Why People Think Their Eating Habits Have Evolved to Include Meat in their Healthy Diet and Why Vegetarians Disagree

People choose to eat healthy food because they want good health. So, what is healthy food? Will eating meat keep us healthy or will eating only plants keep us healthy? The truth is that there are healthy (and unhealthy) meat eaters and healthy (and unhealthy) vegetarians. ANYONE who does not eat a healthy diet will become unhealthy. Whether you are or are not vegetarian, you will not be able to sustain good health without a healthy diet.

Evidence clearly shows that our bodies are designed to withdraw nutrients from everything we eat, if nutrients exist. If we are eating a candy bar, our bodies will take the fat, sugar, and protein (from nuts) from it. We have also evolved so that non-digestible parts of food (like fiber) will just pass through us. And, many poisons get stopped along the way, caught in our appendix or filtered by mucous or nasal hair. So, if something we eat doesn't kill us immediately, we call it "food".

No one really knows whether we should or should not eat meat. Anthropologists have found that we don't have all of the answers yet--and may never have them. DNA shows that we all came from Africa. (See the video.) No one knows for sure when man started eating meat.

Possible reasons why humans began eating meat:

1. Moving into a colder climate where fruits and vegetables didn't grow year round led humans to survival food that included meat.
2. Fire made cooked meat more palatable than raw.
3. Meat became affordable for working class people, thanks to government subsides. Although a pound of protein from meat is far more costly to produce than a pound from grains, a hamburger is cheaper than a salad.
4. Advertising meat products is made possible by the major meat controllers (big money) like Armour and Swift. (The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Beyond Beef by Jeremy Rifkin)
5. Education teaching good nutrition usually includes meat, eggs, and dairy products (the food pyramid)--being promoted by our government through our schools thanks to big money lobbyists from the meat industry and the dairy industry. Often, the food pyramid charts are supplied to schools by the dairy industry. A college nutrition course I took, filled with teachers, was being taught by a teacher who was paid by the dairy industry. We learned things like reading food nutrition labels was unnecessary, and that hot dogs and ice cream constituted healthy food for children. The well-educated are taught the same thing, and meat advertisements appear in medical journals. So, if the establishment is teaching us it is true, it must be true--right?
6. Meat makes us strong. Actually, all of the beasts of burden are vegetarian. Since our bodies have to work a little harder to break down meat for its protein, it pulls strength from us to use energy to digest the meat.
7. Humans have evolved into meat eaters. More likely, our bodies have adapted to what we eat. As survivors, we are like pigeons, roaches and rats. We will eat anything that doesn't kill us immediately.
8. Humans are at the top of the food chain is a common argument.
9. Our parents taught us to eat (meat). Every child is programmed to think that the people who love and care for them only do things in their best interest. Even if we hate our parents as adults, we can't completely erase what we learned.
10. Smelling meat since birth in our homes and tasting it since infancy means it tastes good to us. By contrast, my vegan-since-birth daughter hates the smell of meat and texture of faux meats. Starving Africans wouldn't eat peanut butter. Americans are repulsed by the Chinese delicacy of fish eyeball soup.

The argument is that we must need to eat meat because humans don't digest vegetable sources of Vitamin B-12. Vegetable eating animals do get their Vitamin B-12 from plants. Most vegetarians buy their produce from a grocery store. It has been cultivated, sprayed and cleaned, and travelled many miles. Then, they bring their vegetables home and cook them.

Human Intestines: In our intestines there is a mucous lining that protects us from non-foods that we eat--anything that is not digested in its raw, natural form. When people eat only raw food, as all other animals in nature do, they lose that protective, mucous lining. Their intestines, then, are able to digest more nutrients from the healthy, raw food they eat. We need about 5 mcg. per day. If we ate our foods raw and in the wild, we probably would have no problem getting all of the Vitamin B-12 we needed, easily digested from plants or even be able to absorb the B-12 our own bodies make.

There are unhealthy vegetarians. A healthy vegetarian diet must be balanced. Raw foods need to be included in every healthy diet.

1. Our teeth are flat, not pointed for ripping flesh. Look at all of the pictures of our ancestors in the video above (Human Evolution). Flat teethed people cook their meat to be able to eat it. This indicates that we are herbivores not carnivores.
2. Humans don't have retractable claws. We have finger nails. We can make knives and pretend we are fierce like a lion or bear, but that's not what we are.
3. We don't salivate when we see an animal and desire to pounce on it and rip it to shreds. (There is no animal cruelty involved in eating a vegetable.)
4. Our saliva contains alpha-amylase that does one thing: digest complex carbohydrates from plant foods. Carnivores do not have this enzyme. (The McDougall Plan by Dr. John A. McDougall, M.D. and Mary A. McDougall, p.37)
5. Intestines are very specific according to species of animal and their diet. Humans have long intestines, similar to other vegetarian-eating primates. Carnivorous animals have short intestines that allow meat to pass through quickly and not absorb saturated fats and eliminate large amounts of cholesterol.
6. Vegetable eaters drink their water by sipping it. Dogs, cats, and all other carnivores lap up their water with their tongues.
7. Herbivores sweat to stay cool, while carnivores pant.
8. We are the only animals that drink the milk of another species on a regular basis. Human animals are the only ones that continue to drink milk past infancy. Our milk is healthy for our children. Cow's milk is designed to bring a calf to 300-500 pounds in one or two years.
9. All animals make cholesterol in their bodies. Our bodies make all the cholesterol we need. Cholesterol is found in meat, eggs, and dairy. Excess cholesterol, that isn't eliminated, stays in tissues, including arteries.
10. "Cholesterol and fat accumulate in the wall of an artery and act as two of the components in the formation of plaque." (The McDougall Plan, p. 64) Plaque builds in our arteries to cause heart attacks, the #1 killer in the U.S.
11. All vegetables contain protein. People eating a Western or modern diet are dying from obesity and its complications and heart attacks, not lack of protein. Vegetarians, eating a healthy, balanced diet, aren't dying from any of the above.
12. A variety of vegetables and fruits will supply the vitamins and minerals and fats the body needs (see Vitamin B-12 above).

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