That our ancestors ate meat, doesn't morally justify the consumption of meat

Some of our ancestors ate meat. It consisted of 25% or less of their diet.
We still don't have any adaptations for it.

This is a good lecture covering this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0PF5R0ywp4
Another article: http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/07/16/science-debunks-paleo-diet-again?cmpid=tp-ptnr-nutritionfacts

But, so what?
Why do you think it matters morally whether our ancestors ate meat or not??

We can thrive on a vegan diet.
Harming and killing animals for "pleasure"/convenience isn't moral. Thus veganism is our moral obligation.

I highly recommend you to study this article: http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/what-michael-vick-taught-us/#.UfTj1m37aQI

Humans are herbivores, not omnivores/meat-eaters

First of all I recommend you to read this article: http://articles.philly.com/2009-08-14/news/24986151_1_atlanta-falcons-quarterback-vick-illegal-dog-dog-fights

Reposted article:
To those saying that humans are ''omnivores'', just because they eat both plants and meat, you need to do some actual research, because what you choose to eat and what you are meant to eat are 2 completely different things. Actually, it's not even a choice. Humans eat meat because their parents shoved it down their throats when they were children, so they grew up thinking it's ''normal''. It's all due to indoctrination, social conditioning and lies coming from the meat industry.

We are not omnivores. The ''omnivorous human'' myth is based on ''observations'' that humans generally eat both plants and meat - it is not based on scientific or biological facts. Judging by anatomical design, and not by eating habits or traditions, humans are natural frugivores (a frugivore is a type of herbivore that's designed to eat and digest mostly fruits and greens).

All primates are natural frugivores. Yes, they sometimes eat meat, but that doesn't prove anything. Deer, hippos and horses also eat meat sometimes, and cats eat plant foods, but it would be silly to call them omnivores. In addition, according to some tooth enamel analysis of fossilized teeth of our ancestors, it appears that most of our ancestors had a mostly frugivorous diet (starch, fruits), while meat was just a small part of their diet, and our early ancestors did not have the ability to eat hard things, such as meat, so they were eating mostly soft fruits.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC17605

Natural omnivores are basically carnivores that are also adapted to eat plants. One would expect an omnivore to show anatomical features which equip it to eat both animal and plant foods. According to evolutionary theory, carnivore gut structure is more primitive than herbivorous adaptations. Thus, an omnivore might be expected to be a carnivore which shows some gastrointestinal tract adaptations to an herbivorous diet.

An omnivore has an intestinal tract 4 to 6 times their body length, while carnivores' is about 3 to 6 times their body length. A human's intestinal tract is 10 to 11 times their body length, therefore humans cannot be carnivores or omnivores.

In other words, one first must have been a natural carnivore, in order to become an omnivore, after many years of evolution. A natural herbivore cannot magically turn into an omnivore, no matter what. This single fact is enough to invalidate carnists' ''theory'' that humans are ''omnivores''.

We have multiple copies of a gene, called Amylase 1 (or AMY1), found in human DNA, which is evolutionarily designed for digesting tubers (starches, like potatoes). Ptyalin, a form of Amylase, is also found in our saliva, and in the saliva of other frugivorous animals, which proves that we are designed to eat carbs. The salivary amylase gene has undergone duplication during evolution, and DNA hybridization studies indicate that many individuals have multiple tandem repeats of the gene. The number of gene copies correlates with the levels of salivary amylase, as measured by protein blot assays using antibodies to human amylase. Gene copy number is associated with apparent evolutionary exposure to high-starch diets. For example, a Japanese individual had 14 copies of the amylase gene (one allele with 10 copies, and a second allele with four copies). The Japanese diet has traditionally contained large amounts of rice starch. In contrast, a Biaka individual carried six copies (three copies on each allele). The Biaka are rainforest hunter-gatherers who have traditionally consumed a low-starch diet. Perry and colleagues speculated the increased copy number of the salivary amylase gene may have enhanced survival coincident to a shift to a starchy diet during human evolution.

