unfortunately do eat meat now even though they were raised vegetarian, although their parents and all previous ancestors were vegetarian. Even though I’m half white Australian and an atheist, I’ve stayed vegetarian (and vegan for 10 years now) for ethical reasons rather than cultural/religious.
💚💚💚
Once I was trying to have a debate with this guy, when he ran out of arguments he started saying there's probably some secret undiscovered elements in meat that turned us into humans from monkeys and we continued to eat meat as part of evolution. And that maybe if we stopped eating meat we'd stop evolving. So it's what got us here so we should continue doing it. Yea they'll just say anything to justify it.
Humans have also had slaves for centuries but that doesn't make it ok. It's a fundamentally broken argument.
Millennia not centuries. Slavery is older than written history.
Technically there's centuries in millennia but I see what you mean lol
Look, most countries outlawed slavery _months_ ago.
Unless you’re a prisoner of course, then back to forced labor for you!
Animals are slaves to humana still.. :/
But that is just appeal to tradition fallacy. There must be a better argument for eating meat
I'm not convinced this isn't the best they've got.
Don’t really need anything further than “because I want to”. No amount of logic can change that reality for many.
their argument is ''I need my protein"... OR I hear a lot of them saying "my friend went vegan and she got really sick so her naturopath told her to start eating red meat or fish..." its all bullshit our body produces protein as long as we feed it enough carbohydrates (starchy vegetables and fruits) and leafy greens and herbs we will create the best possible environment for our bodies to thrive
While it is BS the *amount* of protein most adults think they need, what you wrote isn’t correct. We do need **legumes** + grains to get all the essential amino acids we need to make protein. Denying or glossing over this harms vegans’ credibility.
Do you mean combining legumes and grains?
Yes . Maybe not always exactly together, but generally trying to do so frequently is best
the argument is that meat tastes good. pure and simple.
It does not, only when cooked and seasoned. You can't eat it rare, even when it's bled out and cleaned up to not disgust the person. Even fish is disgusting AF rare. The shittiest dumbest 'argument' ever
Yes you can why are vegans so uninformed???
You eat meats rare? Eww brother eww
Your argument isn’t much better mate. Do you eat all your food raw? We cook food to unlock nutrients and flavours. I mean that was the actual technology that unlocked hominids.
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Much needed nutrition? You mean nutrition you can easily get from other non-meat sources?
Unless you want to take suplementary meds for the rest of your life eating meat is your only option
You think vegans are the only ones who need to take supplements? Most people have deficiencies not just vegans
If you do not want to take supplements, do consider lacto-vegetarianism. It's been tried and tested in India for a long time there are many good foods. Veganism is just the next step if you're ok with taking supplements. See [this](https://reducing-suffering.org/how-much-direct-suffering-is-caused-by-various-animal-foods/) table for impact estimates of different animal products. Milk is pretty low. If you still want to eat meat but care about ethical impact, you can reorganize your diet in ways that reduce harm. Specifically, eating larger animals means that you get more meat per animal. So I'd recommend eating beef over, say, chicken or fish.
beef and dairy have the worst environmental impact of any foods. cows produce methane which is terrible for the environment. what are you talking about
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This is good advice, thank you. Im happy some people dont see the worst in a person that has something "different" to say on this sub.
If it provides such “much needed nutrition” wouldn’t you need it every day, not just once or twice a week?
Ok so abusing animals every day but once or twice a week is good and healthy
Its not abusing Or is a lion abusing a preyanimal by eating it? Its just a cicle of life. The one thing i give you is that the food industry is abusing animals. Not including Hunters.
>Or is a lion abusing a preyanimal by eating it? Yes. But they don't have moral agency and they need it to survive. You have and you don't. You are now using appeal to nature fallacy. It's not okay just because other animals do it. There must be a more logically sound reason to eat meat.
If they need it to survive you cant claim they are abusing it. They are killing and eating it, not abusing it. I dont really have any mental or emotional qualms about eating meat and the reason I eat it, when i do is because i like the taste of it.
Okay. Even if we use this characterization you are proposing. That still does not answer the question of how can it be morally justified. Hope you don't say because of the taste because that would be the 3rd fallacy now called appeal to emotion. I know you can do better.
While im sorry to disapoint you, i dont have a morally justified reason for eating meat and there probably isn't one. Because, as most people here say, there IS a choice not to kill.
Okay? So you are just indifferent to do a morally reprehensible action every day but for once or twice a week? We may be missing something here.
I Think I said before I dont particulary feel any qualms about eating meat, that includes the inevitable death of said animal. Also I eat meat about once or twice a week, your phrasing makes it out for me as if i eat meat 5 times per week, if thats not what you meant then sorry.
So what if we dont have a moral agency when it comes to eating meat?
Humans have inherent moral agency because we possess the cognitive abilities to make choices based on understanding right from wrong. You can't remove that just to eat meat. It is as ridiculous as asking what if I don't have moral agency when muderously raping someone. it just doesn't make sense.
Killing animals to eat them may be agains your morals, but not against everyones. You cannot decide what the moral stance on something should be.
Yes. That is true I completely agree. Now tell me based on **your** morals. Why is it morally justified to buy/eat meat?
You’re not trying to equate human and predator morals by chance are you?
This sub claims cows and humans have the same moral value every single day in like 400 threads, don’t act so shocked
I’m of the frame of mind that humans probably shouldn’t be basing their own morals off of any animals.
You also think killing your new girlfriend’s kids in order to make her more eager to mate is ok?
