Hypothetically Speaking

[mncavylover]

Hey Rocintante, your point was made, but it is no longer valid. What we needed to survive before is totally inapplicable to how we can survive today. Also, I doubt that the animals were killed cruelly as they are today. We have the luxury of choice, whereas the choice for them was survival. If there is an option, as there is, and if survival is no longer such a huge issue, as it's not, then we can choose to either support cruel killings or go against it.

Also, you'll actually find that not eating meat reduces your risk of heart disease as it lowers cholesterol and fat content in your diet.

Here are some links that may be useful to you:

http://www.goveg.com/feat/a-favs-health.html on health issues for meat-eaters
http://www.goveg.com/feat/faq.html please read, everyone! Covers many of the myths and facts.

[mncavylover]

Sorry to double post, but here is a direct quote from http://www.goveg.com/feat/faq.html :

"What will we do with all those chickens, cows, and pigs if everyone becomes a vegetarian?"
It’s unrealistic to expect that everyone will stop eating animals overnight. As the demand for meat decreases, the number of animals bred will decrease. Farmers will stop breeding so many animals and will turn to other types of agriculture. When there are fewer of these animals, they will be able to live more natural lives.

[mncavylover]

Does that help anyone at all? Just asking since nobody has replied.

[Rocinante]

Originally Posted by CavySpirit

Any book on anthropology will do.

Sorry, no it won't.

OK, then read Lucy's Child by Donald Johanson. It's more of a mainstream book by a respected paleoanthropologist.

Also, use a little common sense.
Do you think our brains grew from gathering plants for food, or by thinking of ways to hunt animals during droughts?

[CavySpirit]

I find your flavor of common sense to be not quite so common. I'm not going read your recommended books. In trying to be polite, I'm saying that I find your question to be amusing. The burden of proof is on you to quote one of your books stating or proving that "our brains grew from thinking of ways to hunt animals during droughts rather than from gathering plants for food."

[AngelsCavies]

huh I have no clue what he is talking about.

[mncavylover]

Rocinante, although it may be true that part of our initial development hundreds of thousands of years ago came from learning how to hunt food, this is certainly *not* the only way our brains developed. It is also totally inapplicable to today's society, because we now have the luxury of choice. We can make the decision whether or not to contribute to the cruelty of the meat industry, or to try our best to combat it. I choose the latter, and I hope that others will do the same. Your argument is just not credible at this point in time.

[mncavylover]

Anyhow, back to the topic at hand. I still haven't heard from anyone about the infomation, but maybe that's just because less people are on these days. Oh, well, just wanted to get some action over here in the veggie forums again.

[Rocinante]

Originally Posted by CavySpirit

I find your flavor of common sense to be not quite so common. I'm not going read your recommended books. In trying to be polite, I'm saying that I find your question to be amusing. The burden of proof is on you to quote one of your books stating or proving that "our brains grew from thinking of ways to hunt animals during droughts rather than from gathering plants for food."

So, we can conclude that I am educated on the subject and you choose to remain uninformed? You can't say "cite your sources" and then choose to ignore them because it doesn't fit your point of view. Case closed. I am going to go use my teeth that evolved to chew meat on a nice hamburger.

[sofiemuffins]

hmmm...if Our teeth were supposed to be used to chew meat, wouldn't they be sharp and pointy like other meat eaters? have you noticed the teeth on cats? dogs? sharks? all pointy. Our flat teeth are more suited to chew grains...

[CavySpirit]

Rocinante: Here. Let me do your homework for you. This link pretty well sums up your position: http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/...4a.shtml#intro

[font=Times New Roman]To summarize:

The significance of Leonard and Robertson's research [1992, 1994] lies in their analysis of energy metabolism, which reveals the paradox: How do humans meet the dramatically higher energy needs of our brains, without a corresponding increase in RMR (which is related to our body size)? They argue that the factor that allows us to overcome the paradox is our higher-quality diet compared to other primates. Of course, prior to the advent of agriculture and the availability of grains, the primary source of such increased dietary quality was the consumption of fauna--animal foods, including insects.[/font]

You want to justify your meat-eating with this, you go for it. You may want to do a little more research on the issues.

=============================

[font=Times New Roman]Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
[/font]- Albert Einstein

Hundreds of millions of people are vegetarian (eg. Hindus for religious reasons); more health professionals are discouraging the consumption of animal fats and red meats, that have been shown to increase the chance of obesity, cancer and other diseases; and the environmentalists who know that much of the limited resources, on Planet Earth, are wasted by converting them to meat.