''Atherosclerosis affects only herbivores. Dogs, cats, tigers, and lions can be saturated with fat and cholesterol, and atherosclerotic plaques do not develop.''

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312295

Still think you're a natural omnivore? Try eating only raw meat (without any spices or seasonings, like true omnivores do) for at least 2 months and see if you can digest it and not get very, very sick. A true omnivore can live on an entirely plant based or an entirely meat based diet (without taking any supplements) and be healthy. True omnivores (and carnivores) can produce their own vitamin C. Humans can't. We would die from scurvy if we tried eating a meat only diet.


Facial Muscles
Carnivore - Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
Herbivore - Well-developed
Omnivore - Reduced
Human - Well-developed

Jaw Type
Carnivore - Angle not expanded
Herbivore - Expanded angle
Omnivore - Angle not expanded
Human - Expanded angle

Jaw Joint Location
Carnivore - On same plane as molar teeth
Herbivore - Above the plane of the molars
Omnivore - On same plane as molar teeth
Human - Above the plane of the molars

Jaw Motion
Carnivore - Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
Herbivore - No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
Omnivore - Shearing; minimal side-to-side
Human - No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back

Major Jaw Muscles
Carnivore - Temporalis
Herbivore - Masseter and pterygoids
Omnivore - Temporalis
Human - Masseter and pterygoids

Mouth Opening vs. Head Size
Carnivore - Large
Herbivore - Small
Omnivore - Large
Human - Small

Teeth (Incisors)
Carnivore - Short and pointed
Herbivore - Broad, flattened and spade shaped
Omnivore - Short and pointed
Human - Broad, flattened and spade shaped

Teeth (Canines)
Carnivore - Long, sharp and curved
Herbivore - Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
Omnivore - Long, sharp and curved
Human - Short and blunted

Teeth (Molars)
Carnivore - Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
Herbivore - Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
Omnivore - Sharp blades and/or flattened
Human - Flattened with nodular cusps

Chewing
Carnivore - None; swallows food whole
Herbivore - Extensive chewing necessary
Omnivore - Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing
Human - Extensive chewing necessary

Saliva
Carnivore - No digestive enzymes
Herbivore - Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
Omnivore - No digestive enzymes
Human - Carbohydrate digesting enzymes

Stomach Type
Carnivore - Simple
Herbivore - Simple or multiple chambers
Omnivore - Simple
Human - Simple

Stomach Acidity
Carnivore - Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
Herbivore - pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
Omnivore - Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
Human - pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach

Stomach Capacity
Carnivore - 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
Herbivore - Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
Omnivore - 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
Human - 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract

Length of Small Intestine
Carnivore - 3 to 6 times body length
Herbivore - 10 to more than 12 times body length
Omnivore - 4 to 6 times body length
Human - 10 to 11 times body length

Colon
Carnivore - Simple, short and smooth
Herbivore - Long, complex; may be sacculated
Omnivore - Simple, short and smooth
Human - Long, sacculated

Liver
Carnivore - Can detoxify vitamin A
Herbivore - Cannot detoxify vitamin A
Omnivore - Can detoxify vitamin A
Human - Cannot detoxify vitamin A

Kidney
Carnivore - Extremely concentrated urine
Herbivore - Moderately concentrated urine
Omnivore - Extremely concentrated urine
Human - Moderately concentrated urine

Nails
Carnivore - Sharp claws
Herbivore - Flattened nails or blunt hooves
Omnivore - Sharp claws
Human - Flattened nails

 Article from: Veganism Is The Future & Green Unity For Nature And Animal Liberation
I don't agree With everything on these websites.

Christianity, religion, the Bible, God and veganism?

Hello again Debbie,

Why would the gorilla who is a complete herbivore have canines that are much sharper than ours?
Why would God create a desire in the animals to live and a want not to be killed by humans, if that is the purpose of the animals?
Why would a Loving and Compassionate God, act against the love and compassion of the animals - who don't want to get killed by humans?
Why would a Loving and Compassionate God create misery and suffering in animals and their families, by allowing us to kill them and eat them?
Why would God command humans to be vegan in Genesis 1:26, showing how He wants people to live?? And this was before the "fall".
Why would our anathomy be the anathomy of a herbivore?
Why are animal products bad for our physical health if we are supposed to eat them, and causes cancers, heart diseases, diabetes, autoimmune diseases and other diseases?

