We Weren't Designed To Eat Meat, Here Is Proof

reply to post by Rockpuck

Something like this?

Originally posted by Johnmike
Then where would we get Vitamin B12 from?

Vegan diets are notoriously deficient. You can generally be healthy if you eat eggs and drink milk, but that's about it.

B12 is derived from bacteria and fungi in the soil, this is where herbivores get it from. So most B12 can be obtained from soil and natural water sources. In a time when humans got their water and food in less than clean areas and didnt wash or filter water, this is where the B12 comes from.

Today most vegans dont want to eat dirt or unfiltered water, so they supplement B12.

Wiki B12

I love steak and always will


BTW: That amazing chart of yours seems to me like a fake humans have carnivore qualities and this chart just overlooks them it seems forced you know what I mean?

Originally posted by Disney



If it's a circle of life and it's okay to kill when you really don't have to, would you surely not mind go to the country, kill some pig or chicken causing it miserable pain, and then eat it, while you have PLENTY other possibilities to feed yourself and not kill any animal.

Who cares about animals. See this argument always breaks down to people not eating meat because of the "pain" that we are causing them. Big friggen deal, go into a jungle and cut yourself and show some blood. See if a lion decides to "not cause you pain" and spares you. That thing would be on you like stink on crap. I do agree though that the way meat processing factories are set up and the methods that they use are unfair. I like to buy my meat from local butcher shops and organic farms to ensure that the product is coming from genuine people.

I don't see why their is still an argument. We are omnivores, we can eat both plants and meat. It makes sense to take advantage of that. We should definately modify the system of doing so. I for one am going to start hunting more and killing my own meat. I could probably go out on a weekend, shoot a few wild turkeys and be sustained for a few weeks.

Thanks to this post, more turkeys are going to shot. And then i'm going to catch a mackerel and scream at it until it dies.... i promise i will eat it though.

Originally posted by HimWhoHathAnEar
This is a 'luxury' argument. When you get hungry you're gonna eat whatever you can get your hands on. We haven't been there for a long time in the Western World but that may be changing as inflation continues to gain momentum.

Maybe when times get tough I can start a thread about the Grossest thing I ate last week to stay alive.

Oh, that's right, I won't have the luxury of a computer and internet then. Oh well, guess we'll just keep musing about the 'best' diet while we can.

Hahaha, on the real! How many people out here loathe shooting that 10 pointer after sitting all day in that tree stand waiting for some buck to come walking by? I have land up in the good ole north woods. If you guys don't know what it is like to sit and wait for you meal to come walking by, you missing out. Because we Are Omnivores, yes we eat what ever the phuck comes our way and looks good. That's strait up. If im hungry, and I am not around civilization, damn strait im going to start looking for anything I can take down to eat. I don't care if it is a rabbit, a coyote, or a goose-- or an apple on a tree or berries on a bush. If I can catch and kill it, I am going to eat it. Survival of the fittest baby. Think plane crash on a snowy mountain. If you are too stuck up to survive, you gonna die. We have not survived earth and the other species on earth for this long because we are berry pickers...

See I don't disagree with the philosophy of the vegetarians... If it is for moral reasons... Because seriously, the way we raise and slaughter animals is messed up. But that don't mean that you should not eat meat, that means you should go out there and catch yo shyt yourself. Because guess what, man has always, always, always killed animals if necessary to survive. If we did not, we would not be here. Plain and simple. How do you think we survived through the ice ages? by picking berries? Get outta here with that false logic. We would not have survived if we didn't eat meat, how could we have?

I agree that the mass slaughtering of animals is cruel, and a decent reason to boycott mass produced meat. For the entire population to abandon meat would be unfesable and ignorant... Eating animals has fed many of your parents, to the point I am sure at least one winter, if they did not have animal, they would not be here. Imagine if the world had never heard of meat.. life would be so much harder. Humans abandoning meat would be like dudes abandoning chocha. Even those amazonian people who have never ever heard of electricity hunt animals with their spears... come on now..

[edit on 16-6-2008 by pyroboy4206]

reply to post by Shar_Chi


YA. Like that. More sauce though.

(Not really sure what the picture is supposed to mean..)

A Vegetarian trying to convince all of us Omnivores that eating meat is bad = a vegetarian trying to justify his/her own decisions!