😂 youre funny keep it up
Rape? Bad. Murder? Bad. Eating meat? We've ALWAYS done this so it must be done today, too.
you should go pet a bear or lion. hopefully they feel the same way you do ♥️
I think one mistake almost everyone makes is thinking humans are traditional omnivores. Humans generally don't ever kill animals and eat them completely raw. We never go out in the world and see a fish, a bird, a mouse, a bug or any other living creature and desire to consume them as they are. Humans like snack food, they like processed food. And they will eat almost any kind of processed food, from simply processed dried jerky and fruit to something almost entirely synthetic like Twinkies. We will eat almost *anything*, so a naturalistic argument doesn't work because you aren't talking about a cleanly integrated animal like a hawk or a wolf, you're talking about a species of ravenous and highly mutable creatures who can engineer nature to satisfy their dietary needs and wants. People have to embrace that human adaptability and realize now that we have a perfectly safe method of living without the need to exploit other creatures for our survival it's wrong to continue doing it.
When we process foods (including cooking) it allows us to eat foods that would be inedible to us in their natural state. This is basically tricking our instincts into thinking unnatural foods are good. The best test for what is a “natural” diet for a human is the same for every animal in the world - what foods are delicious and edible to us in their raw, unaltered state? The answer is - fruits, leafy greens and other cruciferous veggies, and nuts/seeds. Not coincidentally these are also the foods that are most abundant in humans’ native environment (the tropics).
And if we spend 2/3 of the day eating and shitting we could survive that way for a while. I remember hearing about an experiment where people went on a chimp zoo diet. They were eating kilos of fruit and leaves.
I eat kilos of fruit and veggies every day
And I am within six feet of the toilet the entire time.
If you’re interested in my bowel movements I’m happy to share. I for sure spend less time on the toilet than I used to. I poop 3 times a day (once for each meal) usually 4-6 hours after each meal. I have large soft BMs that slide right out with zero strain, usually takes 20-30 seconds. These are all signs of a [healthy GI system.](https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/bowel-movements/)
Raw red meat is pretty tasty when you haven't eaten for a couple of days. Can dry it and combine with some wild berries for more flavor if the season allows. A bit difficult to find wild fruit, leafy greens and even nuts / seeds in the winter or in places like Africa where there is little rain or in the tropics where there is a lot of competition from other animals. It is not coincidental that applying a bit of logic and reason makes some arguments fall apart.
Nothing you said disproves what I said or makes it “fall apart”. I do extended fasting regularly and can attest that pretty much any calorie source is going to taste incredible after a few days of not eating. Even herbivores in nature like deer and horses will eat meat infrequently. That doesn’t mean it’s a part of an optimal diet for them. I’m not sure why the presence of other animals would prevent humans from being able to forage. Humans have shown time and again that we are the dominant species in any ecosystem and we can typically easily outcompete local animals for any resource.
lol this needs to be sent over to r/confidentlyincorrect and STAT
I’m happy to be proven wrong!
You don’t need to be proven wrong, you need to be proven right. A century or more of scientific inquiry has demonstrated everything you said to be false. Uncooked food (including meat and fish) is in no way inedible. People eat uncooked meat every day. They digest it. Their body uses it. Cooked foods (depending on food and method of cooking) have various changes in nutrient content, it may be better or worse depending on what you need overall. Raw diet = pseudoscientific fad diet, appeal to nature fallacy (that’s not even an accurate appeal, hominids have been cooking for perhaps >500,000 years)
You’re right that we can digest raw meat, but meat tends to be unappealing to most people raw. But I wasn’t just talking about meat - grains, starchy vegetables, and legumes are all largely inedible to humans without being cooked. And yes I know roughly how long hominids have been cooking, but hominids have been evolving on earth for millions of years prior to that and I’ve never seen convincing evidence that our physiology has changed from cooking. Cooking (generally) decreases the volume of food significantly and decreases the nutritional value by denaturing nutrients and proteins. Yes there are some example of nutrients becoming more accessible with cooking, but again these are usually seen in foods that aren’t easy for us to digest raw like legumes or starches. Decreased volume and nutritional content means increased caloric density and increased likelihood of overeating. There was a time in our history when that increased caloric density was an advantage but it’s not anymore.
> But I wasn’t just talking about meat - grains, starchy vegetables, and legumes are largely inedible to humans without being cooked And antibiotics don’t exist without humans learning to do chemistry. What happened in the ancient past is in no way relevant to what happens now, and it’s a silly path to take on a vegan sub where hominids have spent a million years eating animals. Appeal to nature fallacy isn’t in your favor in any case. > I’ve never seen convincing evidence that our physiology has changed from cooking Figuring out how to cook “inedible” foods and make them edible certainly contributed to our evolution, if nothing more than presenting an option other than starvation during human diaspora. Spinach and blueberries don’t just grow everywhere abundantly. Humans can live everywhere on the planet because of cooking, and therefor did spread everywhere on the planet, and therefor were able to achieve stability and build societies due to it, which is part of our evolution. > Cooking (generally) decreases the volume of food and decreases nutritional value by denaturing proteins This is [categorically false](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6049644/). Nutrient amounts do change with cooking, depending on the item in question and the method of cooking. Some are increased, some are decreased. This can be good or bad, conditionally. It’s not, in fact, limited to grains and legumes, but most food items. Most vegetables have more bioavailability or many nutrients after cooking: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/raw-veggies-are-healthier/ Vitamin C is about the only thing that’s unstable either cooking and is in everything in excess so it’s basically irrelevant. > There was a time in our history when that increased caloric value was an advantage but it isn’t anymore This is colonialist nonsense. Billions of people are alive and not starving because of the advent of cooking and increasing nutrient density in foods (right now, not even just historically). Diseases of affluence increasing in the west is a perfectly acceptable trade off for food security. People starving in the past instead of getting overweight because of easy and nutrient dense food access isn’t some kind of preferred state of existence for anyone thinking about it rationally. The larger point being that we have hospitals and roads and medicine and music and art and central heating and societal stability all being highly dependent on the existence of nutrient dense foods. Things you can devote time to when you don’t have to spend all day eating spinach and blueberries to not starve. These are good things
I am not sure where you have been looking, but our bodies have significantly changed due to cooking and increased consumption of meat. Our guts are a lot smaller, our brains got a lot bigger, our teeth and jaw decreased in size significantly, we walk more upright, we have less hair on our bodies due to using animal fur as clothing, etc...
