?? Not at all. It's great that we can use forks and knives to do what our own bodies cannot do on their own. And fire (controlled heat, actually) is an even bigger issue - because it sterilizes meat and breaks down some of the more complex compounds, allowing us to eat it with much less risk of disease and death. But if you're going to go by definitions like that, then cows are omnivores too - because we feed them animal byproducts. Sort of a useless definition, though, because you can make a dog an herbivore and a cow a carnivore that way. It is, of course, both. Well, here in the US, a meat and fat rich diet has led to a lot of people who will never experience the thrill of being able to run in a race, or climb a mountain, or bike through a desert. Personally I'd miss that more.
The distinction between carnivore, herbivore, and omnivore is pretty vague. There are lots of herbivores that will eat insects to supplement their diet. Lots more herbivores eat insects and other small animals by accident, since they get mixed up with the vegetable food. This is not sufficient for them to be reclassified as omnivores, since it is such a small part of the their diet. To be classified as an omnivore needs significant animal protein consumption - enough to be a vital part of the overall diet.
Well suit yourself. I'll take the steak over any of those forms of torture any day! Just finished one and it was divine. Unless by "bike" you mean "motorcycle." I rode quite a few enduros across the California desert when I was young. That's actually pretty tough on the old bod. I had to quit because I couldn't take the pounding anymore.
Well, agreed. But again, we sometimes feed meat to cows in sufficient quantity that it makes up a vital part of their caloric intake. (Heck, we sometimes feed them chicken manure, although I'm not sure if that counts as an animal product.) That doesn't make them omnivores. Indeed, it generally makes them sick. But it also means cheap beef for McDonald's.
I think "carnivore," "herbivore," "omnivore," "detritivore," etc., refer to an animal's natural dietary habits that complement its digestive system. The fact that we can use chemical engineering to provide all the key components of a herbivorous diet without letting a cow walk out into the sunshine and graze does not turn it into an omnivore. No more than using chemical engineering to mix plant tissue into a tasteless, textureless simulation of meat, eggs and cheese turns humans into herbivores.
And no more than using science and engineering to pre-chew and pre-digest otherwise impossible to eat meat turns man into an omnivore!
Humans have had the teeth and digestive system necessary to use raw meat as their primary source of nutrition since H. sapiens first appeared. It's estimated that it originally took them three hours per day to chew it, especially since the early primitive flint blades could not cut it up into neat bite-size pieces. So our species has always been not only an omnivore, but arguably a carnivore. Cooking, which became common after our species was already in existence, of course made meat even easier to eat. Shorter mealtimes gave our ancestors more time to pursue other interests, such as inventing more technology, which turned us into the apex predator of the entire planet. The history of our species has been aggressive transcendence over nature, both external nature such as weather and larger predators, and our own internal nature such as tribalism and the instincts of a nomadic hunter-gatherer. So what turned us into carnivores was not a complete evolutionary revision of our internal organs, but rather our own human-ness.
That's an argument that says we cannot eat meat without technology (i.e. knives.) As best we can tell, our species reached its current form (archaic homo sapiens) about 200,000 years ago; the first evidence of technology use occurs around 160,000 years ago. Indeed, the desire to increase caloric intake via eating meat was probably one of the things that _drove_ development of technology, since we couldn't do it without assistance. Well, but again - if your argument is that "technology allows us to eat meat" you can apply the same argument to demonstrate that cows are carnivores. Well, omnivore; most people will still eat french fries. But yes, technology is what allowed us to start eating meat.
Shellfish and other shallow water meats are easily caught and eaten without technology. So are small amphibians, eggs, large insects, and the like. Chimps do it - and their fangs are for fighting, not eating. We cannot eat large herbivores or carrion without some rudimentary tech - such as a rock handy, for cracking marrow bones- but we had that technology long before we became humans. And grow big brains, and coddle our children through ten years of incompetence, and travel the world feeding ourselves everywhere we went. There is no such thing as a human being without technology.
Agreed. Before technology arrived, our meat-eating was limited to what our bodies alone could handle - grubs, insects, bird eggs etc. Hmm. Do you have evidence for that behavior before 200,000 years ago? Earliest indication of any organized hunting activity at all I could find was 160,000 years ago. By choice? No. Historically? There definitely were.
Before technology, we had a different body. Fish and shellfish and such get pretty big, and are obtained in large quantities to eat raw even today. And even chimps can handle more robust fare than grubs, bird eggs, etc. They hunt and eat meat. I wasn't specifying hunted big game - but anyway: Chimps hunt. No human remains exist without evidence of technology sufficient to forage for carrion at a minimum - opposable thumbs, bipedal stance, land dwelling environment. What kind of evidence would you expect? None. Name them.
