Freston has hit on some important points that deserve our attention, especially as we enter an era of renewed consciousness about adjusting our lifestyles to be healthier for ourselves and the environment.

The biggest influence over what we choose to eat is cultural preference (ie, we like what we are used to), not necessarily what is best for our health. Unlike many other cultures around the world, meat is abundantly available here in America and, thanks in large part to the successful marketing strategies of animal agricultural industries, has traditionally been the center of attention when it comes to what’s on our plate. However, compare the catastrophic heart disease-related death rates in America with those of other cultures where meat plays a less prominent role and you’ll get a glimpse of the extent to which we are, in many ways, dying for the taste of meat.

The points Freston makes about the physiological characteristics that carnivores have and that humans lack are accurate, and make a compelling argument for vegetarianism. There are even more facts that she did not mention which further strengthen that argument.

For example, the stomach acidity of humans is more suitable for a vegetarian diet. This is because carnivorous animals typically have very strong acidic stomach fluids in order to break down meat. Plants break down more easily so naturally herbivores’ stomach acids are not as strong. The acid level of a human is the same as that of an herbivore, not a carnivore or an omnivore. (Specifically, carnivores and omnivores have a stomach digestion acids pH level of 1 where as herbivores’ stomach acids pH levels are around 4-5. Human’s stomach acid is the typical herbivore level of 4-5.)

Not only does eating meat cause health problems for us, but eating fruits and vegetables can actively improve our health. Whether it is preventing cancer or improving blood pressure, a vegetarian or vegan diet can drastically affect our health for the better.

We are lucky to live in a time where vegetarian food is so easy to get. Over the past 10 years it has gotten easier because the demand consistently increases as people learn about the benefits of vegetarianism.

It is hard to find a grocery store or restaurant that doesn’t have wholesome food for people who want to avoid meat. Even base ball parks are making room on their grill for vegetarian “not” dogs and burgers. This is a step in the right direction, but more is needed. Every person should take on the responsibility of taking care of their health, and that includes avoiding meat. One advantage that will result is allowing us to be less reliant on pills and emergency treatments, which will in the long run relieve some of the tension on our health care system which is currently facing unprecedented challenges.

It is time for us as a society to get behind the current growing trend of adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet for the sake of our individual health and the health of our society and environment.

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Though I understand that not everyone may adopt a more compassionate vegan lifestyle, we are certainly going to fight for these animals you "love to eat". Some people just dont care about animals and that is very unfortunate, especially if that person has kids, because that indifference and apathy is spread from generation to generation. It is what allowed slavery and racism to exist for so long- such lack of empathy and compassion for something so defenseless.

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Soy will kill you faster than any meat product. An if you do the research, you will find that humans have been eating soy "products" for a very short period of time, (decades as opposed to hundreds of thousands of years)and then only in FERMENTED form, because our little tummies do not readily digest unfermented soy products (soy was for the animals for the most part). Today's "tofu" is not our ancestors' fermented soy.

This continued harangue about a vegan diet is a real turn off to me as an AlterNet reader. Can we have some balance, please? No one needs to eat pounds of meat a week, and we should all support bio-regional food and humane treatment of animals. The consumption of meat is not the problem, the meat industry is the problem.

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Gristly, greasy, blood-soaked meat? No thanks! Give me delicious Riblets, Boca "chicken", and soy bratwurst any day...these fabulous alternatives to dead animals made me a vegetarian overnight.

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The article points out that a vegetarian diet is healthier. You're response does nothing but highlight your lack of understanding of basic statistics. What does it prove that your grandparents lived into their 80s? Do you realise that four people is an extremely small sample of the population?

Science and statistical evidence backs up the claims in this article, and you do nothing to back up your own. You may as well have told us that you like reading books with pictures in.

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And my mom is 76, and she's not even on any meds! NOT ONE. She's a meat-eater, too.

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{{ Just like my grandparents who all lived into their 80s. }}

Hmm. Funny you don't mention your parents, god rest their souls. Mad cow anyone?