Humans having the body of an herbivore [see footnote 1], animal products being bad for us [2], and us having not nutritional need at all for animal products [3], claiming that we are a predator is an erroneous statement. Just like the gorillas, cows and horses and many other animals we are herbivores. Just like cows, we can eat meat, however it is not good for our body, and not good for us spiritually [4].

We can’t look at other species, and justify our behavior, just because there are predators that hurt and kill other beings. There are many behaviors that some predators do that we would never justify, and if we use this methodology almost any human behavior can be justified. Put a small bunny in the same room as a small child. She will not try to hurt and kill the bunny. Hurting and killing other sentient beings is something that is contradictory to our inner nature, our loving, compassionate and nonviolent nature; and is something that is only learnt by the indoctrination of our culture, which has reduced animals to being commodities. Doing this as a regular habit, we disconnect ourselves to the animals, and we lose some of our capacity to understand that it is wrong to take the life of another being - who is consciousness just like us. Just because they have been given another body than us, doesn't mean that there is any essential difference. This is also discussed in the wonderful book World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle [4]. If you visited a slaughterhouse you would see that the animals don’t want to die and that they suffer tremendously when someone is taking their precious life.

Footnotes:
1.http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/natural.html; 2. http://www.adelicatebalance.com.au/ ;3. http://www.drmcdougall.com/ ; http://www.forksoverknives.com/
4. www.worldpeacediet.org  ; good lecture here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PkQrJZYZN4&NR=1&feature=endscreen

Human canine teeth? We are not made for eating animals.

Lorr,
Regarding our anatomy including teeth, please check this out: http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/11/the-comparative-anatomy-of-eating.html
Our love, compassion and empathy for animals we have for respecting their lives and not to inflict violent and death upon them, in contradiction with their wants and desires. The spiritual law of treat others as you yourself want to be treated, and as you saw you will reap, applies to all animals: http://bloganders.blogspot.no/2013/04/golden-rule-treat-others-as-you.html
...x

Vegan answer to 'Humans are at top of the food chain'

Quote: "but i did not fight my wy to the top of the food chain to be a vegan i think its fine if you are"

Humans having the body of an herbivore [see footnote 1], animal products being bad for us [2], and us having not nutritional need at all for animal products [3], claiming that we are at the “top of the Food chain” is an erroneous statement. Just like the gorillas, cows and horses and many other animals we are herbivores. Just like cows, we can eat meat, however it is not good for our body, and not good for us spiritually [4].

We can’t look at other species, and justify our behavior, just because there are predators that hurt and kill other beings. There are many behaviors that some predators do that we would never justify, and if we use this methodology almost any human behavior can be justified. Put a small bunny in the same room as a small child. She will not try to hurt and kill the bunny. Hurting and killing other sentient beings is something that is contradictory to our inner nature, our loving, compassionate and nonviolent nature; and is something that is only learnt by the indoctrination of our culture, which has reduced animals to being commodities. Doing this as a regular habit, we disconnect ourselves to the animals, and we lose some of our capacity to understand that it is wrong to take the life of another being - who is consciousness just like us. Just because they have been given another body than us, doesn't mean that there is any essential difference. This is also discussed in the wonderful book World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle [4]. If you visited a slaughterhouse you would see that the animals don’t want to die and that they suffer tremendously when someone is taking their precious life.