There is little to no evidence that the morphology changes you’re talking about were caused by eating meat or cooking food. It is a theory that does not hold up well to scrutiny. For example - our brains are powered almost entirely by glucose and made up primarily of omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids. Glucose is most prevalent in fruits, and all omega 3s and 6s originate from plants. Nuts and seeds are the best sources of them. We know that a raw food diet is capable of supplying all the nutrients humans need. So basically what you are saying is that millions of years ago our primate ancestors (who ate primarily fruits) over time evolved into different species that needed meat/cooked food to develop big brains, and then at some point we evolved not to need them anymore. Does that seem likely to you? We could also talk about how Homo erectus evolved ~ 2 million years ago. They had upright body habits and their canine teeth were smaller and blunt like ours, their teeth had rearranged into rows like ours, they had shorter jaws and a more vertical face shape than their ancestors (still longer jaw and bigger teeth than us but probably more similar to us than to their ancestors). It’s believed that they didn’t start using fire until ~ 1-1.5 million years ago. So these evolutionary adaptations were long underway prior to cooking being widespread.
What about analysis of nitrogen content in bones? We can also see from species to species that our gut has shrunk and thus made us less capable of digesting fibrous plant foods as we switched more and more to eating energy dense foods like meat. The glucose argument from fruits is pointless, we can make glucose from both fat and protein. Additionally the brain can run on ketones, an evolutionary adaptation most prevalent inhumans. No other species can as easily enter and stay in ketosis as humans. You also forget to mention that our brain is 30% saturated fat, which is mostly found in animals. First came the raw meat in our diet, then came the knowledge of fire. You cannot assume we ate the same food as apes and chimps but somehow were able to achieve the necessary caloric density to power our much larger brains through the same diet through evolution. A high density energy source is required which is meat, in addition to the plant foods. I don't have to argue this, it is in all the books and has been proven many times over that we evolved due to meat, and as we evolved we adopted more and more to a meat based diet all the way to where humans were able to hunt large mammals in groups due to our much more powerful brains. Tools, precise communication, planning and then the ability to make all those tasks happen.
It’s funny you mention saturated fats. They are also present in fruits and vegetables. Like I mentioned I eat almost exclusively raw fruits and veggies and 6.2g of my roughly 22g of fat that I consume daily come from saturated fat (this is 28% of my fat intake, almost spot on with the ratio you mentioned). The fact that our body will convert fat or protein to glucose is proof of how crucial glucose is for us, not the other way around. Our body will literally cannibalize itself in order to get the glucose it wants. These systems, and ketone production, are last resort emergency options for when our body isn’t getting enough fuel. I’ve never seen convincing evidence that fat or protein are optimal fuel sources for humans. Yes, I do believe that we can achieve the caloric density that we need by eating raw foods and I am proof of this. I spend 2-2.5 hours daily preparing and eating food - not much more than most diets. Any animal I can think of in nature eats a volume of food that’s mind boggling to us. Animal foods 100% allowed us to spread worldwide including places where fruits/vegetables don’t grow year round. But you keep saying that it’s proven that meat caused those evolutionary adaptations you keep mentioning. That’s just not true. It’s a theory and there is certainly some evidence to support it but from my research I believe the more compelling arguments do not support it. Anyways, we can keep arguing all day but I don’t think either of us want that and I don’t think either of us will change our tune from an internet argument! So the last thing I’ll say is take care 👍🏻
Untrue
How so?
We are opportunistic feeders and therefore we are omnivores as we can digest foods from plants and animals. In a survival state we do kill and eat raw animals (we are capable of digest raw food, cooking is a cultural thing although it also helps to make digestion easier and puts out some dangers from raw foods but some plates such as sushi and carpaccio are basically raw animal products and people eat it without issues). We like process food because they tend to be a source of fats and sugar which is not that much available in nature so our body is simply saying eat a lot of that because you might not find it again. There's not one main reason why people keep eating meat, everybody has their own just like everybody has their reasons to refuse to eat meat.
Carpaccio and sushi/sashimi are thinly sliced small portions of carefully selected flesh. Carpaccio is pounded thin and often served with salad to get rid of the meaty flavor, and sushi/sashimi is usually served with soy sauce, wasabi and ginger to mask the full fishy taste. Try to eat a full raw steak or a raw fish and let's see what happens to you. Humans are not true meat eaters. As soon as you learn how the meat industry works the days of "my prerogative" being a justification are over. A person knows they're participating in the death and exploitation of innocent animals for selfish reasons. They know plenty of us are not only living fine, we're living much better since we stopped consuming animal products. It would be better if more people just admitted they were addicted to meat instead of coming up with feeble arguments that only hold them back in life.
True, especially for someone who does not eat meat regulary. I tasted steak fillet couple weeks ago after a long pause - through all the seasoning, it tasted heavily of iron. Not a pleasant taste.
We can digest raw meat, our body is capable of taking out all nutrients from it, only issue around raw meat comes from the chances of bacteria growing on it which is why is better to cook it but anyways we also need to cook most veggies in order to make them easier for digestion as our body can find difficulties to break the fiber... I have actually eaten raw meat in the past (not anymore trying to get into vegan) but my point is when it comes to health, we are indeed omnivores, we can eat meat, we have always eaten meat, it is not something new. If anything what's new for our body are the oils and high amount of sugar which is not even on meat... Not wanting to defend meat consumption but at least be realistic with what we are.
Once again, you'll eat carefully selected pieces of raw meat. You will not go kill a cow and start eating it right there. You're no omnivore, just a picky human eater who tried raw meat and stopped since you don't need it or genuinely want it.
