Are humans designed to eat meat query

Sabri

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I'm a vegan, but my family is not. My parents like to come up with arguments agaisnt my reasoning. I can usually come up with an answer, however today they come up with something that I couldn't really respond to:

I have explained that humans are not designed to eat meat and animal products, that it's not healthy etc.

She then questions how come her parents, grandparents, old people she knows are still alive and fit, well into their 60/70/80/90s, even though they consume animal products 3+ times a day. Clearly this is evidence that humans can process animals perfectly fine.

Please help me out here, in a way this makes sense, but what should I tell them?!

Thanks in advance :)
 
I don't know if you can say they are fit in their 70's+ many people have to be on medications. Also just because they look fit doesn't mean inside they are ok, have you hear of the term fatty banana? Fit looking on the outside but on the inside they are a mess. Its really hard to change people minds, they are so hard set and with big corps like the meat and dairy industries telling you that you have to eat their produces to live a healthy life makes it even harder. Good luck :)
 
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How many of them, as SD Joe says, have never needed blood pressure medication, statin medicines, surgery, etc.? Plus, even if some individuals live long and medical-intervention-free with animal products, the public health numbers don't lie. Heart disease is the #1 killer, and animals who are more omnivores and carnivores don't get that. Science is clear that animal products raise the risk of this. Diabetes is also related to meat consumption, and that's getting to epidemic proportions now too. Have them watch What The Health, a new documentary. Even a lot of kids have streaks in their arteries. So do a lot of young soldiers autopsied. Over 75% in one study. Carnivores don't get this.
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/286620

However, it is true that we can't prove ALL animal products are harmful and ANY amount, which is why the main argument for veganism is ethics. A whole food, plant-based diet with a few servings a week of animal products is probably just as healthy as veganism -- and more so if the vegan isn't taking B12 or getting enough fortified foods. We did evolve to need a little animal products, because B12 tablets weren't even available until the 1970s, and we need a little B12 in our diets. But we didn't evolve to use cell phones and computers either, so people only use "natural" evolutionary arguments when they want to argue against the vegan lifestyle. It's like someone invented an easy to take, cheap tablet so we don't have to kill animals anymore, and everyone's like, "Oh, but that's not NATURAL; I'm going to go eat my factory-farmed totally unnaturally bred and grown dead carcass now..."

Good luck in advocating for veganism. It's so frustrating sometimes.
 
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We were not designed for anything. We are an accident which got lucky because we happen to be suited to this environment. But we will die sooner or later. The environment will change. The race will die out eventually.
Being vegan is no guarantee that we will live to a ripe old age BUT the chances that we will live longer are higher. There are no guarantees because human existence is too complex. Some people smoke 100 cigarettes a day and live to be 90. That doesn't mean it is a healthy lifestyle and that all smokers have nothing to worry about.
 
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PS I think your grandparents were almost certainly healthier, Sabri. They did not have the disadvantage of living in the society that spawned such monsters as McDonalds. They did buy everything prepacked and precooked. etc.
 
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I remind people, who say eating meat and fish is not bad for them, that it's harmful to the animals and fish they are eating. Eating another human would not harm us, but we don't wish to be cannibals, but by eating living creatures we are cannibals in my eyes. The real problem is lack of empathy. Imagine being born into overcrowded captivity, having their children taken from them. Being shaved on a regular basis so their hair can be used to make clothing for their masters. Being tested on with medical experiments without anesthesia. Having whole communities taken and slaughtered.
Humans have done all these to each other in various parts of history, especially in WW2, but we think it's okay to do it to animals. I think it makes us worse than animals.
 
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I don't know, but it seems to me that two vegan capitals of the world, Berlin and Tel Aviv, are no accident. They're both places where humanity was deeply affected by the systematic killing of humans just because there was an imaginary line put between them, like the line we make between pets and livestock.
 
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I'm a vegan, but my family is not. My parents like to come up with arguments agaisnt my reasoning. I can usually come up with an answer, however today they come up with something that I couldn't really respond to:

I have explained that humans are not designed to eat meat and animal products, that it's not healthy etc.

She then questions how come her parents, grandparents, old people she knows are still alive and fit, well into their 60/70/80/90s, even though they consume animal products 3+ times a day. Clearly this is evidence that humans can process animals perfectly fine.

Please help me out here, in a way this makes sense, but what should I tell them?!

Thanks in advance :)

Re: Bold

Are they, though? The reason I ask is because not long ago my mother said something along similar lines, regarding her parents. I had to remind her that I watched her mother die. Although she lived into her 80’s – her later years were not pleasant. Overweight, in diapers, on multiple medications, blind, nearly deaf, going senile and she depended on a walker to get around (in her home). Her father also lived into his late 70’s and was also fat, on multiple medications, had a stroke/heart attack (can’t remember which) that left him without speech. He died shortly after.

A bit tragic that I can remember all those things be she conveniently put them out of mind for the sake of continued animal flesh eating.

On the question of design:

I think it is fairly obvious that we are not designed to eat animal products. We can adapt to them, even for extended periods, but this isn’t without consequences.

I also think we aren’t designed to eat stripped plant products. These can have consequences too. For instance, soy protein isolate raises IGF-1. Otherwise depending on stripped grains can lead to hunger and deficiencies. I think this is a very big reason people eat animals or their by products in the first place – the animal eats the whole grain, seed, or grass, and people then eat the animal to get the nutrients by proxy, along with all the negatives of that proxy. If they were just eating the natural grains, seeds, legumes and so forth, they wouldn’t need a proxy. But most don’t.
 
