The “food pyramid” will never be the same;
Despite a widespread belief that humans owe their evolution to the dietary flexibility in eating both meat and vegetables, researchers in Israel suggest that early humans were actually apex predators who hunted large animals for two million years before they sought vegetables to supplement their diet.
In a study recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, academics from Tel Aviv University in Israel and the University of Minho in Portugal examined modern biology to determine if stone-age humans were specialized carnivores or generalist omnivores.[…]
“We decided to use other methods to reconstruct the diet of Stone-Age humans: to examine the memory preserved in our own bodies, our metabolism, genetics and physical build,” Ben-Dor said.
“Human behaviour changes rapidly, but evolution is slow. The body remembers.”
They discovered 25 lines of evidence from the studied papers on human biology that seem to show that earlier Homo sapiens were apex predators at the top of the food chain.
For example, the academics explained that humans have a high acidity in their stomachs when compared to omnivores or even other predators, which is important for consuming animal products. […]
In addition to the evidence they collected by studying human biology, the researchers said archeological evidence from the Pleistocene period supports their theory.
I have found Jordan Peterson’s tales of he and his daughter’s past medical difficulties and their finding relief in all-meat diets fascinating as hell.
Triggering vegans in 4..3..2…
Or government safety inspector…
Or labor laws…
Hint, our farmers are illegally hiring foreign workers…
Just don’t add a complaint to the labor board…quiet.
Gell-Mann amnesia again.
To call anything earlier than homo sapiens sapiens (300kya) “human” is to fundamentally misuse the term. 2Mya – 300kya is australopithicus.
The cladistic definition of “Human” is a member of the genus homo, which includes erectus and neandertal.
Didn’t get these big brains eating leaves….
Because steak is good.
And the protein helps in a primeval environment.
I’ve been eating a carnivore diet for over a year. I initially lost 30 pounds without even trying. I sleep better, more mental clarity, more energy, no brain fog, better sex life, I pack on muscle easier than in my 20’s – I’m 54 now – visceral fat almost zero, and my last CAC scored zero lest anyone cry, ‘what about your cholesterol!’. It’s been life changing.
I wouldn’t go that far but the current medical paradigm of reflexively prescribing statins to anyone with a ‘high ldl’ is dangerous.
18 months for me, and similar results including the CAC score of Zero.
Damn it! Steak again!
Oh well, its a sacrifice I feel I have to take to reduce the environmental catastrophe that would ensue if ruminants were allowed to fart on forever.
There is no such thing as the ideal human diet. Different ethnicities, lifestyles, etc, make all the difference.
Back that up with something like evidence.
There has been significant research into dietary issues with native Indians. It seems their metabolisms don’t readily adjust to the grain-rich diet introduced by the incomers, and the problem worsened when the powers-that-be came out with the triangle diet which mandated more carbs and less protein (what a vet I know refers to as the “feed lot diet”). Remember reading something along these lines about a west coast native who was reverting to the salmon and oolichan grease diet prevalent along the coast and who was reporting good things happening.
Forget the environmentalists and cow farts: we need more beef and fewer grains.
Certain dietary intolerances are preponderant in different ethnicities, and, hooda thunk it, they have to do with the diet that their ancestors have been eating for thousands of years. Then there are the different requirements of the body and brain between, say, a long-distance runner and a watchmaker. That’s just the in-your-face stuff, what can and can not be assimilated by different ethnicities, now, if you choose to believe that the story ends there, and other than these things, all ethnicities can use all other nutrients with exactly the same efficacy, well, I can’t help you with that.
BS. The Krebs cycle is excellent at metabolizing carbs and sugars. Fruits have lots of sugar in them. Veggies have lots of carbs in them. Honey is almost pure sugar.
So what about India which is full of vegetarians whose main source of calories is rice? Since the invention of agriculture the main source of calories in the western diet has been bread. Potatoes were added to the diet more recently. There was a time in the not too distant past were people ate bread and potatoes three times a day. I’m pretty sure that the obesity epidemic isn’t caused by what we eat, it’s caused by how much we eat and how little we move. Your average person probably needs about 1200 to 1500 calories a day to sustain the modern totally sedentary lifestyle, but we still eat like we’re medieval peasants doing back breaking labour from dawn till dusk.