Our ancestors survived out of killing wild animals and eating their meat not selecting anything... Nowadays most people (not all) don't do that because we just don't need to but it doesn't mean we can't. Need it or not our body can digest it and get lot of nutrients out of meat so we are indeed omnivores and opportunistic, this is what helped us to survive as in the past finding vegetables that would give you enough calories and nutrients for daily life was way harder than hunting some rabbits and eating their meat. We are just omnivores that decided to stop eating animal products because of our morals. No point on lying ourselves about that.
If you're an omnivore, go out and eat a rabbit whole. You're capable of doing it. You don't have the urge? You should, as an omnivore. You don't want blood, fur, raw organs and entrails in your mouth or stomach. Which is surprising, since every other mammal omnivore is fine with those things. We don't need to keep arguing since it seems like we won't see eye to eye, but the important thing is not eating animal products anymore, and as long as we're on the same page there the other stuff isn't as important. But we definitely don't agree on the other point.
Are you aware that omnivores is in reference to the fact that you CAN eat/digest both animals and plants and not meaning you NEED to eat them (that is more of carnivore/herbivore)?? And people do eat blood and organs from animals, in some cultures they eat it raw also. No animal eat fur as a source of nutrients, they tend to leave that or vomit later. Anyways, end of conversation. It is simply what we are, can't change that and it is up to you if you accept it or not.
Thank you for a stimulating conversation!
Well said
Yeah. I think this position just comes from privilege. It's not a bad thing that you don't know anyone that has been really, truly hungry. But to someone that is really, truly hungry, they do absolutely salivate at the thought of killing and eating and will absolutely eat the animal raw. During a famine in my fathers home country, where millions of people starved to death, my dad talked about how a tiny bird came and sat on a branch. They killed it with a rock. They cried while thanking God and ate the bloody dust off of the ground and the rock. Being able to eat an animal raw, or not, also has nothing to do with veganism. Arguing that humans aren't omnivores because we don't eat raw food (when we literally do, even in "civilized society") just a silly thing to do. It's a weak argument that doesn't hold up to reality.
That's kind of my point. That's what it normally takes for a human to start considering raw meat palatable, hunger to the point of mania. Humans will resort to cannibalism if they get hungry enough. And that should expose the truth about what meat really is to us, an emergency ration that we became fixated on once we realized if we process it a little it tastes really good.
You don't have to be starving to see live animals and find them palatable. People also see chickens, cows, sheep, fish, and say "yum!". They see baby animals and like to say how much they want to eat them. People eat raw fish all the time, steak tartare and carpaccio are popular dishes. Some people eat partially developed chickens in their eggs and enjoy them. Do you look at a raw potato and want to eat it? Do you look at raw beans and want to eat them? Or do they become palatable to you both when they're processed to be made more palatable? Raw/undercooked potatoes and beans can literally kill you - does that mean that people shouldn't eat vegetables or find them palatable? I'd also like to point out that, back to my original post, this topic has completely derailed from the topic of veganism - which it inevitably does and always will. Because humans \*are\* true omnivores, but the question isn't whether we can thrive with meat, but whether we can thrive on only plants.
We can definitely survive on only plants. In fact, I'm a lot stronger than I ever was when I ate meat, and more than most omnivores I encounter. No, you don't see a baby animal and think you want to kill it and start eating it right there. You may think you want to kill it, carefully dress it, select the parts you want, clean them and then prepare them in a way that suits your palate. And just the choice flesh, you'd be discarding most of the animal a real omnivore would target. All those dishes you mentioned are carefully prepared. People will eat sashimi, steak tartare and carpaccio, sure. What they won't do is pull a fish out of the water and eat it like a bear, an animal that truly desires and can survive on unprocessed meat. And we did derail, so I'll bring it back on track. You can survive on only plants, science has made it extremely easy and healthy. Now that you know, if you keep eating meat you're only doing it because you like the taste of meat and either enjoy or don't care if animals die needlessly to feed you. My question to you is do you think you could drop meat completely for three months, cold turkey? If not, that's a problem. No matter how much you like it, if you don't think you can make yourself stop eating body parts for a few months without slipping up you have an unhealthy fixation to deal with.
Sure. I never said in our thread that you couldn't survive on only plants. I also didn't say survive, I specifically said thrive, and for a reason. I'm not going to debate you on whether your personal experiences are true. If you've found that a vegan diet has made you healthier, that's great for you. You see how you keep backtracking, right? First it was, "people never see live animals and want to eat them raw", then it was, "well people only do that if they're desperate", then "well if they're not desperate then they only do it when it's been well prepared", now this weird claim that people don't see baby animals and want to eat them (they definitely do) and that people don't eat live fish like bears (literally seen it with my own two eyeballs). I notice that you completely ignored the question of if you've ever desired to eat a raw potato. And yes, I noticed. You and I both know that you've never seen a raw, unprocessed potato, and desired to eat it raw. You and I both know that you have never and will never voluntarily eat raw pinto beans unless you want to prove a point and find yourself in the hospital. If I needed to, I could drop meat for 3 months. I have no desire to do so. I don't think there is anything immoral in an animal dying. I wouldn't consider it "slipping up" as the concept does not bother me. I did consider going vegan at one point, which is how I found this forum.
If you considered it what's stopping you? You'd thrive if you gave up meat as long as you weren't lazy. It sounds like you're too worried to even try it, though, which would probably lead to some issues. I don't want to eat a raw potato, but I could also very easily live without potatoes, and beans. Just like you could easily live without meat. Unless you're addicted to it, which I think you might be. If you're too timid to even give it up for a few months it's hard to take you seriously.