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I'm going to provide a different idea:

Scientifically speaking, humans evolved eating meat since millions of years ago (but that does not mean that we shouldn't go vegan or that vegan diets are unhealthy)

Quoted from the source below

"A brain is a very nutritionally demanding organ, and if you want to grow a big one, eating at least some meat will provide you far more calories with far less effort than a meatless menu will ... None of that, of course, means that increased meat consumption—or any meat consumption at all— is necessary for the proto-humans’ 21st century descendants ... If the animals got a vote, they’d surely agree."

Source: Sorry Vegans: Here's How Meat-Eating Made Us Human
 
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Humans are opportunistic omnivores. It's hard to argue with the carnivore theory, as it involved eating leftover carcasses, bone marrow, and insects
Edit: I meant that as in people arguing we were meant to eat meat when what our ancestors ate bore no resemblence or even the same nutrition, as the juicy steaks and bbq they want!

 
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Great article. I've read stuff like that before so I just skimmed it. So I'm not sure they made this point.

but depending on who you choose to listen to we have been eating meat for either less than a million years or less than 4 millions years. but we have been evolving from apes for 10 million. so most of our evolution has been without meat.
 
Great article. I've read stuff like that before so I just skimmed it. So I'm not sure they made this point.

but depending on who you choose to listen to we have been eating meat for either less than a million years or less than 4 millions years. but we have been evolving from apes for 10 million. so most of our evolution has been without meat.

Both gorillas and chimpanzees eat very small amounts (~ 5%) of animal products (meat, grubs, eggs, insects).

Information on gorilla diets, from the World Wildlife Foundation: What do gorillas eat? And other gorilla facts | WWF

Information on chimpanzee diets, from the World Wildlife Foundation: Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Information on chimpanzee diets, from National Geographic: Chugging Chimpanzee
.
 
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In 1999, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published this meta-analysis of 5 studies on the comparative mortality rates of vegetarians and omnivores: Mortality in vegetarians and nonvegetarians: detailed findings from a collaborative analysis of 5 prospective studies

"Mortality from ischemic heart disease was 24% lower in vegetarians than in nonvegetarians (death rate ratio: 0.76; 95% CI: 0.62, 0.94; P < 0.01). The lower mortality from ischemic heart disease among vegetarians was greater at younger ages and was restricted to those who had followed their current diet for >5 y. Further categorization of diets showed that, in comparison with regular meat eaters, mortality from ischemic heart disease was 20% lower in occasional meat eaters, 34% lower in people who ate fish but not meat, 34% lower in lactoovovegetarians, and 26% lower in vegans. There were no significant differences between vegetarians and nonvegetarians in mortality from cerebrovascular disease, stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, or all other causes combined."
 
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Both gorillas and chimpanzees eat very small amounts (~ 5%) of animal products (meat, grubs, eggs, insects).

Information on gorilla diets, from the World Wildlife Foundation: What do gorillas eat? And other gorilla facts | WWF

Information on chimpanzee diets, from the World Wildlife Foundation: Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Information on chimpanzee diets, from National Geographic: Chugging Chimpanzee
.
I'm going to add that chimpanzees are the closest living species to humans, so if they eat small amounts of meat, early humans (probably) also ate at least some meat. Also there are many cave paintings of ancient hunting, such as this one:
 
I don't think anyone will argue that early humans ate no meat.
It is almost for sure that they ate some meat. Bugs, grubs, eggs, small animals that they could catch.

The OP asked if people were designed to eat meat.

Well of course I have a problem with the word designed. But I challenge the idea that humans evolved to eat meat or that meat-eating significantly affected our evolution.

BTW, this question and ones like it are commonly posted by trolls in order to bait vegans.

I think Free from harm made one of the most coherent counter-arguments.

The term omnivorous doesn’t mean must eat some animal products. It means capable of subsisting on both plant and animal matter. Of the two, we are able to thrive without eating animals; however, if we eat no plants, we could quickly become malnourished. In fact, decades of scientific evidence have demonstrated that humans have no biological need to consume flesh, eggs or dairy products. We can get all the nutrients we need on a plant-based diet, without the unhealthy animal protein and cholesterol, and without inflicting needless suffering and death on billions of animals.​
Many archeologists and paleontologists don't agree that we evolved to eat meat. If you look at our evolution, hominid first appeared around 10 million years ago. Early man first started eating meat mabye 3 million years ago (its doubtful that we could eat much meat before we had fire and stone tools). So most of our evolution occurred without the benefit of meat. and although there is plenty of difference between 3 million old men and modern man, there are even more evolutionary changes that occurred before 3 million years ago. And our guts are still way more similar to the early hominid than they are different.
 
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Here's an interesting thought people don't usually mention.

What people don't realize about biology is that species can change their diets. Give enough time, maybe a hundred thousand years, and any species can switch from carnivore to herbivore, and vice versa. For example, there's a species of spider called the Bagheera kiplingi, which almost entirely eats plants, and the panda which used to be a carnivore, but now primarily eats bamboo. Not to mention numerous species of carnivorous fish that now eat plants.

There are also examples of herbivores that became carnivores. Many insect species have made this transition. A mammal species is the northern grasshopper mouse, Onychomys leucogaster. It has a mostly carnivorous diet, eating bugs, mice, and even snakes.

I didn't know this stuff until I started thinking and researching about this topic. So in response to this question, I don't think its worth arguing whether humans are omnivores, herbivores or whatever. We have a choice, we can change our diet. But based on what we know now regarding the planet, other animals, and our health, I think we all know which diet would be best for the future of humanity.
 
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