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  #1   ^
Old Wed, Dec-03-08, 21:36
BoBoGuy's Avatar
BoBoGuy BoBoGuy is offline
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Default Are humans biologically vegan?

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.

Last edited by BoBoGuy : Wed, Dec-03-08 at 21:43.
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  #2   ^
Old Wed, Dec-03-08, 21:46
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LessLiz LessLiz is offline
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Since you posted this in the research and media forum instead of the War Zone, where it belongs, where is the research to back up your assertion?

You really can't leave it alone, can you?
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  #3   ^
Old Wed, Dec-03-08, 22:05
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Rosebud Rosebud is offline
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Quote:
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.

*shakes head*

This has all been argued over and over again. For example, in this thread.
Please note Doreen's post here which clearly refutes your statements about humans having a digestive system consistent with herbivores.
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  #4   ^
Old Wed, Dec-03-08, 22:41
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Quote:
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.

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.
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  #5   ^
Old Wed, Dec-03-08, 23:56
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Wifezilla Wifezilla is offline
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Thank you for posting Martin. It saved me from screaming in frustration and breaking things
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  #6   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-08, 00:20
M Levac M Levac is offline
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What makes you think I didn't break things myself? :-)
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  #7   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-08, 01:20
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girlbug2 girlbug2 is offline
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Ah, belligerance.

The fact is, the higher the percentage of meat in my diet the better my health and well-being. No amount of theorizing can refute the living proof in my life. YOU may have been biologically engineered to be a vegan, but I was not.
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  #8   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-08, 01:33
Backtoslim Backtoslim is offline
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Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by BoBoGuy
Some studies question if humans are biologically supposed to be vegan?

...snip...

Perhaps we are indeed biologically vegan and simply refuse to admit it?

Bo.


In my case: no. Googling homo erectus diet says that they ate meat, I eat meat, lots of people on this planet eat meat.
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  #9   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-08, 01:40
Backtoslim Backtoslim is offline
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Also, read about people who hardly ever eat veges - Eskimos here http://discovermagazine.com/2004/oct/inuit-paradox but I wonder why people come to live in such a hostile environment. Human nature being what it is, you'd think that stroppy teenagers would head south towards the sun and find themselves on a deck chair basking in the sun with the only ice nearby being in their drink.
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  #10   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-08, 02:00
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tmatrocks tmatrocks is offline
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If humans evolved into meat eating machines in order to survive, then no, humans are not basically vegan.

We just are what we are. The "way it oughta be", as Lenny Bruce said, is "just a dirty, nasty lie someone told you."
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  #11   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-08, 08:26
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TheCaveman TheCaveman is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BoBoGuy
Perhaps we are indeed biologically vegan and simply refuse to admit it?


Human ancestors were never in a position to be vegan. Paleobiology and paleobotany tells us that--where humans evolved--there did not exist the edible plant biomass in sufficient quantity to sustain human populations. There is no known combination of plants available in the regions and climates where humans evolved that would allow enough humans to eat year round to maintain viable reproducing groups.

You'll notice that of the modern plants edible by humans, that all are seasonal.
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  #12   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-08, 08:39
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LarryAJ LarryAJ is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Backtoslim
I wonder why people come to live in such a hostile environment.
IMHO, the answer is QUITE simple. Homo erectus as a species was so successful that the growing population of homo erectus caused them to have to migrate away from their initial home range. This migration pushed farther and farther away into areas where the lack of sufficient meat sources caused them to consume plants to supplement their meat in order to survive. Since the progress of the "migration" was very slow, it would allow adaptions such as learning how to live, survive and even prosper in extreme environments like the artic or desert.

The advent of agriculture was one of the adaptions that allowed further expansion of the population of homo erectus. Earlier adaptations would be the socialization of homo erectus which helped them survive as groups where single individuals would not have survived. Becoming territorial also helped to conserve food resources by keeping out other groups. These things, among others I am sure, helped in the reproductive success of homo erectus.
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  #13   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-08, 09:53
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Nancy LC Nancy LC is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BoBoGuy
Some studies question if humans are biologically supposed to be vegan?

It's like asking asking if sharks are biologically ok living out of water and doing an experiment that results in pain and death to the shark. A rather stupid experiment. If sharks were meant to live out of water then surely, in some remote corner of the world, or some time in history, sharks would be living out of the water.

But like air breathing shark, there are no human vegan populations. NONE. EVER. There's no site where human remains have been found that there wasn't found a plethora of evidence they ate meat whenever and however they could find it. There's no tribe of hunter/gatherers found that weren't delighted to consume meat in whatever form they had it. And when animal flesh is scare, they turned to consuming insects to make up the protein needed.

Only vegans have this nutty idea that suddenly it's just fine to cast off the way humans evolved to eat. There's nothing in our evolution that supports that we should eat that way and there's no evidence humans ever did (and survived to leave any mark on the world). It is only in the last few thousand years that human even could get enough protein from plants, by growing and cultivating grains and legumes (which by the way we haven't had enough time to adapt to eating that diet) that we could conceivably get enough protein out of plants to survive without animal protein. But without agriculture there's a whole lot of time, like probably 1.4 million years or more, where there is no evidence that humans, or even pre-humans, were purely vegetable eaters.

We never would have become humans if we hadn't eaten meat whenever and where ever we could.

Last edited by Nancy LC : Thu, Dec-04-08 at 10:25.
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  #14   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-08, 10:20
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Nancy LC Nancy LC is offline
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Ok, outside of the anthropological and historical evidence that humans aren't ever vegan. There's the biological evidence that humans aren't meant to be vegan. There are a number of nutrients we can only get from eating animals.

Vitamin K2 (We don't convert K1)
Vitamin B12 (Remember primitive man didn't have access to supplements or fermented stuff)
Omega-3 fatty acids -- These are essential to human, we die if we don't get them. We can't produce them. We can convert plant sources to EPA but not DHA, apparently. And we do a poor job at the conversion. We need to eat animals that convert much better than we do.

Here's a couple of articles that do a good job of explaining why evolutionarily huamsn are not, and have never been, vegan.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/search?q=vegan
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  #15   ^
Old Thu, Dec-04-08, 10:25
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Wifezilla Wifezilla is offline
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I say anyone who thinks humans should be vegans should go right ahead and be vegans. Between the brain shrinkage, bone density problems, heart disease, etc.... it will be a self correcting problem.
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