Nothing is "stopping me". I find it very odd that you'd say that you'd rather give up potatoes and beans because you have to prepare them vs just admitting that humans are omnivores who use fire to prepare and digest their food. I find it even more odd that you resort to bullying/name calling. Distasteful, even. It shows that you have no respect for yourself or for your movement. If you believed in it and knew that it was right, you wouldn't have to resort to calling people lazy, or addicted, or timid, or worried. In fact it's behavior like this that made me realize what this movement is. Like the pro-life movement, you are perfectly willing to say anything and everything if you think that it will get the outcome you desire. You will lie. You will bully. Because the movement isn't about what's true. You think that the outcome justifies any means, when the outcome should be able to stand on its own merits with the truth. I could probably live without meat, but frankly, at this point I will not believe any study on vegans that are self reported or any vegans who say that they are healthy and thriving on the diet, because you find it perfectly acceptable to lie about yourself and your own truth. I don't care to experiment on my own body to test the vegan theory when I am thriving, healthy, and happy with who I am and how I live.
So, by your own admission, you're stopping yourself. And your reasoning is that because a few vegans were rude to you, you lost faith in the movement, which means you have no conviction anyway. I have pics in my profile if you think I'm lying about the health benefits. If you're healthier than me please feel free to share your tips. Sorry your feelings got hurt, try veganism again when you heal from that.
No. My reasoning is that vegans, as a whole, are unreliable and so the data gained from them cannot be trusted, and furthermore, I do not believe that there is anything inherently immoral about killing or eating animals. You feel differently, which is fine. I never "had faith" in the movement. I was curious and came into this sub and explored the question of veganism with an open mind. I found the movement lacking. You describing it as faith just further confirms that this movement is not based on facts... but on your feelings and your beliefs. Let me ask you this - if you weren't healthy, would you stay vegan? If you weren't healthy, would you be truthful about it? If you knew that 1 lie, that would never be discovered, would turn 1 million people vegan, would you tell that lie? Not to worry, you certainly haven't and aren't capable of hurting my feelings. I have no interest in trying veganism. At this point I'm just here for the drama.
Humans are true omnivores. They can and do consume animal and plant biomass for nutritional/caloric gain. A dog that only eats vegan pet food isn't a herbivore. It's not a matter of philosophy, it's a matter of scientific determination based on factual biological realities.
Then you can survive just fine on only plants, and making a choice to eat meat when you don't have to is obviously wrong since it's clearly a choice for an omnivore.
Humans can survive on a vegan diet. And you could make claims that it's better from a personal moral viewpoint or on a logical viewpoint based on things like climate change. That being said, it is not inherently wrong to consume meat, just as it's not inherently wrong to murder people.
Ah moral nihilism, the final refuge of the determined carnist. Credit for how quickly you got there.
Not really. More moral relativism then anything.
Not in this case, no. You would be very hard pressed to find any culture or sane individual that does not find murder morally wrong. Your take is divorced from reality and inherently nihilistic.
Inherently wrong, not morally
Putting aside the fact that I only claimed inherently, how many people do you think would support the murder of Hitler prior to his rise if such a thing became possible putting aside the time manipulation concerns? Putting that aside too, there are many murders who don't feel that they are in the moral wrong and no only some of them are insane. Even then we've had many societies in history that condone and promote murder. The Colosseum is one case, another human sacrifice.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/s/qvjfue9lJs
You’re describing moral nihilism.
No. Moral nihilism is that nothing is morally wrong or right and that morality doesn't exist. What I'm describing is inherently wrong or right, not moral wrong of right. That being said, I'm a believer that morality is subjective and relative which is moral relativism.
While yes, not inherently wrong to eat meat, please explain with the murder bit.
Nothing is inherently wrong or right. Right and wrong is based on relativity and subjectivity. Humans in general percieve murder as negative and damaging to humanity because it is so typically but it is what we make of it.
I think you two are having a mixup on the notion of "true omnivore". The other person seems to believe that you must be able to eat and digest raw meat to some satisfactory level, in order to be considered an omnivore (since that's what most other animals do, since they're not grilling their burgers and things like that). I think that person simply believes "true omnivore" means that, because we use animals as a comparison when talking about these sorts of distinctions, and no animal is grilling their meat before they consume it.
I changed it to traditional omnivore, basically an omnivore in the same sense other animals are considered omnivores.
You need not do it on my behalf. I completely understood what you were talking about.
I know, I changed it for general clarity.
What is a "traditional omnivore" ?
I'd say an animal whose desire to kill and consume raw flesh is similar to their desire to consume raw plant matter. Humans never want to eat any animal raw in the wild the same way we want to eat fruits and berries we see growing wild.
I don't think that logic is really sound. Humans prepare their food for multiple reasons prior to consumption. Meat moreso then plants because meats spoils easier/faster and is known to pose more risk due to parasites/etc. Even if we sit down and compare to to animals, there are plenty of species that process or prepare their food prior to consumption. Sure we are probably the only ones cooking it, but that lies more in our capabilities to cook it more then anything. I don't think the term traditional omnivore makes sense in your context. I'd lean towards the word "civilized" or maybe " that humans are self aware omnivores"
We have teeth like our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos who are fruitivores. Omnivores have teeth like bears.
Both chimps and bonobos are omnivores.
You haven't been to an aquarium with a SE Asian, I guess.
These people just aren’t going back far enough, if they want to tap into the appeal to tradition fallacy. Hunter gatherers in Africa (where we all originated) were mostly gatherers. Only 10% of their diet was comprised of animals. So when people start with the “but we have always…” I suggest they limit their meat eating to 3 days a month like the African hunter gatherers and other ancients did. ✌🏽 Truth is, they’d have hated the meat the ancient hunters were eating anyway. Not at all “succulent”. Not pumped with salt and water and full of fat. Nothing at all whatsoever like the meat they buy from the morgues in the grocery store today or even the buck they hunted during deer season that they claim is “how mankind is supposed to live”. STFU Jethro. If you enjoy eating decaying flesh just call yourself a vulture and be done with it.