Footnotes:
1.http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/natural.html and http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/030700pumeatinthehumandiet.htm [I don't agree With everything in this article, but it contains good facts about human anatomy];
See also this video: Nathaniel Dominy PhD. and the True Human Diet.
 2. http://www.adelicatebalance.com.au/ ;3. http://www.drmcdougall.com/ ; http://www.forksoverknives.com/
4. www.worldpeacediet.org  ; good lecture here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PkQrJZYZN4&NR=1&feature=endscreen

----------------

• Jan Vilse Ah, "nature's food chain". People resign any ability to critically question human actions, and this intellectual and moral passivity -- the attitude of "this is just how things are" -- they try to disguise by presenting it as some kind of pre-assigned natural law or order.
• Sarah K. Woodcock Jan Vilse, humans using nonhumans for food is "nature's food chain" just like whites using blacks for slaves is "nature's slave chain" -- it is right...because it is right. Right?

Debunking the paleo-diet. The paleolithic diet, the 'meat myth'. Humans have no known anatomical, physiological, or genetic adaptations to meat consumption.

My notes as I was listening to a lecture about the real paleolithic diet.
Myth 1

Humans have evolved to eat meat and paleo-people consumed a lot of meat.

Quite the opposite is true.
Humans have no known anatomical, physiological, or genetic adaptations to meat consumption.

We have many adaptations to plant consumption.

Vitamin C is found in plants. We can’t make it ourselves such as carnivores.

Or digestive tract is longer than carnivores, so that our food can stay in the body longer so we can digest plant matter. We need more surface area and we need more microbes.

We have genera... We have bit molars there to shred fibers, plant tissue. We don’t have carnassials, the specialized teeth that carnivores have to shred meat. We do actually have some genetic mutations in some populations that are adapted to animal consumption, to milk not to meat. These arose in certain agricultural communities, primarily in Europe and Africa.

I call this the Meat myth. The idea behind is that we always have eaten meat. Anything that a paleolithic person would have eaten would probably have been lean, very small. And they wouldn’t really have eaten that much meat. Of course there is also bone marrow, organs, these would have been very important. We see evidence of harvesting a bone marrow in F.. .. We see characteristics in cutting of the bones for marrow extraction. Now sure people did eat meat, in special in the Arctic area with a long period with no plants available, they would have eaten a lot of meat. People in more temperate regions and tropical regions would have have had a very large portion of a plant-based-diet.

Where does the meat myth come from.

One is the inherent bias in Archeology record. Bone preserves much better than delicate plant remains.

The second is from bone bio chemistry study performed.

It is complicated but I am gonna break it down. You are what you eat. It is Nitrogen-14 and Nitrogen-15. With each step you go up of the trophic hierarchy the amount of the heavy isotope increases. If you measure the amount of heavy isotope in the bone you can infer where  that individual was on a food chain. This is an example of a generalized isotopic model: [Picture in the video]

However, one of the problems is that not all eco-systems conform to this model. ..

In East-africa we see some very strange patterns, how can a herbivore and a human be above a lion. It turns out that the food that you eat is not the only contributor to this values. Also irridity can have an impact. What we likely see is differences in water-access.

Ancient maya.

We know they were heavily relied upon corn. The model is wrong also here. It may depend on how they fertilized their crops.

What we think is happening. In very cold climates animals eat unusual things. Mammals are eating bark. Gives them very strange values.

If you don’t have a good control on the paleolithic eco-systems, you can come to very erroneous conclusions.

We have stone-tool evidence, 20000 years before the invention of agriculture, to grind up seeds and grains. We can measure fossilized dental plack. We can recover micro-fossils of plants and other remaints. My team is working on extract DNA and...

With the limited research we have we can see abundant remainders of  plant-based evidence. We can find legumes, grains and barley [e.g. inside Neanderthali].

Myth 3: Paleo-diet (the fad diet) foods are what our paleolithic ancestors ate.

Example bananans are the ultimate farmers food. Every banana is a genetic clone from every other banana. A farmers food.

A wild banana is so full of seeds.
Salads- we have radically changed it. In the wild it contains an indigestible component. Also to make it taste betters.

Tomatoes - in the wild it is toxic.

Oil - It requires rudimentary presses to remove it....

The blueberry-New England, avocado Mexico...Would have never appeared on paleolithic plate.

Wild avocado-a couple of millimeters of fruit, also wild olives.