SE-Asia is experiencing epidemic levels of type2 Diabetes as formerly-peasant societies have become accustomed to luxury levels of rice and additional flavourings.
Keep in mind that very basic rice or potato diets are not particularly appetising, either. The populations that remained relatively healthy on such starch-rich foods had far lower levels of appetite-enhancing food additives. A bland diet does not encourage eating to excess.
We have a greater cancer risk because we live much longer and are much better at identifying (and treating) and posthumously identifying cancer. No one dies from natural causes anymore. [We all know everyone does from COVID…LMAO].
You’re probably right about what we’re eating. We live in a time of extraordinary wealth and the food availability of Pharohs. My grandmother survived prairie winters on turnips, carrots, some berries, the phlegm she coughed up from the flu, and whatever great-grandpa could kill. I don’t think they fretted much about cancer.
Two generations later I bitch about the pizza guy being five minutes late.
Mother also grew up on a prairie farm. Grandad would make his own corned beef in a barrel each fall. Also Mum would talk about being in a “beef circle”. A group of farmers would band together and each one would in turn slaughter a steer and distribute the meat amongst the circle. So there was fresh meat available year-round.
Mum was also on record as saying the most traditional Prairie dish was a steamed carrot pudding. Seems every ethnic group had a variant of same.
‘Fruits have lots of sugar in them’
Not always
In my youth apples, oranges and my morning toast didn’t taste sweet.
I remember reading a paper, some years ago, that compared animals based upon the size of their liver compared to their body mass.
Carnivores had a much higher liver size.
Humans came somewhere on the scale alongside tigers.
WeII……I guess I finaIIy have the answer I was Iooking for. Now I know why I onIy have ONE stomach, and everything I eat seems to have 4.
*As the saying goes, “If God didn’t want us to eat animaIs…..then why did he make them out of meat?”
I have a T shirt that says “If God wanted us to be vegetarians, he would have made broccoli more fun to shoot”
“We are not adapted to eating sugar and carbs . . .”
We are the only ape with starch amylase in our saliva. I interpret this as our ancestors using tools to dig for tubers, rather than having to extract the poor energy from leaves and vegetables.
That does not imply that it was a regular and significant part of our diet, but could be used to prevent starvation.
Here’s my “scientific” study of our meat eating predisposition …
1. Animal fats, from butter to bacon, TASTE delicious
2. Animal fats, from butter to bacon, are more energy dense than any other food
3. Animal fats, from butter to bacon, build Gray matter. Everything else is “side dishes” … where they belong. But they DO belong, because we are both scavaging and agricultural omnivores. Everything else If fashionista nonsense.
“Everything else is “side dishes” … ”
. . . if you put enough bacon fat on ’em.
Vegetarianism is an asceticism. Meaning, it’s the same idea as flogging yourself with thorns.
Vegetarianism is a mental illness.
It’s a philosophical error in several ways.
It also depends almost entirely on imported foods as well. Which take a fair bit of energy to import.
Precisely. And all the more annoying … they insist on showing you their scars … and insisting YOU should be flogged as well. It’ll do you good
But muh paleo-diet!
Paleo is still generally low-carb.
It also lays to remember that most fruits and grains are highly seasonal and are prized by animals other than humans. Anyone with more traditional fruit tree – one with an extended ripening window – will understand how happily birds will take or spoil fruit before we consider it ripe enough to be palatable. Let alone rot, insects and weather. Same goes for natural grain crops and much in the way of leafy greens.
Honey is an occasional treat, not a staple.
The error is in imagining that just because something could be eaten, that it was eaten year-round and in large quantities.
Animals, on the other hand…… walking food-storage mechanisms.
This is why I want to be a Swanson. Those in the know, know what I mean.
I have believed (for decades , I am 61 ) that humans ( well… our ancestors ) only ate fruits and vegetables either because the hunt failed and there was no meat to eat… or as a side dish of sort but that meat was the main food.
Also just a look at our teeth says a lot ; we have incisives to cut trough flesh and meat , and we canine just as other meat eating predators do.
We do not have teeth like cows and horses to chew grass.
our teeth alone say a lot about our meat eating ancestors.