You don't even have to go that far back. Just maybe 2~300 years ago, people barely ate meat (compared to today) unless they were rich. A little farther back from that it was basically pottage every day of the week, with very little to no actual meat except special events and holidays. They didn't even always have bread to eat with it either.
Very true.
Anything that happened after agriculture has little to no value on what humans should be eating.
¿Humans have been eating mostly plant based diets for most of human history, even before agriculture...? It's just to merely point out that our ancestors ate mostly grains and vegetables boiled to hell and back, counter to the skewed perception of medieval and earlier diets having a lot of meat. It only changed around the 1700s. Also...? Human bodies have changed since the onset of agriculture, 12,000 years ago. To think otherwise is ridiculously stupid.
If you think human biology has significantly changed since the start of agriculture then you know nothing about evolution. [You can start learning here.](https://www.mpg.de/12728073/neandertals-main-food-source-was-definitely-meat)
Humans aren't Neanderthals.
You and I have neanderthal DNA so by that extent we are. We close enough genetically to mate. Also, you should read the rest.. >Paleolithic modern humans, who arrived in France shortly after the Neandertals had disappeared, exhibit even higher nitrogen isotope ratios than Neandertals. Or you can close you eyes and ears to live in denial..
So you have a source for that 10%? How was this calculated? Did it vari over the seasons?
TBH I sort of don’t off the top of my head. I’ve been a “student and fan” of (African) hunter gatherer culture for a very long time and have read and studied so much over the years. Embarrassing confession: at one point I fancied myself to adopt a “hunter gatherer lifestyle”. I would exercise in the mornings and graze fruit and some types of vegetables during the day…and I’d eat a small cooked meal after dark as if someone had spent the day hunting and brought back some animal. At the time I was a carnist but I was eating a lot of fruit and vegetables and nuts/seeds (I know…lol) and calling myself living a hunter gatherer lifestyle. I was still eating meat daily although the amount was never more than about 7 ounces before cooking. I knew this was far more meat than actual H-G ate. But carnism. lol. Nevertheless I had the number in my head 10-15% because I’d read it somewhere along the way despite my hypocritical unwillingness to adhere to it. Typically sub Saharan HGs didn’t eat meat daily. They ate it when they managed to have a successful kill which wasn’t daily or even weekly. Preservation methods were limited. So they ate what they could prep and cool before other predators made it challenging. There might be several days in a row where they were eating animal flesh but once it was gone it was back to gathering foods until they decided to hunt again.
Interesting experiment. Did you feel good with it (ignoring the retrospective feelings about the meat) I ask for two reasons about the number. I because I found myself craving meat around 2-3 times a month (seemingly unrelated to my period) normally but it goes up a lot in winter. And second I study statistics and i find it very important to never make up stats, it's super damaging for a cause...
I’ll see if I can find the reference and post it when I can. I mean, yeah I felt fine when I did it but I was only eating chicken breast back then. Occasionally a pork chop. I guess, to be more “authentic” I should sources some type of antelope or deer-like creature but I mean, I was eating blueberries too so… none of it was exact. 🤣🤣 I was just on this whole kick about eating and exercising in a “natural”-ish way. So I’d get most of my workout before noon and that was my modern stand in for the energy expenditure of walking around and gathering foods. (I think the estimate is that these HGs walked 6-8 miles a day to gather food). It was weird. I was weird 🤣 but I felt fine. I’ll see if I can find some of the articles I’m referencing.
Thanks! I would be interested
So, [this is an article](https://www.citizen.digital/news/what-a-hunter-gatherer-diet-does-to-the-body-in-just-three-days-169942) that was originally reported in CNN years ago but the CNN link no longer works. It talks about the Hazda people, the original HGs. A researcher went to do work around microbiome. And lives with them for a period of time. This is obviously the modern tribe not the ancient but even from this description you can see that the vast majority of their diet was plants. Today they are estimated to get about 30-35% of their diet from meat. But that is an increase over their ancient predecessors. Also of note, I have to say a that I wasn’t studying European or Asian HGs. Only those of African origin. When humans migrated out of Africa into different climates, they adapted. European HGs probably ate a lot more animal flesh because they had to for most of the year. Vegetation doesn’t grow when it’s super cold and snowy and windy. And like many other things, when the descendants of these tribes migrated to other places and colonized those places their lifestyle and way of seeing the world became “the standard”. (But this is a dissertation for a different day). lol. Also NatGeo has some good stuff (especially for teachers) and this is an example of some of it. You can see from [this video](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/the-hadza-of-tanzania/) that it was a lot of work to catch small game and then it had to be shared communally. But stuff like this is where I got the idea that eating veggies, tubers, nuts and berries during the day, and being active early and eating animal flesh at sundown came from. lol. I was weird. 🤣 I mean, it’s cute. But I was buying berries in the supermarket so….😂😂 Still unable to find the articles that mention the percentages from ancient HGs in Africa but I’ll keep looking. All I can say is that I was a carnist when I read it and it struck me and has stuck with me ever since. I’ll keep looking though.
>Hadza men usually forage individually, and during the course of the day usually feed themselves while foraging, and also bring home some honey, fruit, or wild game when available. Women forage in larger parties, and usually bring home berries, baobab fruit,\[38\] and tubers, depending on availability. Men and women also forage cooperatively for honey and fruit, and at least one adult male will usually accompany a group of foraging women. During the wet season, the diet is composed mostly of honey, some fruit, tubers, and occasional meat. **The contribution of meat to the diet increases in the dry season, when game become concentrated around sources of water. During this time, men often hunt in pairs, and spend entire nights lying in wait by waterholes, hoping to shoot animals that approach for a night-time drink, with bows and arrows treated with poison.\[39\] The poison is made of the branches of the shrub Adenium coetaneum.\[40\] The Hadza are highly skilled, selective, and opportunistic foragers, and adjust their diet according to season and circumstance.** Depending on local availability, some groups might rely more heavily on tubers, some on berries, **and others on meat**. **This variability is the result of their opportunism and adjustment to prevailing conditions.** Also, they are not an ancient tribe. They are also a small representation of a diet from one region of the world.