Chickens-lays eggs every day.... Wild hens, small eggs, do not lay all year around.

Broccoli did not exist in the paleolithic period. Wild kale, wild Brussels sprouts-all the same species. We selectively bred it in different ways.

Broccoli -the flour of the plants. It is flours. Buy some broccoli, but it in a vase, and it will bloom.

Carrots, wild carrots-bitter in flavor, tastes bad...

Almond, closely related to prum. Bred out the cyanide, so that we can eat the seed.

Like carrots and broccoli- essentialy human invention.

Real paleo-diet

Many different paleo-diet. People ate local foods. When we speak about paleolithic diets- they are in plural.

Mexico.

Plenty of food on seasonal basis.

Wild plants: Prickly pear fruit, agave, various nuts, beeds and squashes..
They also ate rabbits, and other small animals.

Very much different from the Arctic regions and subtropic regions. People moved from resource-patch to resource-patch.

Food packets were generally small--collect a lot of broccoli. Generally collect tough, woody and fibrous food. They ate marrow and organs of animals.
Plant-foods with pytho-chemicals.

3 billion people can not eat like forgers.

Can we take lessons from them that we still can apply today?

3 main lessons to learn

1. Diversity is the key.

We lack the ability to synthesize many nutrients. So diversity is important.

Today it is almost only 3 species in everything we eat: soy, wheat and corn

In large urban societies you can’t eat everything fresh. Seeds and nuts preserve very well... We can preserve food from salting, drying, vinegar..

It all works by inhibiting bacterial growth. Our intestinal s are full of good bacteria that promote your immune system. Food with preservatives - we don’t know how it effects us and good bacteria in our stomach.

Your food.., Even the part you can’t digest are very important.

All sorts of function. Feeds the good bacteria.
Low-fiber diets....cause obesity and diabetes.

Unfortunate -- we are losing the whole foods.. We don’t get the benefits of the fiber and the pectin in the fruit juice, for example.

We can eat so many calories.. It shortcuts our abilities to no if we are full or not.
If you drink a full soda.. How much sugar cane would you have to eat. How many feet of sugar do you have to consume to reach that level. 8,5 feet of sugar cane in one soda.

We can override the mechanism that we have evolved to signal fullness. Dietary diversity is the key. We need to eat fresh foods when possible. We need to eat whole foods.

We still have a lot to learn from our paleolithic and our neolithic ancestors.

http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Debunking-the-Paleo-Diet-Christ;search%3Adebunking%20paleo

"And if you took a baby and put a bunny in front of him, and if you had a cat and a bunny, the cat at any age would want to attack and kill the bunny and the child would say, “Oh, look at the bunny!”

"And if you took a baby and put a bunny in front of him, and if you had a cat and a bunny, the cat at any age would want to attack and kill the bunny and the child would say, “Oh, look at the bunny!” So the idea that we have some innate aggression towards animals…we don’t.

About the teeth: if you open the mouth of a cat, a carnivore, you see that they have long canines, way beyond the other teeth. If you open the mouth of a dog, you see the same. If you open your mouth, you don’t. You have canines that are the same length as your incisors. If you have long canine teeth, it allows you to do two things: one, it allows you to snatch your prey. The other thing it allows you to do is to pull away the hide. If a dog happens to catch a rabbit or another animal, it can very easily remove the hide. If a cat catches a squirrel, they have no trouble with that. But if a person does that, they will work all day and all night to get the skin off of an animal, because they don’t have long canine teeth anymore.

We also don’t have claws. Plus we’re not fast. Plus we don’t have very good vision, or good sense of smell. An owl is a predator and can detect a mouse at a tremendous distance. Dogs have a sense of smell much greater than ours and they’re much faster than we are. We have fairly dull senses, fairly slow locomotion. In our Olympic trials, we celebrate speeds that would be an embarrassment to a bird or a dog or another animal.