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The fact remains that the meat, egg, and dairy industry is all about money and profit- it makes no effort to ensure humane treatment of animals or humans, nor does it produce a healthy product. The result is a huge negative effect on not only human health but also the environment. Where animals are treated as commodities or "part of the machine", not a living, breathing, creature capable of suffering immense pain and fear. Humans have become so disconnected with where their food comes from, seeing only that plastic covered flesh and forgetting that there was once an animal who probably endured unbelievable cruelty just to feed someone a product they dont need.

Lets face it, eating meat has come to be a matter of taste buds versus choosing compassion for animals, as it is proven that we not only dont need meat to survive and be healthy, its in fact counterproductive to a healthy lifestyle. I ask anyone who eats animal products to watch, read, see, & hear what is happening to animals on factory farms- are you okay with directly contributing to those animals miserable lives simply for taste? Are you unwilling to care about these creatures who depend on us for true compassion?

Once humans realize that they have the power to change and stop this complete war and onslaught against animals, with every bite, and every meal, we can only then, begin to move into a more compassionate and healthy world.

. : . With love & compassion for all creatures big & small . : .

Shani Campbell
President
East Bay Animal Advocates

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Bravo, Alternet for continuing to post pro-vegetarian articles; I don’t care too much about whether eating meat is “natural,” though I suppose it’s a fair enough topic, if the argument that some meat eaters make is—in some minds—that eating animals is natural or healthy. But really, for progressives, it seems to me that the central questions should be: Is it right to cause beings to suffer for our pleasure?

There is no doubt in my mind that, as Tolstoy said, “vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.” That’s for the very simple reason that if we’re basing our diet on domination (of animals in this case, literally devouring the corpses of those who can’t stop us), how are we going to root out the more difficult areas of violence in our lives?

Or as Pythagoras put it, “As long as humanity continues to be the ruthless destroyer of other beings, we will never know health or peace. For as long as people massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” Of course, vegetarianism was called Pythagoreanism for centuries before it got its new name.

Most people today understand the connections among certain movements—abolition of slavery, suffrage for women, civil rights, feminism, gay and lesbian rights, labor justice. All are these movements oppose oppression and advocate liberation for the oppressed. The neglected link, for many, is animal rights.

Prejudice may be prejudice on the basis of race, gender, sexual preference or on basis of species. In each case, a line is drawn placing one group above a line, and everyone else below it. Bias on the basis of species is as unjustified as racism, sexism, or homophobia (in fact, Isaac Bashevis Singer called speciesism the “most extreme” form of racism, because it elevates the “might makes right” principle to its peak—eating the corpses of those who can’t stop you).

Americans consume more than 10 billion land animals every single year. The vast majority of these animals live lives which are “nasty, brutish, and short.”

As just one example of current farm conditions, laying hens spend their entire lives crammed 4-7 in wire-mesh cages stacked in a warehouse with tens of thousands of other birds. Conditions are so horrendous that their feet often grow through and around the wire, and one-third of birds suffer leg breaks on the packed and painful ride to the slaughterhouse--which often entails days without food and water. One egg represents 24 hours of unimaginable suffering for a hen, not to mention her ride to the slaughterhouse.

Broiler chickens, pigs, turkeys, dairy cows, and beef cows also are separated from their families at birth, suffer the mental and physical anguish of living in tiny spaces with no relief and no hope for escape, endure the long and excruciating ride to the slaughterhouse. Non-ambulatory animals are dragged from the backs of transport trucks, bones snapping. They are killed by being hung upside down and bled to death, often skinned, hacked to bits, and killed while fully conscious. I have been to many of these farms and a few of these slaughterhouses. The animals scream with fear, frustration, and pain. Arguably, the best thing and most immediate thing anyone can do to promote justice and reject violence is to adopt a diet free of animals or their milk and eggs.

A bit of historical perspective is useful: The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (abolition) was passed in 1865, just 133 years ago; the 19th Amendment (suffrage) was passed in 1920, just 78 years ago; labor justice, including the 40-hour work week, is very new; the first child abuse case was tried in this country in 1913.

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Many good and thoughtful people did not believe that Native- or African-Americans deserved rights, or that women and children deserved rights. Slavery flourished from the 1520s until the end of the 1800s in this country. Rutgers law professor Gary Francione pointed out that “If you had asked white men in 1810 whether blacks had rights, most would have laughed at you.”