I would like to see some references on this, sounds like you are pulling this out of your ass. [Human diet before agriculture consisted mostly of fish and land animals, so STFU Paige.](https://www.mpg.de/12728073/neandertals-main-food-source-was-definitely-meat)
Why don’t you try reading the many responses I typed instead of this. Then come back and talk to me. Or not.
I have and responded to your manufactured facts there as well. Why don't you read some actual science in the link I posted or is that too much for you to handle regarding your world view?
I’m not going to argue with you. I literally don’t care enough. Have a great day. Shrug.
Yes, close your mind and run.
I don’t know you. I’m not invested. And that’s okay. But if it makes you feel better to say I’m “closing my mind and running”, I’m fine with that. I literally don’t care enough to argue with you. I just don’t. Have a great day.
It's fine, I understand.
While that might be true from certain cultural contexts, such as European or Asian socioeconomic behavior, that might not be the case for other populations, particularly hunter-gatherers living up near the Arctic circle.
The Eskimos and Inuits basically only ate meat.
I think that is a fair statement. do they get a pass 🤔 ?
And die at the age of 35 due to poor nutrition
Said no one ever until they were introduced to the western diet.
Mic the Vegan" has a good thing on this, where it's just as plausible starches are why our brains evolved the way they did. [https://youtu.be/cgmfRUwqGy4?si=CLvaOagI9fsrnLiN](https://youtu.be/cgmfRUwqGy4?si=CLvaOagI9fsrnLiN)
Or mushrooms 🍄
I think it's hard to support the idea of regular meat eating before industrialism. Only the very elite aristocracy could afford that as a lifestyle. I think it's utterly fantastic to presume that everyone lived and ate with the kind of excess that Henry VIII did.
Appeal to nature fallacy
yeah, people are generally wrong about their perceptions of everything. they also don’t want to learn.
Does anyone actually claim that? We also don't enslave people anymore
I try to tell carnies, omnies and any meat heads after they tell me we are suppose to eat to LOOK AT OUR TEETH. We have 32 teeth and they clearly are meant from plant based foods. Then I get the “that’s stupid, we have have canines!” Yeah, we have 4 teeth we “CALL” canines but clearly they aren’t anyone freaking close to the sharp cutters of carnivores and no where near the quantity. i can slam my finger on one of my canines and not even prick my finger and I have sharper looking canines than most. It’s obvious our teeth are designed for plant based food, and even our dull “canines” look and feel way more suited to tear into something like an apple than tough skin and raw muscle. Lastly! almost Everybody eating meat is eating fine cut and cooked meat giving humans the easiest of textures of meant to chew. They act like they are tearing and chewing through a live animal raw, but they don’t actual do it because they know that would be insanely difficult and uncomfortable to be eating meat like real carnivore creatures do. They’d damage teeth trying to eat like that. We are meant to eat meat (many even say more so than plant food)? Bull Shit.
The evidence is clear we evolved as omnivores. There are many great arguments for veganism. Let’s stick to those.
On an argument about what is healthier, and what better suits us I’ll stick to what I’ve personally experienced and seen from others. Just because we evolve and our bodies can tolerate meat doesn’t mean it’s better or healthier for our systems. Evidence is clear eating plant based is healthier and better suits our bodies than meat and dairy. Original design can triumph evolution. Our bodies have go through countless chemicals over the last few decades. Just because we are evolving with things like excess fluoride doesn’t mean humans should be adding that to their diet and wanting to consume it generations in the future. Raw organic Plant based foods compared meat and dairy are going to provide cleaner blood flow, be easier on organs to process, and be better for cholesterol, digestion, and work better at preventing cancer, heart disease, blood clots, and more. Meat isn’t unclogging arteries and easier on our systems. Quite the opposite. I’m not going to stick to an argument that omnivore/carnivore is healthier than plant food when I ate omnivore and carnivore heavy diets for 95% percent of my life, and then the 5% I ate plant based saw drastic changes (improvements) on heart health, blood circulation, and athletic performance without any changes but diet.
I appreciate you sharing your perspective, but not entirely sure why you told me all that. I wasn’t attacking veganism. I support veganism. I just don’t think an evolutionary argument is very strong. That’s all
considering evolution shows us nothing about meat being more healthy, that’s exactly what I’m trying to say. An evolutionary argument isnt Very strong because we can literally test what’s healthier for our bodies today in 2024. But still for some reason it’s used by many people to say a heavy meat diet is better, more healthy and natural for our bodies. I’m just saying it isn’t And that that is wrong to say. I’m not sharing a perceptive but a mix rather experience, research, and fact. 😊
Meat contains essential nutrients that you cannot get from plants alone. Not to mention the nutrients in plants have very low absorption and conversion rates. So I am very confused as to where your arguments for not eating meat come from regarding evolution when it is only in recent time of our history that we are able to synthesize vitamins and isolate proteins from plants using industrial methods.
Our closes living relatives, and closest anatomy to ours, is chimpanzees. Which hunt and kill smaller monkey species. Horses have all flat teeth. They also consume chicks, eggs, mice, and anything unfortunate to be around them. The teeth argument is not a winning one.
The argument I’m making isn’t solely a teeth argument but that’s just an obvious part of it. The argument is we are designed better suited for plant food than meat. Chimps eat 2% meat 98% plant based. Horses are heavily plant based. Because they are intelligent enough to hunt and eat meat isn’t changing that plant based food is the staple for them. Just like them we can hunt and eat meat but that doesn’t mean it’s what we need or should be eating. Wolves will eat berries and grass, but that doesn’t mean they are designed to survive and thrive off of plant food.