We have nothing to kill prey with and nothing to remove the hide with. So the question is when did that change come? It’s something like 3.5 million years ago that we lost our long canine teeth. And most of the great apes did, too—and they’re almost entirely vegetarian. Chimpanzees will eat a little bit of meat. But, they never eat dairy products, and no other animal would do that."
http://therumpus.net/2012/09/the-rumpus-interview-with-dr-neal-barnard/

----------

From the Journal of Human Evolution article: The human adaptations to meat eating: a reappraisal

"Gut measurements of primate species do not support the contention that human digestive tract is specialized for meat-eating, especially when taking into account allometric factors and their variations between folivores, frugivores and meat-eaters. The dietary status of the human species is that of an unspecialised frugivore, having a flexible diet that includes seeds and meat (omnivorous diet). "

Are Humans Designed To Eat Meat? : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH-hs2v-UjI

Humans have a body of a herbivore, early hominids were not pre-adapted to eating meat

Interesting comment that I found:

.... 

I have been researching this issue for a while now, and would like to 'pick a few bones' in the latter part of this article.

 

'Herbivore', 'omnivore' and 'carnivore' are not the only dietary biological adaptations. It was important to mention in the context of this essay 'Frugivores', which are species that eat primarily fruits.

 

It is evident that early hominids were not pre-adapted to eating meat.- 'While comparable shearing crest length studies have not been conducted on early hominids, australopithecines certainly have relatively flat molar teeth compared with many living and fossil apes. These teeth were well-suited to breaking down hard, brittle foods including some fruits and nuts, and soft, weak foods such as flowers and buds; but again, they were not well-suited to breaking-down tough pliant foods like stems, soft seed pods, and meat. ..' http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg/posters/pungar/satalk.ht m

 

But humans have increased consumption of flesh foods over time, probably in order to survive in poor environments when there was a scarcity of fruits and nuts, and it has been our reliance on flesh that has allowed metabolic relaxation in the synthesis of taurine, although humans can still synthesize it from cystein in the liver and from methionine (veg' sources- beans, garlic, lentils, onions, seeds, soybeans) elsewhere in the body, as long as sufficient quantities of B6 are present (veg' sources- brewer's yeast, carrots, peas, spinach, sunflower seeds, walnuts, wheatgerm, avocado, bananas, beans, blackstrap molasses, broccoli, brown rice and other whole grains, cabbage, cantaloupe, corn, dulse, plantains, potatoes, rice bran, soybeans and tempeh).

 

The truly "essential" fatty acids are Linoleic Acid (LA) and Alpha Linolenic Acid (ALA). LA and ALA are used to produce other fatty acids, including; Gamma Linolenic Acid, Eicosapentaenoic Acid (EPA), and Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA), which in turn produce eicosanoids. We generally get an excess of Linoleic acid from foods containing vegetable oils, but very little of the omega-3s, Good plant food sources include flaxseed and walnuts. (Factors including the consumption of saturated and trans-fats, sugar, alcohol, the taking of prescription medications, viral infections, stress, and diabetes can inhibit the conversion of LA to GLA. Insufficient quantities of zinc, magenesium, Vit. c, B6 and niacin also slow the process.)

 

Hydrochloric acid is necessary for the digestion of protein. Proteinous *nuts* require the hydrochloric acid of the stomach to provide an adequate medium for the enzyme pepsin to act on the protein. But true carnivorous (meat eating animals, and 'omnivores' are meat eating as well) have in their digestive tracts a highly concentrated hydrochloric acid, about 1100% more so than ours.

 

Vitamin B12 is produced by bacteria. It is naturally present in a healthy natural environment, and consequently on healthy natural organic unwashed plant foods.

 

I am mystified as to how John McArdle can state that humans are 'omnivores' and then go on to say; "the best arguments in support of a meat-free diet remain ecological, ethical, and health concerns (http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/omni.htm). If humans have really adapted to eating animal flesh, as are true omnivores (pigs, bears), then why would there be any 'health concerns'?

 

Sincerely, Lotus http://www.iol.ie/~creature/creature.htm See also http://www.iol.ie/~creature/BiologicalAdaptations.htm