It is possible that the earliest hunting of game occurred when stone tools were first used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_tool I quote : "The earliest known Oldowan tools yet found date from 2.6 million years ago, during the Lower Palaeolithic period, and have been uncovered at Gona in Ethiopia. After this date, the Oldowan Industry subsequently spread throughout much of Africa, although archaeologists are currently unsure which Hominan species first developed them, with some speculating that it was Australopithecus garhi, and others believing that it was in fact the more highly evolved Homo habilis." Homo habilis first evolved about 3 million years ago, so it is quite likely that our ancestors have been hunters of game for at least 3 million years. Since the simplest tools and weapons, like unchipped lumps of stone, and sharpened bits of wood, do not remain an identifiable part of the fossil record, it is likely that our ancestors have been tool users for a lot longer than 3 million, and may have hunted game during that earlier time, also. After all, a tribe of chimps has been found in which the females used short, sharp sticks as spears for hunting.
So basically, there can't be an agreement on what is the most "natural" diet for human beings (between vegetarian or omnivore). To the fact that we have been eating meat for about 3 million years we can easily respond with the health effects of vegetarianism today (not base on historical behaviour, but studies of the current health benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle). Highlights: * Vegetarians tend to have lower weight, total serum cholesterol levels, and blood pressures than omnivores. * Vegetarians have lower mortality than the population at large, attributable primarily to lower death rates from ischemic heart disease and certain cancers. * Clinical nutritional deficiencies are uncommon even among strict vegetarians, although obtaining essential nutrients requires planning and, in some cases, vitamin supplementation. * At present, vegetarians appear to make up less than 2% of the population, but substantial public health and environmental benefits would likely result from a more widespread adoption of vegetarianism.
Also, you cannot say that vegetarianism hasn't been tested in society; in India alone there are approximately 375 million vegetarians, and their ancestors have been vegetarians for thousands of years.
Not much of one. Homo Sapiens hasn't changed much in 200,000 years. For this you'd need a digestive system capable of handling carrion. We don't have one. (For evidence of this, observe what happens when someone eats even mildly spoiled meat.) First Homo Sapiens fossils - 200,000 years ago First evidence of any hunting - 150,000 years ago
To WS You need to specify what kind of vegetarianism you are describing. Total vegatarianism is called vegan, and is characterised by lots of anemia from both lack of iron and lack of vitamin B12. On the other hand, people may be lacto-vegetarian, eating dairy products, which gives animal protein and lots of calcium. Better is ovo-lacto-vegetarianism which supplies most nutrients. The omnivore diet we now eat is quite different to the 'natural' omnivore diet. For a start, game animals have very little saturated fat. The biggest problem with eating meat, is the saturated fat. Especially in America where animals are grain fed and store heaps of fat in their tissues. A person who eats lots of meat, but restricts that to low fat meats, will have all the benefits you describe for vegetarianism, plus no chance of dietary anemia.
Agree with you. From the article: Definition of Vegetarianism Most epidemiologic and clinical studies of vegetarians classify them as either vegans, lactovegetarians, or lactoovovegetarians. Vegans eat no food of animal origin (except perhaps honey), and lactovegetarians eat dairy products. Lacto-ovovegetarians eat both dairy products and eggs and outnumber vegans in most reports. Because the elimination or reduction of alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine intake often accompanies vegetarianism, 24 many studies control for this.
Do those studies also control for calorific intake? Vegetarians tend to be very 'faddy' about food, and often consume less than meat eaters who are less picky. Mind you, I have a niece who is vegan and horribly obese. She is generally pretty unhealthy, which shows that doing away with meat does not automatically make you healthy. My belief is that it is not being vegetarian that cuts cholesterol etc., but cutting calories. I am a big meat eater myself, but my saturated fat consumption is minimal. Living in New Zealand, we get pasture fed meat, not grain fed, which makes the meat way less fatty. In addition, we trim fat off meat. Going from grain fed to trimmed pasture fed can cut fat content from 20% to 3%. My cholesterol, blood pressure, resting pulse, ECG etc are all excellent. My doctor says he wishes everyone was like me. Which shows that a big meat intake is not really a problem.
I'm not sure what you mean by "technology," but in science the word is normally used to mean "the creation of tools." The first stone tools go back more than two million years, way before the appearance of our species on the landscape.
Chimps hunt and eat meat. They haven't changed much in the past 200,000 years either. Check out the normal handling of hunted game and other such meat just a couple of generations ago - before refrigeration (for example, the debate among grouse and pheasant hunters over how long the dead bird should be hung to "cure" before consumption - some preferred merely a couple of days, others recommended hanging the bird by the neck and eating it when it had rotted off its neck and fallen to the floor). Humans are and have always been perfectly capable of feasting on predator kills, etc - with enjoyment. Most men in most cultures through history have put more time and effort into obtaining meat than they put into anything else. Chimps hunt and eat meat, in organized packs. Besides: I would include a Homo sapiens fossil - its obvious anatomy, brain size, manipulative hands, etc - as evidence of hunting.
