This must be devastating news to the vegans and vegetarians they insist that meat is not natural.
Possibly, until you consider that "natural" does not mean "better"
For 2M years, humans ate meat and little else: study
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Re: For 2M years, humans ate meat and little else: study
#12This must be devastating news to the vegans and vegetarians they insist that meat is not natural.
I'm a vegan and I could give a crap how we ate 100k years ago. It has no bearing on building a contemporary diet conducive to health optimal health and pollution related outcomes.
Given trophic levels, meat takes far more energy, land, and clean water to produce. Population studies repeatedly show that large amount of meat consumption leads to individual and population health issues. The same is true of sugar and alcohol, I readily admit, and assume kinds of meat don't require as much energy.
We are fishing our oceans to extinction, destroying essential natural area to grow soy and corn which we then waste 90% of as cow feed.
There is no amount of persuasion that could make me go back, unless the laws of physics are rewritten such that eating meat reduces the amount of atmospheric carbon.
Re: For 2M years, humans ate meat and little else: study
#13Well, regardless of the topic at hand (the point about brain-size shrinking when eating plants certainly sounds interesting), already the infographics are full of obvious typos ("Domesticsted", "Larg prey") which suggests shoddy editing at least. While that made me chuckle a bit in the context of "brain size" it also leads me to not giving to much credence to the quality of the rest of the text (which I cannot really judge on its merits because it's outside my area of expertise). I do tend to refer to the Gell-Mann effect [1] in instances such as this though...
However, if there's anyone here who has expertise in this area, I would certainly be very interested to hear what they think. Let me ask more plainly: Should we all ditch salad and go back to eating "bone marrow and brains" tomorrow?
Re: For 2M years, humans ate meat and little else: study
#14This must be devastating news to the vegans and vegetarians they insist that meat is not natural.
All 0 of them.
Re: For 2M years, humans ate meat and little else: study
#15Re: For 2M years, humans ate meat and little else: study
#16This must be devastating news to the vegans and vegetarians they insist that meat is not natural.
Stone age humans are hardly the standard we should be aspiring for. The biggest two arguments for veganism are:
1. The horrific practises of the animal agriculture industry, which looks nothing like a chiseled hunter holding a bow
2. The devastating impact of the above on the environment
Cavemen had neither of these issues.
Re: For 2M years, humans ate meat and little else: study
#17In 2019, age 30, I ate only red meat (and a little fish) for about 8 months. It was by far the peak of my physical condition. Better sleep, stronger workouts, no mid-day grogginess. Blood test results were as best as one could hope for, apart for the debatable "high cholesterol".
Unfortunately a couple of trips abroad (damn Italy) and I got back to a more standard diet. Have put on 15kg since. I've been longing to return to it, but the quality and price of meat here in Israel makes it so hard.
Re: For 2M years, humans ate meat and little else: study
#18My 2¢: in however many decades from now, we'll be about equally horrified by animal cruelty and by all the grain we used to eat.
If you're not eating meat and you're not eating grain, where are you getting all of your energy from?
Re: For 2M years, humans ate meat and little else: study
#19My father had a mid-life crisis in the mid 90's, and went from being an avid hunter and fisherman to being a hardcore animal rights vegan. (It was all precipitated by him meeting and dating a woman who worked at PETA)
He was about 45 at the time. Within 2 years, his health had markedly declined. There are healthy vegan diets, but his was an unhealthy vegan diet.
Despite no history of heart attacks on either his mother or father's side, he developed heart disease in his early 50s. This was where I first became aware of the scientific fraud that is the lipid hypothesis, and how wrong it is. The Framinham Heart Study has been a source of data that actively refutes the lipid hypothesis for decades, but the nutritional science community has similar issues to many other organizations with tenured experts whose entire reputation is tied to their theories being right.
My experience dealing with militant vegans is that there is no amount or type of evidence that would convince them that a diet that includes ANY amount of animal products is healthy. It's a religion to them, and that's that.
I was a teen when he converted to veganism, and my encounters with these various activists made me absolutely despise them and their ilk. Truly contemptible people in general, who fully believe the ends justify any means.
Re: For 2M years, humans ate meat and little else: study
#20This must be devastating news to the vegans and vegetarians they insist that meat is not natural.
It‘s not about eating animals being un/natural. That’s not the (main) argument. It‘s about cruelty towards animals and about sustainability.
Besides: Even if you claim us humans were carnivores for thousands of years, what does that prove? First off, humans are omnivores. And secondly, with this kind of argumentation we could say that for hundreds of years we had kingdoms (or slavery), so why have democracies (or universal human rights)? Humans do make progress, and the past does not prove or justify anything.