First of all, the Bellevue experiment showed no such thing. "Perfect health" was not one of the things measured in the experiment; it's mere hyperbole. Second, a year-long experiment on two people cannot possibly show that anyone can live indefinitely on an all-meat diet. It merely shows that such a diet leads to no overt health problems in a year. That fact is significant enough; there's no need to oversell it. Third, and most important in this context, there is absolutely no warrant for the inference from the Bellevue experiment to the conclusion that plants are not food.

There are vegetarians who can easily go more than a year in excellent health without eating muscle meat, but consuming eggs, dairy, etc. If they were to conclude from this that muscle meat is not food, you would be quick to accuse them of committing a logical howler.

I distrust hagiolatry in all forms, including the unquestioning acceptance of claims made by Stefansson (or Taubes, for that matter). There are, however, multiple sources that indicate that the Inuit used plant foods when they could get them, and so did the Plains Indians. In fact, from my own reading on this subject over a period of more than ten years I conclude that human beings have always consumed plant foods when they could get them. The fact that they can survive without them does not begin to show that a diet without plant foods is optimal for our species, unless you could also show that populations that avoid all plant foods have better health than all populations that consume them. But no one has ever even begun to show that, so the claim is without support.

Finally, to go from the simple fact that people enjoy plant foods to the suggestion that consuming them is equivalent to opiate addiction is nonsense. People enjoy meat too. Addiction is not mere enjoyment.

Ubizmo