• It takes 2,500 gallons of water, 12 pounds of grain, 35 pounds of topsoil and the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of feedlot beef.
  
  
• 70% of US grain production is fed to live stock.
  
  
• 5 million acres of rain forest are felled every year in South and Central America alone to create cattle pasture.
  
  
• Roughly 20% of all currently threatened and endangered species in the US are harmed by livestock grazing.
  
  
• Animal agriculture is a chief contributor to water pollution.
• America's farm animals produce 10 times the waste produced by the human population.

There are sound reasons for health, ethically, and ecologically to be vegetarian.

from http://www.geocities.com/nutriflip/veg_diet.htm

====================

So, we can conclude that I am educated on the subject and you choose to remain uninformed?

Like I said, I find your flavor of common sense to be not quite so common.

Enjoy your burger.

[mncavylover]

Originally Posted by Rocinante

So, we can conclude that I am educated on the subject and you choose to remain uninformed? You can't say "cite your sources" and then choose to ignore them because it doesn't fit your point of view. Case closed. I am going to go use my teeth that evolved to chew meat on a nice hamburger.

Or is it the other way around...?

That book dealt with human history, which (as I have previously stated) is totally irrelavant to today's world, where we have the happy luxury of choice.

So we evolved that way, it's possible. I'll give you that much. However, we continue to evolve, and this is just the next step into evolution. You're just choosing to stay in the past rather than looking an the here-and-now.

Have fun eating your cancer and heart disease-causing meat.

[chrishall1979]

No one here would argue with one of the greatest minds the world has ever seen would they? Albert Einstein said, and I quote: "So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way. It always seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore."
He also said: "Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. "
I don't care if you are vegetarian, vegan or the most avid meat eater. I am a vegetarian myself. But you cannot argue with his mind and ability to think and reason. Doing so would only prove your own stupidity.

Chris

PS: Cows were brought to America from Europe. They did not naturally exist here. They would not flourish if there was no meat industry. We'd have deer, and bison. And with 100's of millions of people on earth that are impoverished. If we changed the grazing land used in the US alone to crops. We could easily fill every stomach in the world. You want to be a humanitarian? You want to be remembered as someone who cared about all of the earths inhabitants. Stop eating meat.

It would cost the meat industry $0.005 to use a humane method to kill these beautiful animals. But, that half a cent was deemed too expensive and animals are brutally slaughtered by the thousands instead.

[mncavylover]

Thanks for the information on cows, Chris! I had no idea, that's an excellent point.

[GuineasGalore]

to the guy who said we needed pointy teeth, right beside the teeth beside your front teeth are pointy teeth. At least they are for me

not that i'm saying being veggitarian is bad, i'm pro veggitarian (though i'm not about to give up organic meat) and i do partake of soy 'meat'

[chrishall1979]

I think you missed his point about pointy teeth. True meat eaters have pointy front teeth and no molars, among many others. Here's some science facts to chew on.

Just because you can digest animals does not mean you are supposed to. You can digest cardboard. That does not mean you should eat it. And it also does not mean that you digest it well. Our closest relatives are primates. Very few eat animals, and those who do typically stick to things like insects, not cows and pigs. Jane Goodall, famous for her extensive study of apes while living with them, found that it was very rare for the primates she saw to eat other animals.

Another author said, "The human body was not designed to catch or eat animals. You have no claws. Your teeth do not rend flesh. Your mouth can not seriously wound nor is it made to really get a good bite into an struggling victim like true carnivores can. You are not fit to run fast to catch prey. Meat-eaters have fast enough reflexes to ambush or overtake a victim. You do not. Try catching a pig or a chicken with your bare hands; see what happens."