I mention these past atrocities to point out how much society has changed in, historically, a blink of the eye. In fact, it was the mid 17th Century—just 330 years ago—that found the Pope sentencing Galileo to the torture chamber until he would recant his heresy that the sun did not revolve around the earth. I used to believe that humans are the top of the life cycle. But I came to see that the belief in humans at the center of the moral universe is exactly as valid as our one-time belief in the earth as the center of the physical universe. Over time, I have grown to see animal liberation within the context of other movements for justice.

Animal liberation is an optimistic movement. We believe with Jeremy Bentham that “The time will come when society will extend its mantle over everything which breathes.” We believe with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that the arc of history is long, but that it bends toward justice and compassion (The fact that King’s wife and son, Coretta and Dexter Scott King, are vegans is evidence of this). We believe that society will look back on human arrogance and cruelty toward other animals with the same horror and disbelief we presently feel at slavery and other atrocities.

To quote the Latin American adage, “The struggle is one.” As King stated so often: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Nobel laureate, stated that “As long as human beings go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace. There is only one little step from killing animals to creating gas chambers a la Hitler and concentration camps a la Stalin... There will be no justice as long as a man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.” If we can convince people not to harm mice and rats and cats and dogs and pigs and chickens and turkeys, they will certainly not turn around and hurt human beings. And many great humanitarians, from Albert Schweitzer to Ellen White, from Louisa May Alcott to Albert Einstein, felt that a peaceful society is impossible as long as we are eating and otherways torturing animals.

Albert Einstein called human bigotry according to species an “optical illusion of consciousness.” He stated that the human task is “to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures...” This is a process, and none of us will ever be pure; but we should do the best we can, adopting a vegan diet as a bare minimum in support of basic animal welfare.

Animal liberation is the social justice movement for the 21st century.

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ask this to the well known vegetarian A.Hitler.

everybody knows in mean time that aFlexotarier (eating meat from time to time and deciding to eat vegetarian other times) is the right answer to the problems .

my Lisu wife living in the hills birma,thailand still remembers the tribe was eating the familypig at chinese newyear.
Poverty ment no meat during the year.

and remember many liberals have ideas originating from 1830 till 1901

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And not only do they suck but there are WAY to fucking many of them. Trust me, the earth is going to fix this problem and fix it soon. The aborted are the lucky ones! Besides what could be better than being a baby in Heaven? You dumb dim witted fucktard.

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Turn off the neocon talking - (and empty) - heads.

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Nihilism is the belief in no ideology or creed, Honky.
Your true colors are showing, and those colors are as red as your neck.

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Mmmmmmmm! Meat fetus! Tender! Juicy! A veritable "baby banquet!" Yummy! All this talk of abortion has made me really hungry for veal!
Have a nice day.

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socially 'expectable'? have much schooling?

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Just name-calling and petty nonsense.

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Freston makes some strong arguments here and it really seems there's no doubt that meat does not belong in the human diet in the quantities in which we now consume it. A vegan diet seems far closer to the one we evolved to et than a contemporary Western diet. The question though is not whether it is "natural" for us to consume it but whether it is necessary. The answer is pretty simple. Every healthy vegan is evidence that it is not necessary - and there are very many of us. Some vegans, like some meat-eaters eat bad diets and pay the consequence but my many vegan friends (and their children) absolutely show thaht the diet is healthy for people at all stages of life - a posuition also held by the American Dietetic Association, effectively ending the debate.

So, if we don't need meat (or dairy), given its impact on world resources, the environment, our own health and animals, we must stop. It's a crazy habit, one that only fails to seem crazy because it's validated by social convention. That's not good enough any more.

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Your article makes a lot of sense, gave me a new perspective on vegetarianism. I have atherosclerosis, and I limit my saturated fat and cholesterol intake. I don't eat red meat anymore, seldom eat chicken. The hard thing to give up for me is low-fat frozen yogurt, non-fat liquid yogurt, and non-fat milk. I tried soy protein powder (w/orange juice) and soymilk, but I have read reports that when they process soy into soy protein isolate (powder), it actually becomes an anti-nutrient, i.e., it's bad for you. Does anyone have any info on this?

