Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains • Hacker News Board

Re: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

#21

Post by jiggy2011 » Wed, Nov 28, 2012, 1:51 AM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #16

Have there been vegans claiming that veganism is natural, and that this is somehow a reason to be vegan? Because that would be dumb. Veganism is an ethical stance, after all, so I'm not sure on what basis that argument would even rest. Also, archaeologists who don't know about nutrition should probably not talk about nutrition as if they did. There are plenty of non-animal sources of B12, including soil (you know, wh…

I think Gary Yourofsky claims something similar to that. But he's pretty extreme even by vegan standards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es6U00LMmC4

Lots of psuedoscience in there.

Re: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

#22

Post by maratd » Wed, Nov 28, 2012, 1:52 AM UTC

bitops wrote: post #3

Hopefully folks reading this article won't take it to mean that humans still need to continue consuming large amounts of meat. Maybe it was necessary to eat meat and hunt to evolve large brains, but the negative economic & ecological impacts of eating meat are pretty well-documented by now. I am thinking here of the "meat industrial complex" that powers a lot of large commercial meat production, not the friendly sust…

> Our brains are big enough now after generations of evolution.

Err... bigger isn't always better, but I won't say no to a bigger noggin.

> Time to put those big brains to use so we can figure out how to continue the existence of the human species.

I wasn't aware we were heading toward extinction? There are billions of us, you know?

> I really doubt it'll be by continuing to eat lots of cows.

I like chickens, turkeys, goats, sheep, and all the other domesticated animals too. There's fish as well. Oh, and there's pigs too. I don't think we've ever relied on a single animal for sustenance?

Re: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

#23

Post by aaronblohowiak » Wed, Nov 28, 2012, 1:55 AM UTC

icegreentea wrote: post #9

graeme wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conflates at least four issues: 1. Is is healthy to eat meat? 2. Is it right to eat meat? 3. Is it healthy to eat sustainable organic meat? 4. Is it right to eat sustainable organic meat? Accepting that the 'meat industrial complex' is bad doesn't automatically imply vegetarianism/veganism. In particular, I'm thinking of Joel Salatan's brand of sustainable agriculture and permaculture.

I think every single one of those questions is missing yet another 'question' - that is, how much meat? From a naive min-max approaching to building your diet, it generally pops up that -some- meat is super useful. Simply by doing that you ease all sorts of constraints on your diet, and allows you to optimize your veggies/grains for other stuff, instead of desperately trying to get all your iron and B12 in. Even from…

How much, how is it produced and what kind?

farm raised alantic salmon have a feed to gain ratio of about 1.2, which is amazing (cattle are about 5x worse)

Also, there are some serious doubts about whether veganic farming could support current global population levels (manure is a great fertilizer!)

Of course things get more complicated in terms of efficiency when you start thinking about dairy and fertilizer and hide production.. the thinking around permaculture ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture ) takes this "whole system" approach to agriculture and would be necessary if you wanted to e.g. create a self-sustaining colony on mars.

Re: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

#24

Post by aaronblohowiak » Wed, Nov 28, 2012, 1:59 AM UTC

gruuby wrote: post #17

bitops wrote: post #3

Hopefully folks reading this article won't take it to mean that humans still need to continue consuming large amounts of meat. Maybe it was necessary to eat meat and hunt to evolve large brains, but the negative economic & ecological impacts of eating meat are pretty well-documented by now. I am thinking here of the "meat industrial complex" that powers a lot of large commercial meat production, not the friendly sust…

People who I met traveling in the south of India were shocked to find out that I eat meat every day or even multiple times a day. Even those who eat meat in India do so springy. I too took to that way of life and now am pretty much a vegetarian who cheats with seafood every so often. Feels good.

Aquaponics ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics ) exploits the nice relationship between fish excrement and plant growth (using some friendly bacteria to turn the amonia into nitrates) in a sustainable way that yeilds tasty lean meat.