OK.. time for a little bit of truth and reality here. Regardless of what many of you think or have come to believe. We humans are OMNIVORES... period. I could go on and on and on about teeth this and digestive system that... blah blah blah. The bottom line is we have evolved over many, many millenia and still hold some of our original traits. We have been omnivore for a very long time in our evolution and most likely will hold onto certain physical traits for many millenia to come.

We are neither vegitarians nor meat eaters... we are both... and we need a healthy balance of the two. This balance is why a diet of 1 or the other does not work for us. Our bodies are more adapted to eat forageable meats like fish and insects than full blown red meat fresh off the hoof. Moderation of all is key here.

As far as the teeth argument, particularly the "canines" that some have brought up. This is only a name given to a set of teeth that most closely resembles those of dog, cats, bears etc. etc. We share those similar, yet distant traits because we share a common evolutionary path to a certain point on the tree of life. It's simply carryover... nothing more. Just like our internal tail... yes... we still have reminants of a tail.

So do yourselves a favor an read up on where you came from... walk out into a quiet forest sometime and close your eyes and really listen to your body and mind... the answers are all there.

Why is it that Vegans get all crazy about eating meat?

I dont' know. And as for not salivating when I see a cow?

Man I don't even have to see the cow. I just think cow or pig and some nice tasty ribs come to mind..... mmmmmmmm
ohhhhhhh

omg ribs....... juicy and cooked slow all day long... omg..omg... with some realy juicy and tasty spicy honey bbq rib sauce OMG! it's soo good.
I love just grabbing the bone and using my teeth to rip the meat right off of it. OMG IT'S SOO GOOD. And then licking the rib sauce from off your fingers... mmmmmm... it's soo freaking awesome... I think I'm gonna have to hit Tony Roma's some time this week..
omg.. mmmmmmmmmmmmmm




I'm about to have a religious experience... mmmm


[edit on 16-6-2008 by grey580]

lol it is so annoying when vegitarians try to convince the public that is what we are... what is the appendix for then? and also, if we are vegitarians, then why do we have incisor teeth? why aren't we like cows and have only molars from front to back? where is our six stomaches? seriously we can make a chart that compares us to carnivores way better. In fact, why doesn't someone remake this chart, to compare the other way around, us omnivores need some room here...

So, if I eat a diet of corn, nuts and mushrooms, I'll completely digest them like a good herbivore. I'll send you the results of this experiment...

reply to post by Danger Girl


interesting thread. i dont know if we are not meant to eat meat. i do know we are NOT meant to eat animals that are born just to become food, then drugged and held in captivity their whole lives. what a world, what a world.

reply to post by caitlinfae


Again i will bring up the idea of the Mr.Universe competitions. These men couldn't get there and be the best without high levels of protein, if you've ever talked to a bodybuilder you owuld find they eat a great deal of lean meats, avoiding the fatty ones.

As for your average person, well they will reduce their creatine levels by not eating meat as there are no plant sources of it available in food production as far as i'm aware. Whilst the average person doesn't need high levels of creatine to survive, if they start getting very physical then they wil be reduced in what they can do. Don't get me wrong they could still do very active things, but put them up against someone of equal fitness who eats meat, run them both into the ground, and i bet you the meat eater goes on for longer. So it's my view that for optimal health you need small amounts of meat.

However the rest of your post i agree with, our society eats far to much meat, lots of people have it with every meal and that's just wrong. A diet that contains mostly vegetables and fruits with small amounts of meat tends to be the healthiest form of eating, at least in my view.

However as i will say again, this thread was not about whether eating meat is correct or not, it's about whether our bodies were designed to keep meat in our diet. I gave many reasons why our bodies have been honed by evolution (in my view) to be omnivorous.

[edit on 16-6-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

Originally posted by Trash can

BTW: That amazing chart of yours seems to me like a fake humans have carnivore qualities and this chart just overlooks them it seems forced you know what I mean?

Yeah the chart is the silliest thing I've ever seen. It lists all of our herbivore features, while leaving off the carnivore features we have, to claim that we are herbivores. Yes, we have herbivore features - because we are omnivores. But we also have carnivore features as well, which the chart conveniently leaves out.

Ok if we weren't meant to hunt and kill prey why do we have stereoscopic vision? Only hunters need it. Prey animals eg "cows" have their eyes mounted on either side of their head to prevent hunters from sneaking up on them. Hunters who chase and kill prey need 3-d vision to attack successfully. Answer that Vegans!

Oh and when I see a prey animal I do salivate. MMM Steak my favorite animal.

THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

When we eat such things as bread, meat, and vegetables, they are not in a form that the body can use as nourishment. Our food and drink must be changed into smaller molecules of nutrients before they can be absorbed into the blood and carried to cells throughout the body. Digestion is the process by which food and drink are broken down into their smallest parts so that the body can use them to build and nourish cells and to provide energy.

The digestive system is a series of hollow organs joined in a long, twisting tube from the mouth to the anus. Inside this tube is a lining called the mucosa. In the mouth, stomach, and small intestine, the mucosa contains tiny glands that produce juices to help digest food.

There are also two solid digestive organs, the liver and the pancreas, which produce juices that reach the intestine through small tubes. In addition, parts of other organ systems (for instance, nerves and blood) play a major role in the digestive system.

How Is Food Digested?

Digestion involves the mixing of food, its movement through the digestive tract, and chemical breakdown of the large molecules of food into smaller molecules. Digestion begins in the mouth, when we chew and swallow, and is completed in the small intestine. The chemical process varies somewhat for different kinds of food.

Movement of Food Through the System

• Mouth: Seconds
• Esophagus: Seconds
• Stomach: Up to 3 ½ hours
• Small Intestine: Minutes
• Large Intestine: Hours

The large, hollow organs of the digestive system contain muscle that enables their walls to move. The movement of organ walls can propel food and liquid and also can mix the contents within each organ. Typical movement of the esophagus, stomach, and intestine is called peristalsis. The action of peristalsis looks like an ocean wave moving through the muscle. The muscle of the organ produces a narrowing and then propels the narrowed portion slowly down the length of the organ. These waves of narrowing push the food and fluid in front of them through each hollow organ.

The first major muscle movement occurs when food or liquid is swallowed. Although we are able to start swallowing by choice, once the swallow begins, it becomes involuntary and proceeds under the control of the nerves.

The esophagus is the organ into which the swallowed food is pushed. It connects the throat above with the stomach below. At the junction of the esophagus and stomach, there is a ringlike valve closing the passage between the two organs. However, as the food approaches the closed ring, the surrounding muscles relax and allow the food to pass.

The food then enters the stomach, which has three mechanical tasks to do. First, the stomach must store the swallowed food and liquid. This requires the muscle of the upper part of the stomach to relax and accept large volumes of swallowed material. The second job is to mix up the food, liquid, and digestive juice produced by the stomach. The lower part of the stomach mixes these materials by its muscle action. The third task of the stomach is to empty its contents slowly into the small intestine.

Several factors affect emptying of the stomach, including the nature of the food (mainly its fat and protein content) and the degree of muscle action of the emptying stomach and the next organ to receive the stomach contents (the small intestine). As the food is digested in the small intestine and dissolved into the juices from the pancreas, liver, and intestine, the contents of the intestine are mixed and pushed forward to allow further digestion.

Finally, all of the digested nutrients are absorbed through the intestinal walls. The waste products of this process include undigested parts of the food, known as fiber, and older cells that have been shed from the mucosa. These materials are propelled into the colon, where they remain, usually for a day or two, until the feaces are expelled by a bowel movement.

If God didn't want us to eat meat, he (or she) wouldn't have made it taste so good. My statement is just as scientific as that chart of unrelated observations, which have absolutely no bearing on our biology. A Venus fly trap doesn't have teeth, but it eats meat. Bacteria do not have teeth, and they eat meat. Just because we have a digestive system that is optimized for eating meat and vegetable matter, and a Lion's is optimized for meat doesn't mean we aren't supposed to eat meat. We are omnivores and have evolved to get nutrition from many sources.

Kerrymac here. It's wrong to say that you can't sustain yourself on a vegan diet - although vegan is also slightly ambiguous. Y'see, no animals are vegan - even cows eat the odd insect, and this is where you get your b12 from.

I was homeless once and between you lot and me, I lived for about three months on weeds from a park in Dundee. Also nicked the odd thing from outside shops - but obviously, these were all items of fruit. But at that point in my life all my ailments went away, "Man's Search For Meaning" style. (If you haven't heard of it - that's a book in which a man relates his time in a concentration camp.)

I'm now vegan most of the time - and eat chocolate sometimes for kicks. You've got to be careful - you can't just expect you'll get your b12 and vitamin D from leaves and fruit - in the wild we would have had our whole bodies exposed to the sun for vitamin D and our b12 would come from the bugs we accidentally ate.