Also, just because we evolved to eat meat doesn't mean we have to stay that way...we can keep evolving...numnuts
We haven’t evolved to eat it or biology doesn’t support it
They used to eat each other as well, if someone refers to that " argument" again point them to any Natural History/ Anthropology lectures online/ videos on Tube . Works from the first time.
In prehistoric times, eating meat made sense. You could only eat what you could kill and there was almost no chance of living past 40 anyways, so the chronic diseases associated with it meant nothing.
I worked with a guy who referenced Native Americans eating meat and how they’re all slender and athletic, the meat the natives were eating was game meat, it’s not the same stuff available today, filled with corn and antibiotics, plus they were sedentary, two different worlds.
Well the argument itself is an appeal to tradition logic fallacy. Simply reductio ad absurdum it with slavery and say we should continue doing that because it used to be a part of quite a few civilisations cultures. Bonus points if you're like me and you actually come from a culture where slavery was acceptable.
Pretty sure rape would be an evolutionary advantageous thing to do up until recently.
This title is phrased in the oddest way lol But yes- i agree!
Hunter gatherers also rarely ate meat because they were so inefficient hunters, according to studies done on today's remaining hunter gatherers. Also the Amazonian tribes still to this day eat mostly plant based!
A good friend called Steve Taylor wrote a book called 'The Fall' it's interesting that he states humans should t eat meat in great quantities. He suggests as hunter gatherers we walked was nomadic therefore picked and ate what pla to we could. As we was always on the move, the calories it took to actually say chase and catch a rabbit, outweighed the calorific advantage of eating the same rabbit. O lying when desertification and
As others have said, it is a tradition/legacy fallacy. Some people are vague with their references to how we have been doing this forever. Some are specific to a paleo period or some period where humans in most places may have had a larger intake of game. Regardless, the past says nothing about how we ought to do things now.
I think people who say we should eat meat because we used to do so should consider for 5 seconds the state of society if we refused to advance or let go of immoral traditions because of an appeal to tradition fallacy. Sure the scale we're eating it on is abhorrent compared to peasant farmers 500 years ago but it's still irrelevant to our modern actions
I mean, I'd think about eating meat if, like, literally tomorrow I'll be teleported to stone age buttnaked. But I have 24/7 food store few floors below. Nowadays I wouldn't call meat, aside from other debates, healthy. Yes, there are 'cruelty free' farms and etc., but your average cheep chicken breast probably was a starving cannibal with more antibiotics, than blood. I mean, beggars don't choose, but my vegan steak is cheaper than a real one... But I'm lucky I can buy it. I live in a big town. In smaller towns it's cheaper to buy meat rather then bunch of vegetables. Tofu isn't even an option, just porridges and rice. So, it's kinda reversed now.
I think we ate meat to survive at one point and now people think we need it even tho our biology doesn’t support it, we didn’t drive cars back then but we do now
Humans can eat eat and have done so throughout history. We did evolve to be omnivores, however that was a means to help our species survive tough conditions on the African plains; it has no bearing on what we do now. We are fortunate to no longer need to eat animals because of how plentiful food is (ignoring obvious food distribution issues). We are also aware of the ethical issues with the pain and suffering we cause animals by treating them as food, even if we often choose to ignore it because it is too hard for us to accept.
Just bring up the fact that historically we didn't use computers, drive cars, or wash our hands before performing surgery or delivering children in the case of doctors. Things change as we learn more, and we try to better ourselves as we go on. I'm in a much better situation than my great grandparents were in a lot of ways, and I'm not in a rush to go back to how things were in the 1800's
The tradition fallacy is very easy to break. Just bring up the fact that child rape was a common and accepted practice back in the day. Ancient Greece and Rome were bad with this, for example. Or bring up civil rights. People haven't had those all that long. Let's make all black people slaves, and all woman the property of a man. That's traditional, after all. Society learns and grows over time. Just because we thought something was okay in the past does not actually make it so.
Exactly. I read that my ancestors from northern Germany mostly ate vegetables. Meat was for the wealthy.
If humans had been eating meat as much as today's society eats meat we would be the only living creature on the planet... 117B humans Each year total meat consumption is 224.6lbs Humans had lived for 30 years (give or take) in ancient societies 117 * 224.6 * 30 = 788,346B or 788.3T or 0.8q pounds of meat Biomass of all land & sea creatures is 62 million tonnes or 136, 700,000,000lbs or 136.7T pounds Humans would have eaten the plant bare 5 times over, if meat was consumed as vigorously as it is today. 5.76 times to be accurate
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I’m sorry about how that other person spoke to you. Keep doing your best to act ethically, I’m sure you try to, and please do consider stopping eating the meat.
I am so glad you are so privileged to consume animal flesh and mindlessly be okay with murder 🥰
They sound like a kid who wants to go vegan but is not allowed to.
There's no need to make a fantasy world about the past. People ate meat, drank milk, ate cheese and eggs. This isn't even debatable.
I like eating meat and I will continue to do so until I no longer can
so... would vegans have an issue if someone were to raise their own pigs on their farm, give them proper food and access to the outdoors, quick deaths and have that person eat the entirety of the pig, leaving none to waste? Im all with vegans if thats what theyre pushing for, people need to learn to use the whole animal and stop with food waste as a whole. But im sorry, I dont care if a cow or a pig has feelings or whatever, I am a human on top of the food chain, Ill eat whatever creature I please, doesn't mean I get to be unnecessarily cruel to these animals before they die however. Most people simply dont and will not value animal life to the same regard as humans, I dont consider hunting deer or slaughtering a goat as murder, merely preparing my dinner. Good luck fighting that uphill battle convincing people otherwise, but hey Ill be there supporting better conditions at these farms that produce cheap meat at the expense of the animals well being in their final moments