Meat Eater

has claws
no pores on skin; perspires through tongue to cool body
sharp, pointed front teeth to tear flesh
no flat back molar teeth to grind food
small salivary glands in the mouth (not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits)
acid saliva; no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains
strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest tough animal muscle, bone, etc.
intestinal tract only 3 times body length, so rapidly decaying meat can pass out of body quickly

Carnivorous animals, including the lion, dog, wolf, cat, etc., have many unique characteristics which set them apart from all other members of the animal kingdom. They all possess a very simple and short digestive system -- only three times the length of their bodies. This is because flesh decays very rapidly, and the products of this decay quickly poison the bloodstream if they remain too long in the body. So a short digestive tract was evolved for rapid expulsion of putrefactive bacteria from decomposing flesh, as well as stomachs with ten times as much hydrochloric acid as non-carnivorous animals (to digest fibrous tissue and bones). Meat-eating animals that hunt in the cool of the night and sleep during the day when it is hot do not need sweat glands to cool their bodies; they therefore do not perspire through their skin, but rather they sweat through their tongues. On the other hand, vegetarian animals, such as the cow, horse, zebra, deer, etc., spend much of their time in the sun gathering their food, and they freely perspire through their skin to cool their bodies. But the most significant difference between the natural meat-eaters and other animals is their teeth. Along with sharp claws, all meat-eaters, since they have to kill mainly with their teeth, possess powerful jaws and pointed, elongated, "canine" teeth to pierce tough hide and to spear and tear flesh. They do NOT have molars (flat, back teeth) which vegetarian animals need for grinding their food. Unlike grains, flesh does not need to be chewed in the mouth to predigest it; it is digested mostly in the stomach and the intestines. A cat, for example, can hardly chew at all.

Plant Eaters and Humans (exact match)

no claws
perspires through millions of pores on skin
no sharp, pointed front teeth
has flat, back molar teeth to grind food
well-developed salivary glands, needed to pre-digest grains and fruits
alkaline saliva; much ptyalin to pre-digest grains
stomach acid 20 times weaker than that of meat-eaters
intestinal tract several times body length (plant foods decay slowly so can take their time to pass through the body)


Grass-and-leaf-eating animals (elephant, cow, sheep, llama, etc.) live on grass, herbs, and other plants, much of which is coarse and bulky. The digestion of this type of food starts in the mouth with the enzyme ptyalin in the saliva. these foods must be chewed well and thoroughly mixed with ptyalin in order to be broken down. For this reason, grass-and-leaf eaters have 24 special "molar" teeth and a slight side-to-side motion to grind their food, as opposed to the exclusively up-and-down motion of carnivores. They have no claws or sharp teeth; they drink by sucking water up into their mouths as opposed to lapping it up with their tongue which all meat eaters do. Since they do not eat rapidly decaying foods like the meat eaters, and since their food can take a longer time to pass through, they have much longer digestive systems -- intestines which are ten times the length of the body. Interestingly, recent studies have shown that a meat diet has an extremely harmful effect on these grass-and-leaf eaters. Dr. William Collins, a scientist in the New York Maimonedes Medical Center, found that the meat-eating animals have an "almost unlimited capacity to handle saturated fats and cholesterol". If a half pound of animal fat is added daily over a long period of time to a rabbit's diet, after two month his blood vessels become caked with fat and the serious disease called atheriosclerosis develops. human digestive systems, like the rabbit's, are also not designed to digest meat, and they become diseased the more they eat it, as we will later see.

Fruit-eaters include mainly the anthropoid apes, humanity's immediate animal ancestors. The diet of these apes consists mostly of fruit and nuts. Their skin has millions of pores for sweating, and they also have molars to grind and chew their food; their saliva is alkaline, and, like the grass-and-leaf eaters, it contains ptyalin for predigestion. Their intestines are extremely convoluted and are twelve times the length of their body, for the slow digestion of fruits and vegetables.

[chrishall1979]

Part 2

Human characteristics are in every way like the fruit eaters, very similar to the grass- eater, and very unlike the meat eaters, as is clearly shown in the table above. The human digestive system, tooth and jaw structure, and bodily functions are completely different from carnivorous animals. As in the case of the anthropoid ape, the human digestive system is twelve times the length of the body; our skin has millions of tiny pores to evaporate water and cool the body by sweating; we drink water by suction like all other vegetarian animals; our tooth and jaw structure is vegetarian; and our saliva is alkaline and contains ptyalin for predigestion of grains. Human beings clearly are not carnivores by physiology -- our anatomy and digestive system show that we must have evolved for millions of years living on fruits, nuts, grains, and vegetables.