I forage daily in a park just up the road from me and it's since adding these greens to my diet (wild ones, unhindered by pesticides (well unAIDED by pesticides, hence stronger and more nutritious)) that I've become incredibly creative and do nothing but write, draw and play music in my spare time. My apparent autism's cleared off and basic things like concentrating, staying awake in the afternoon etc etc are much better.

I could go into the facts myself of why milk's probably the number one carcinogen in our diets today (due to how much we consume) but if you're interested - here's one of the videos on the subject. (Link at end of post).

I don't mean to be an obnoxious cow by pitting my weight against the rest of the world as though they're mainly in the wrong - but i implore you, in the interest of you being able to make an educated decision for yourself - read "the China Study" and watch the video at the bottom of this post.

My theory is one that Tony Wright, author of "Left in the Dark" and record holder for longest time staying awake, advocates. We were primates who like fruit bats, ate more fruit than the other monkeys (who ate more leaves than we did) which made our brains swell to become huge. Then due to flooding, the fruit trees died and in our desperation, because we couldn't digest grass, we started hunting and eating meat. Since then, history shows our brains have actually atrophied as the body has to work hellofa hard to get nutrition from meat (glucose is brain fuel).

Hence, we've very RECENTLY evolved to tolerate meat - but still fruit, greens, nuts, raw eggs and the odd insect is always going to be the best diet. It's one I follow most of the time and there ain't nuffink wrong wiv me, like! *pats self on hump*

Lots of love
Kezza
xx

here's that link
video.google.co.uk...

Oh, i see... This is from a pure darwinistic view. I consider humans a exception in many ways, not just physiologically. Also:

Sloths, for example, HAVE claws.

Feeders of dead prey do NOT "salivate" when encountered with live beasts.

Dolphins do NOT cool down using their tongue.

The others exaples are more difficult to battle with. However, one could argue that the human body is a good mix of the physiology of both herbivore and carnivore beasts. I feel good eating both, and i have extended periods of almost pure vegetarian diet.

Originally posted by Kaimosae
I just wanted say that most primates are omnivorous...but they eat insects...not vertebrates. The only apes that eat meat are the chimpanzee and bonobo, but bonobos are not as active in hunting as the chimp. Even then, meat only makes up 3% of the chimps diet. Gorillas and Orangutans DO NOT eat meat. They are soley vegetarian.

en.wikipedia.org...

Fruit makes up 65% of the orangutan diet. Fruits with sugary or fatty pulp are favored. The fruit of fig trees are also commonly eaten since it is easy to both harvest and digest. Other food items include: young leaves, shoots, seeds and bark. Insects and bird eggs are also included.

Gorilla also periodically eat Insects but they are nearer the being truly vegan then the other species of large Primates/Apes.

We don't have prominent canines because we simply don't need them. We use tools to kill prey, not our teeth...like predators. "Cavemen" killed animals mostly because of the region they were in. Not all plants can grow in cold ass weather...therefore not enough food to eat. The only option to survive is killing animals.

There are also some theories (granted yes they are theories but then everything as to start somewhere right?) that lead to us having weaker jaws and possibly by proxy dinkier teeth.

One theory is that:

Our Jaw Muscle also became weaker/ small when we lost that Ridge thing off of our heads (look at most primate skulls), (allowing our brain to increase with the new space and spare nurtients) when we started to tenderise/ cook food to make it easier to eat thus meaning we no longer needed that level of Jaw Muscle to chomp through the raw foods in question.

Another theory proposed is:

The Hansell Stedman is regarding a mutation of the myosin gene MYH16, for more info on what MYH16 is/does here is the link (Its still fairly new as discoveries and theories go):

en.wikipedia.org...

Or an article on the theory:

staff.washington.edu...

Choose the PDF for
The Primate Bite: Brawn Versus Brain?

As to what to believe how should I know, you can become fat and diabetic off of too many fruits (If you can stomach that much), too much of anything is not good.

Having a large meat diet is not healthy. Period. Do your own research ppl.

No need to keep reposting the same end phrase, most people here are conducting their own research. Its just unfortunate that most of the time it is usually biased in a positive way to the poster's own beliefs and negatively biased against their opponent's beliefs, much like my post is itself.

Personally I don't eat red meat, I rarely touch poultry but I have frequent fish and eggs. Just because our teeth aren't as good as a Bears doesn't mean we couldn't steal eggs and eat them as a part of our diet.