Seems to me that would depend on the area. Some places have ample fruits, nuts and veggies just hangin around waiting to be picked, places like that probably had people who were carnivores of opportunity, but mainly herbivore. Other places are cold, with no plants growing for months, (or even ever, as is the case with the Eskimos), those places probably had people who were herbivores of opportunity, but mainly carnivore. It ain’t rocket science.
That’s right YeahWell. Humans and indeed all life on the planet will do whatever it takes in order to see another sunrise. We ate whatever was at hand to survive.
We are fashioned from clay and to the dust we will return and in between we garden sayeth the bible.
Fruits and nuts are highly seasonal, and tend to be rapidly eaten by other species. They are not commonly available year-round in the absence of refrigeration and mass-transport. It is probable that the key driver of the development of agriculture is not increased production, but the protection of resources from other species.
Actual observation of Hunter-gatherer people’s is that they tended to gather at a seasonal resource, feast while it was available, then go back to hunting.
We should also keep in mind that much of the theory of human evolution is highly speculative when it comes to the details. No “tree-dwelling-ape” has left behind a journal or a series of letters detailing his exploratory experiences as a savannah-traversing ground-dwelling.
“We do not have teeth like cows and horses to chew grass.”
We don’t have teeth like cats and dogs either, but that’s because we started out as insectivores and by the time we were eating cows and horses we had pointy sticks, sharp rocks and control of fire.
One of the things that makes sapiens unique is that we evolved as pointy stick, sharp rock and fire users. We inherited them from our erectus ancestors and as we shaped them, they shaped us.
Well, no, we were forest apes who had to descend to the savannah because the forest retreated. That’s where we learnt to stand upright. Then we became scavengers, chasing away the predators from their kills with stones and sticks and slowly becoming the predators. Due to combined organized activity, we could take on herds and big game. I don’t understand when fire and language started. Probably they discovered dead game after a wild fire was easier to chew. That was a big jump. Language would have come through better organization in the tall grass and pack behavior of hunting. So there we already have the defining traits of humanity: language, fire, tools, organized warfare.
But, I am told, don’t know enough myself, that the advent of our control of fire enabled much better nutrition and caused our brains to swell, sometimes to the size of a modern leftist’s brain.
From there on, according to said leftists, it was downhill all the way.
” . . . we were forest apes who had to descend to the savannah because the forest retreated. . . ”
. . . who had teeth inherited from their tree dwelling, insectivorous ancestors. Our dentition type goes back a very long way. Our flat crowned teeth aren’t grass grinders, they’re chitin crushers.
Here’s one explanation:
https://www.gradesaver.com/charles-lamb-essays/study-guide/summary-a-dissertation-upon-roast-pig
Hmmm. We certainly are at the top of the food chain; and doubtless we are apex p[redators; but I always think of us as the greatest scavengers. Have you noticed how scavenger animals are the smartest? Racoons, foxes? They’ll eat anything, which makes them omnivores. So are we, but an omnivore can still be a top predator. So, in conclusion, what is the authors’ point.
Human behaviour changes rapidly? News to me now where’s my steak?
I’m a meatatarian. You disrespect me when you eat what my food eats.
https://youtu.be/z0O_VYcsIk8
Only loosely related, sorry.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/nasa-emails-employees-seeking-volunteers-help-staff-facilities-unaccompanied-illegal-alien-children/
Maybe NASA heard “interestellar aliens” when they were told “illegal aliens
Following NASA’s successful program to make muslims feel good about islamic rocketry, they will equalize the diversity of Mars and Venus, maybe rename them as IT and IT , and make their atmospheres and tempertures the same.
Obesity is caused by insulin resistance. IR is caused by repeated, long term high glucose levels and seed oil ingestion. It is irrespective of activity.
Kudos to Jackie Dunham for a well written article. Rare for what passes as science reporting these days.
How many of those arguing against the scientific investigation reported above, by citing speculative narratives and “just-so stories”.
If the *evidence* shows that human ancestors ate a mostly carnivorous diet, then your theory that they didn’t, needs to be amended to fit the *evidence”.
Yep. You don’t see people with “meat protein intolerance”, unlike folk with celiac disease or lactose intolerance. The evidence suggests that every ethnicity, all over the world ate meat.
so there’s that whole paleo/keto/atkins diet “fad” thing that keeps popping up in scientific papers relying on empirical data rather than meta (aka 2nd hand anecdotal stories) information.
Science, at it’s best. Almost.