Furthermore, it is obvious that our natural instincts are non-carnivorous. Most people have other people kill their meat for them and would be sickened if they had to do the killing themselves. Instead of eating raw meat as all flesh-eating animals do, humans boil, bake, or fry it and disguise it with all kinds of sauces and spices so that it bears no resemblance to its raw state. One scientist explains it this way: "A cat will salivate with hungry desire at the smell of a piece of raw flesh but not at all at the smell of fruit. If man could delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still-living limbs apart with his teeth, and suck the warm blood, one might conclude that nature provided him with meat-eating instinct. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his mouth water, and even in the absence of hunger he will eat fruit because it tastes so good."

Scientists and naturalists, including the great Charles Darwin who gave the theory of evolution, agree that early humans were fruit and vegetable eaters and that throughout history our anatomy has not changed. The great Swedish scientist von Linné states: "Man's structure, external and internal, compared with that of the other animals, shows that fruit and succulent vegetables constitute his natural food."

So it is clear from scientific studies that physiologically, anatomically, and instinctively, man is perfectly suited to a diet for fruit, vegetables, nuts, and grains. This is summarized in the table above.


Early Humans




Many scientists believe that early humans were largely vegetarian. See articles by David Popovich and Derek Wall.

Dr. John McDougall asserts that our early ancestors from at least four million years ago followed diets almost exclusively of plant foods. Of the races that followed them, many of which consumed meat, McDougall notes:

"Undoubtedly, all of these diets [meat-containing] were adequate to support growth and life to an age of successful reproduction. To bear and raise offspring you only need to live for 20 to 30 years, and fortuitously, the average life expectancy for these people was just that. The few populations of hunter-gatherers surviving into the 21 st Century are confined to the most remote regions of our planet &endash;- like the Arctic and the jungles of South America and Africa &endash;- some of the most challenging places to manage to survive. Their life expectancy is also limited to 25 to 30 years and infant mortality is 40% to 50%. 5 Hunter-gatherer societies fortunately did survive, but considering their arduous struggle and short lifespan, I would not rank them among successful societies."

[lilouisianagal]

You're forgetting a very important catagory that humans [biologically] fall under. OMNIVORES.
Introduction

There are a number of popular myths about vegetarianism that have no scientific basis in fact. One of these myths is that man is naturally a vegetarian because our bodies resemble plant eaters, not carnivores. In fact we are omnivores, capable of either eating meat or plant foods. The following addresses the unscientific theory of man being only a plant eater.

<A name=confusion>Confusion between Taxonomy and Diet

Much of the misinformation on the issue of man's being a natural vegetarian arises from confusion between taxonomic (in biology, the procedure of classifying organisms in established categories) and dietary characteristics.

Members of the mammalian Order Carnivora may or may not be exclusive meat eaters. Those which eat only meat are carnivores. Dietary adaptations are not limited by a simple dichotomy between herbivores (strict vegetarians) and carnivores (strict meat-eaters), but include frugivores (predominantly fruit), gramnivores (nuts, seeds, etc.), folivores (leaves), insectivores (carnivore-insects and small vertebrates), etc. Is is also important to remember that the relation between the form (anatomy/physiology) and function (behavior) is not always one to one. Individual anatomical structures can serve one or more functions and similar functions can be served by several forms.

<A name=omni>Omnivorism

The key category in the discussion of human diet is omnivores, which are defined as generalized feeders, with neither carnivore nor herbivore specializations for acquiring or processing food, and who are capable of consuming and do consume both animal protein and vegetation. They are basically *opportunistic* feeders (survive by eating what is available) with more generalized anatomical and physiological traits, especially the dentition (teeth). All the available evidence indicates that the natural human diet is omnivorous and would include meat. We are not, however, required to consume animal protein. We have a choice.

<A name=apes>The Great Apes

There are very few frugivores amongst the mammals in general, and primates in particular. The only apes that are predominantly fruit eaters (gibbons and siamangs) are atypical for apes in many behavioral and ecological respects and eat substantial amounts of vegetation. Orangutans are similar, with no observations in the wild of eating meat.

Gorillas are more typically vegetarian, with less emphasis on fruit. Several years ago a very elegant study was done on the relationship between body size and diet in primates (and some other mammal groups). The only primates on the list with pure diets were the very small species (which are entirely insectivorous) and the largest (which specialize in vegetarian diet). However, the spectrum of dietary preferences reflect the daily food intake needs of each body size and the relative availability of food resources in a tropical forest. Our closest relatives among the apes are the chimpanzees (i.e., anatomically, behaviorally, genetically, and evolutionarily), who frequently kill and eat other mammals (including other primates).

