Actually, we're not.

Look into the mirror and smile, your front teeth are meant to rip and tear. The front most are your incisors, just behind them are your canines. Herbivores don't have canines.

While still in front of the mirror, notice that your eyes are side-by-side giving you stereoscopic vision. This is a 'quick and dirty' characteristic of predators...prey animals have thier eyes mounted more on the sides, generally allowing them a 270ish degree field of vision.

The most damning fact to this arguement however comes from our bio-chemistry; for a normal, healthy body essential amino acids are required. Although it is true that you can get all of these from eating a combination of plants at every meal, the quantities are very low and you need to do careful research to find which plants provide the compounds your body requires.

Meat on the other hand provides massive amounts of amino acids and does so in a single source.

Without the benefit of nutritional researchers and a supermarket, our distant ancestors would not have known or been able to attain the specific combinations of plants required to sustain them.

Vegan's/vegetarians who just stop eating meat suffer from low energy and generally poor health. The reason is that it takes ALOT of careful research done over a long period of time to ensure that your body is getting what it requires from limited range of foods being eaten. Even when this work is painstakingly completed, in most cases supplements are needed.

Man is an omnivore, we eat anything we can.

How did humans go about becoming meat eaters then? Was it the propaganda thrown about by the stone age media?

Where's my 2nd stomach? Why don't I chew a cud?

Seriously, it's not just our dental formula that dictates carnivorous behavior. Take into account the function of the gallbladder, to digest meat fats. Take into account our frontally located eyes, unique to predators.

Now, I agree that humans are not designed to be strictly carnivorous. Omnivorous is the correct answer. Herbivorous? Only if you choose to be.

my 2-cents

*le facepalm*

Neanderthals were almost strictly carnivore.

I love how people post here as they are expert in humans, just because they munch meat often... and almost get upset about it.

Like a dog that gets angry if you take its bone

Whahrhrhhghgrrrrrrrrrrrrrr GIVE ME MEAT .. Garhrrwwww... Thats all I hear

I used to care a bit about this "are humans naturally carnivores, vegetarians or omnivores" debate. Then I realised it's actually pointless. I don't really care what the first humans ate.

I'm not my ancestors from before the agricultural revolution, I'm not a gorilla or a chimp or a hippo or whatever other creature you might want to look at for comparison. Why in the world would I look at their diets to decide what I should or should not eat?

We can choose what we eat. Some choose to survive exclusively on junk food, some choose to eat healthy, some like myself choose not to eat meat. What's the big deal.

Oh and no my brain didn't shrink to the size of a pea, nor am I fat, thankyouverymuch.

Originally posted by Vandalour
Then I advise you to eat your biology diploma

Paper is not a significant source of any dietary requirement.

ETA...

Just out of curiousity, why no comment on my family being workers in health and nutrition?

Originally posted by Vandalour
I love how people post here as they are expert in humans, just because they munch meat often... and almost get upset about it.

.

I'm posting here because I have a degree in biology.

Your own source (clearly slanted, likely written by a vegan) debunks it's own premise in the bullet points:

point 3: "Our omnivorism means we're capable of eating meat"

If we are capable of something, then it is a natural occurrence. It's not manufactured, it's not imaginary, it's not an opinion.

Originally posted by {davinci}

Originally posted by Vandalour
Then I advise you to eat your biology diploma

Paper is not a significant source of any dietary requirement.

I like you

Also in that article it claimed that humans have gastric acid 20 times less powerful than a carnivores, this is not true, humans have gastric acid primarily made up of hydrochloric acid, that article has many other wrong parts, the fact is, humans have properties of a carnivore and a herbivore, because they are OMNI-VORES!

In this day and age, the 'experts' are more often than not, biased according to who is paying them to study a given subject, OR, express their own biases that stem from personal beliefs.

I spent my junior and high school years, just outside a small Adventist College town. Seventh Day Adventist's are vegetarian, and it SHOWS. As God is my witness, you could drive down the main street and it looked like the Night of the Living dead (did I get that right?).

The students were pale and frail. The girls were lanky and had small, well, you know. The boys were skinny and docile for the most part and the adults looked like they should be mainlining cans of Ensure. I am not kidding you one bit. The fact that the town, back in those days (yes I'm a bit older than most all of you) was 95% strict vegetarian, you did not have meat eating people mixed in with them, so it really really made an impression on any person driving through.

Now I know that there are exceptions to this. I'm sure there are real healthy vegetarians out there, but I'm just giving you my observations of a vegetarian society.