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Originally Posted by BoBoGuy
Some studies question if humans are biologically supposed to be vegan?
As long as you are getting enough calories from diet, various plant foods can indeed give you all the nutrients you need by themselves or in combination with one another. This includes adequate protein and is why the gorilla's vegetarian diet is healthy. They do consume some protein from the few insects, insect eggs and the larvae on the plants they eat but the amount must be very small relative to the gorilla’s size.
The simple fact is that humans have taught themselves to eat everything in order to survive. Humans have teeth and a digestive system consistent with herbivores so human beings are not natural meat eaters. I suspect that primitive societies consumed meat simply as a survival tactic when plant foods were in short supply.
Also, we have the fact that consumption of red meat correlates with health risks in modern humans due to a mutation that occurred after our last common ancestor with great apes.
As I understand it, the gradual incorporation of a non human molecule found in red meat into the cells of the human body over a lifetime contributes to the inflammatory processes involved in various diseases. It’s a slow process so the chronic effects of this foreign molecule would not be felt until old age.
During primitive times, life was brutish, nasty and short so Homo Erectus probably would not have survived long enough to suffer the health consequences of their red meat diet as modern humans do.
Perhaps we are indeed biologically vegan and simply refuse to admit it?
Bo.
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The gorilla's diet is healthy. For a gorilla. And as you say yourself, he eats insects i.e. from the animal kingdom therefore he's not a vegetarian. He's an omnivore.
Humans have taught themselves to eat what was available locally. It's quite a stretch to conclude that we've taught ourselves to eat
everything. We don't eat everything today and never did in the past either. However I'm willing to concede that we may have tried everything that looked palatable (and not so palatable) in order to see if it was edible or nutritious. And probably more often than not died from eating poisonous plants but never from eating animal flesh no matter how advanced in putrefaction it was.
Humans will develop dental caries by eating carbohydrates. Carnivores don't develop dental caries. Ever. Unless we, humans, feed them a diet of carbohydrates. After which we bring those beasts to the veterinarian for treatment. Poor little things they are. The point is carnivores don't have dental caries and when we eat an all meat diet we don't develop dental caries either. Therefore the contention that our teeth are built to eat carbohydrates is refuted. If they were built to eat carbohydrates, they would be immune to dental caries.
Our digestive system is akin to that of a big cat. It's not, for instance, like that of a cow. Indeed, as we eat more and more carbohydrates, our organs grow bigger. They grow bigger because they are not of the appropriate size to begin with to deal with carbohydrates. Thus the contention that our digestive system is adapted to a carbohydrates diet is refuted. If it was adapted to carbs, it wouldn't grow bigger. Instead, it would already be the appropriate size.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson has already given us facts and history that refutes outright any and all claims that red meat is somehow unsuitable for human consumption. Indeed, fresh meat cures and prevents scurvy. Fresh meat can sustain a man in top shape for an indefinite period. In order to refute what Stefansson gave us, we'd need to bring evidence of equal or greater force: More facts and history. This has yet to be done to any extent.
The molecule you speak of may be active in the lab but it has yet to show its alleged effects in the history and facts experienced and reported by Stefansson. Again we must bring evidence of equal or greater force to refute those facts and history: More facts and history. This has yet to be done to any extent.
Modern humans, as Stefansson observed, eat an all meat diet with no ill whatsoever. Unless we want to argue that the Inuit he observed are not modern enough in the sense you meant?
BoboGuy, it would serve you, and us by extension, to study Ancel Keys and his methods. He tried to
prove his hypothesis by sifting through the data, keeping the data that confirmed his hypothesis while rejecting or just ignoring the data that refuted it. He gave more weight to the confirming data. A true scientist will try to
refute his own hypothesis. If his hypothesis is true, it will hold up under scrutiny. If it's false, it will fall at the first attempt. A true scientist will give more weight to the opposing data.
I have given you multiple refuting arguments that should tell you that your hypothesis about red meat is false. Or at the very least questionable. This should prompt you to review the hypothesis and as the case may be, reject it.
Take the majority of us here for example. Most of us believed that cutting calories and doing more exercise was the way to lose fat. That was the hypothesis then for us. But here we are on a low carb forum talking about carbohydrates restriction as the fundamental method to lose fat. Heresy! Yet time after time our personal experience(s) continue to refute the old dogma of caloric restriction. It is very difficult to hold on to ideas when they prove to be false in the face of our own facts especially when we are reasonable persons. We are reasonable, I hope.