<A name=evidence>Evidence of Humans as Omnivores

<A name=arch>Archeological Record

As far back as it can be traced, clearly the archeological record indicates an omnivorous diet for humans that included meat. Our ancestry is among the hunter/gatherers from the beginning. Once domestication of food sources began, it included both animals and plants.

<A name=cell>Cell Types

Relative number and distribution of cell types, as well as structural specializations, are more important than overall length of the intestine to determining a typical diet. Dogs are typical carnivores, but their intestinal characteristics have more in common with omnivores. Wolves eat quite a lot of plant material.

<A name=vats>Fermenting Vats

Nearly all plant eaters have fermenting vats (enlarged chambers where foods sits and microbes attack it). Ruminants like cattle and deer have forward sacs derived from remodeled esophagus and stomach. Horses, rhinos, and colobine monkeys have posterior, hindgut sacs. Humans have no such specializations.

<A name=jaws>Jaws

Although evidence on the structure and function of human hands and jaws, behavior, and evolutionary history also either support an omnivorous diet or fail to support strict vegetarianism, the best evidence comes from our teeth.

The short canines in humans are a functional consequence of the enlarged cranium and associated reduction of the size of the jaws. In primates, canines function as both defense weapons and visual threat devices. Interestingly, the primates with the largest canines (gorillas and gelada baboons) both have basically vegetarian diets. In archeological sites, broken human molars are most often confused with broken premolars and molars of pigs, a classic omnivore. On the other hand, some herbivores have well-developed incisors that are often mistaken for those of human teeth when found in archeological excavations.

<A name=glands>Salivary Glands

These indicate we could be omnivores. Saliva and urine data vary, depending on diet, not taxonomic group.

<A name=intest>Intestines

Intestinal absorption is a surface area, not linear problem. Dogs (which are carnivores) have intestinal specializations more characteristic of omnivores than carnivores such as cats. The relative number of crypts and cell types is a better indication of diet than simple length. We are intermediate between the two groups.

<A name=conc>Conclusion

Humans are classic examples of omnivores in all relevant anatomical traits. There is no basis in anatomy or physiology for the assumption that humans are pre-adapted to the vegetarian diet. For that reason, the best arguments in support of a meat-free diet remain ecological, ethical, and health concerns.

[Dr. McArdle is a vegetarian and currently Scientific Advisor to The American Anti-Vivisection Society. He is an anatomist and a primatologist.]

<A name=app>APPENDIX: Other Thoughts

The following information is taken from The New York Times, May 15, 1979. According to Dr. Alan Walker, a Johns Hopkins University anthropologist, Homo Erectus, the species immediately ancestorial to our own Homo Sapiens, had evidence of an omnivorous diet. Every Homo-Erectus tooth found was that of an omnivore. However, a small sample of teeth from the human-like species during a 12 million year period leading up to the Homo-Erectus period, indicates the earlier species may have been a fruit eater. Even if this species, way before our own, lived on a fruit diet, they probably would not have consumed what we consider typical fruits. Hundreds of plants produce fruits that are tougher, more substantial foods than what we eat today.



Quoted from an editorial by William Clifford Roberts, M.d., Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Cardiology:

"When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

Quoted from "WHAT DID OUR ANCESTORS EAT?" in Nutrition Reviews, by Stanley Garn, Professor of Nutrition and Anthropology, and William Leonard, Assistant Professor of Human Biology:

"These people of Upper Pleistocene, and later those of the mesolithic, were our immediate ancestors, no longer hunters exclusively and with whole-grain products and a variable amount of roots, fruits, leafy vegetables and nuts in their diet. We must grant them a mixed diet, with animal fat providing a smaller proportion of their food energy than was probably true for the Neanderthals."

This article was originally published in the May/June 1991 edition of the Vegetarian Journal, published by: The Vegetarian Resource Group P.O. Box 1463, Dept. IN Baltimore, MD 21203 (410) 366-VEGE

[CavySpirit]

Please refrain from so much copying of text. A paragraph is okay with a reference. Multiple paragraphs start to violate copyright laws. Please pay attention to copyright laws.

Thanks.

[mncavylover]

Maybe it would be more helpful just to post a link. It doesn't take up quite so much forum space, and doesn't violate copryight laws. =)

Thanks for the information, both of you.