Re: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

#25

Post by Turing_Machine » Wed, Nov 28, 2012, 1:59 AM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #16

Have there been vegans claiming that veganism is natural, and that this is somehow a reason to be vegan? Because that would be dumb. Veganism is an ethical stance, after all, so I'm not sure on what basis that argument would even rest. Also, archaeologists who don't know about nutrition should probably not talk about nutrition as if they did. There are plenty of non-animal sources of B12, including soil (you know, wh…

When it's found in "soil", it's due to bacteria and small animals (insects, mites) that are in the soil.

Any B12(-like) substances that are in plants (e.g., spirulina) are unlikely to be in a form that's bioavailable to human beings.

Vegans have to take B12 supplements of some sort or eat foods that have been fortified with B12. That's just a fact.

Re: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

#26

Post by dllthomas » Wed, Nov 28, 2012, 2:09 AM UTC

dietrichepp wrote: post #11

analog wrote: post #7

"it wouldn’t be possible to get Vitamin B12, which is only available in animal products." Marmite? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite

> vitamin B12 is not naturally found in yeast extract, but is added to Marmite during manufacture Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it can't be found in plants, but it can be found in animals and it can be produced industrially.

And for the record, "produced industrially" means farming bacteria, effectively (per Wikipedia) - it's not synthetic or derived from meat.

Re: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

#27

Post by timf » Wed, Nov 28, 2012, 2:11 AM UTC

graeme wrote: post #6

bitops wrote: post #3

Hopefully folks reading this article won't take it to mean that humans still need to continue consuming large amounts of meat. Maybe it was necessary to eat meat and hunt to evolve large brains, but the negative economic & ecological impacts of eating meat are pretty well-documented by now. I am thinking here of the "meat industrial complex" that powers a lot of large commercial meat production, not the friendly sust…

This conflates at least four issues: 1. Is is healthy to eat meat? 2. Is it right to eat meat? 3. Is it healthy to eat sustainable organic meat? 4. Is it right to eat sustainable organic meat? Accepting that the 'meat industrial complex' is bad doesn't automatically imply vegetarianism/veganism. In particular, I'm thinking of Joel Salatan's brand of sustainable agriculture and permaculture.

Some more variables: grass-fed or not, amount of fat, how rarely it is cooked, what organs are consumed.

Re: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

#28

Post by whyenot » Wed, Nov 28, 2012, 2:34 AM UTC

> it would have been biologically implausible for humans to evolve such a large brain on a raw, vegan diet

Elephants evolved in the same environment, are vegetarians, don't cook their food, and have the largest brains of any land animal.

Re: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

#29

Post by herval » Wed, Nov 28, 2012, 2:35 AM UTC

maratd wrote: post #22

bitops wrote: post #3

Hopefully folks reading this article won't take it to mean that humans still need to continue consuming large amounts of meat. Maybe it was necessary to eat meat and hunt to evolve large brains, but the negative economic & ecological impacts of eating meat are pretty well-documented by now. I am thinking here of the "meat industrial complex" that powers a lot of large commercial meat production, not the friendly sust…

> Our brains are big enough now after generations of evolution. Err... bigger isn't always better, but I won't say no to a bigger noggin. > Time to put those big brains to use so we can figure out how to continue the existence of the human species. I wasn't aware we were heading toward extinction? There are billions of us, you know? > I really doubt it'll be by continuing to eat lots of cows. I like chickens, turkeys…

As a matter of fact, cows were pretty late on the "domestication" game (around 3-4k years after pigs and sheep)[1].

Also, a lot of studies indicate that the kind of meat the humans ate when their brains grew was much more on the frog/bird/misc small animals side than on domesticated cattle.

[1] The edible story of food / Guns, germs & steel

Re: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains

#30

Post by herval » Wed, Nov 28, 2012, 2:37 AM UTC

whyenot wrote: post #28

> it would have been biologically implausible for humans to evolve such a large brain on a raw, vegan diet Elephants evolved in the same environment, are vegetarians, don't cook their food, and have the largest brains of any land animal.

Elephant's brains are proportionally smaller than human ones (so are whales', which are huge)...