Originally posted by MajorMalfunction
Actually we evolved our great big brains because we stopped being largely vegetarian, moved out of the trees and began to eat meat. If it wasn't for our ancestors eating meat we'd no doubt be having this conversation via poo flinging, rather than on the internet.
So far as I understand, we ate meat because it was a more steady food source. However, the nutrients necessary to human brain development are found in veggies.
Milton argues that meat supplied early humans not only with all the essential amino acids, but also with many vitamins, minerals and other nutrients they required, allowing them to exploit marginal, low quality plant foods, like roots - foods that have few nutrients but lots of calories. These calories, or energy, fueled the expansion of the human brain and, in addition, permitted human ancestors to increase in body size while remaining active and social.Source
"Once animal matter entered the human diet as a dependable staple, the overall nutrient content of plant foods could drop drastically, if need be, so long as the plants supplied plenty of calories for energy," said Milton.
The brain is a relentless consumer of calories, said Milton. It needs glucose 24 hours a day. Animal protein probably did not provide many of those calories, which were more likely to come from carbohydrates, she said.
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Since plant foods available in the dry and deforested early human environment had become less nutritious, meat was critical for weaned infants, said Milton. She explained that small infants could not have processed enough bulky plant material to get both nutrients for growth and energy for brain development.
Meat, in and of itself, did not do anything for the development of the brain -- it merely kept our monkey butts alive!
I prefer to eat higher on the food chain myself. Let the bovines, pigs, chickens and ostriches pre-digest the vegetables for me.
I hope you're not suggesting that the calories ingested by a cow transfers into its meat -- most of those calories go to keeping the cow alive! If I eat a peach, those nutrients are not going to just sit in my body, going un-used, to make my flanks taste 'peachy'!! My body uses those nutrients, just as each creature's body does.
P.S. Another thread has some interesting information, although not always directly related to medical-ness. thread
[edit on 30-7-2007 by Diseria]
Last time I checked caloric restriction was a big part of life longevity. Something to consider 
