Wed, Dec-10-08, 14:56
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Senior Member
Posts: 1,178
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Plan: Low Carb - High Nutrition
Stats: 213/175/175
BF: Belly Fat? Yes!
Progress: 100%
Location: California
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Humans have been eating meat for millions of years, and there has never been an entirely vegetarian culture (though there have been cultures that only eat meat). Our closest relatives, chimps, eat a small percentage of meat. Our physiology marks us as omnivores in multiple ways: our teeth and our intestines both look more like other omnivores than they look like either carnivores or herbivores. However, none of this means that we need to eat meat. We are omnivores because during the millions of years that we were hunter-gatherers, we found it to our advantage to be able to eat meat when the opportunity arose (having a wider selection of foods to choose from increases survivability). So those with a greater ability to digest meat had a higher chance of survival, and the traits that enable meat digestion (and skill at hunting, etc.) spread through the population. All this means is that we have evolved the ability to eat meat, not the need to eat meat. Being omnivores it did, once upon a time, make it easier for us to survive.
Ignore the assumption that hunter-gatherers of the past ate lots of meat, and look at the actual data from anthropologists. Hunter-gatherers typically eat a diet that is 80% or more plant matter. Early anthropologists studying hunter-gatherers assumed that meat is more important than it is because they spent most of their time with the men, and the men liked to talk about hunting. But in fact, meat is a small percentage of overall diet in most hunter-gatherer societies (excluding cultures like the Inuit where meat is the only food available). A real Paleo diet would consist largely of whole grains, nuts, vegetables, fruit, and leaves, and would include a smaller percentage of mammal meat, bird meat, seafood, insects, and eggs. It would include no dairy at all, and would be very high in fiber and nutrients and come from a much wider variety of plants than we eat in our society. Remember that the human body is very adaptable and this is only a generalization; humans can subsist on many different diets without severe health effects.
(American Museum of Natural History)
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