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..we're facing violent attacks from right wing maniacs and AlterNet decides to blather on about vegetarianism. What the hell is the matter with you people? Get your gaddam priorities straight! And get yourselves some guns, too!

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Since the time that man discovered fire, meat has been a staple diet. The laws of natural economy and resources determine food sources for any given culture. The fact that food policy is determined by some form of commercial codex is a rather fleeting byline for the abjectly self absorbed secular humananist is a scary prospect. Whether your meat source be your fellow human enemy or the result of a natural fire that provides the easy foraging for some nice crisped up squirrel, monkey, bird or two. To whatever seemed edible be it a plant or animal. While certainly providing an olfactory symphony for the primeval senses. All natural grown food is good for you, try it some time !. First you will have to find some. Seems the consuming of domesticated/industrialized hybrid food sources also breeds a like minded fool.

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I draw the line at eating beef and pork. Not even a buffalo or a hybrid beef & buffalo.
NO WAY!

And I am not sure I like Goats and Lamb either.

But I will kill and fry a rattlesnake and I will eat a non-chicken fowl every so often. Pigeons taste good!

I do NOT like seeing ANY animal killed!

But reptiles are a different matter.

I like deer meat or from a wild pig. There are so many of them here if they weren't harvested, they would die of starvation but DO NOT TAKE MORE THAN YOU CAN EAT. AND IF YOU AREN'T GOING TO EAT THEM THEN LEAVE THEM ALONE!

Rabbits have worms when you harvest them in any month with an r in it. Besides, they are cute and cuddly pets.

I think the New World Order Ruling Class who would PRESUME to be our SOCIAL BETTERS are being HYPOCRITES again. They advocate VEGITARIANISM for us PEONS because that is just more filet mignon, T-bone steak, prime rib, Sirloin and all the other prime cuts of meat for THEMSELVES!

They would have us killing and eating each other if they thought it would bring about their desired 80 percent of the world's population LOSS.

THEY ARE TRYING TO BRAINWASH INTO POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WHICH TRANSLATES TO MORE AND BETTER THINGS FOR THEMSELVES THAT THEY SHAME US INTO GIVING UP OR GIVING TO THEM!
I am not too worried. When I am dead and gone and LEAVE NO CHILD BEHIND.

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Blood type O needs meat

A vegetarian

B/AB mix

see www.dadamo.com

Simple science

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...that never understood hunger.

Coming from a country that during the 20th century suffered long periods of food shortage due to war and an international blockade, Ive seen the consequence of too little meat and dairy in your diet. I see it everytime I stand in an elevator with people over 50. I have a friend who calls them "the hobbits".

Spaniards were believed to be short and stocky for centuries... until meat and milk started to be avaliable to everyone. I am 1.80m and the average spaniard under 30 is taller than me. My father was a tall-for-his-age 1.70 and my mother is -wait for it- 1.52. Spanish diet include a wide array of vegetables and fruit (we are Europe's first fruit grower) yet people still grew underdeveloped. A similar case is the japanese, once believed to be "the pigmys of the pacific" and now growing well into the 1.80m tall since animal protein became avaliable.

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...that never understood hunger.

Coming from a country that during the 20th century suffered long periods of food shortage due to war and an international blockade, Ive seen the consequence of too little meat and dairy in your diet. I see it everytime I stand in an elevator with people over 50. I have a friend who calls them "the hobbits".

Spaniards were believed to be short and stocky for centuries... until meat and milk started to be avaliable to everyone. I am 1.80m and the average spaniard under 30 is taller than me. My father was a tall-for-his-age 1.70 and my mother is -wait for it- 1.52. Spanish diet include a wide array of vegetables and fruit (we are Europe's first fruit grower) yet people still grew underdeveloped. A similar case is the japanese, once believed to be "the pigmys of the pacific" and now growing well into the 1.80m tall since animal protein became avaliable.

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Such as, fat is bad for you. It's not, unless you turn fatty acids into triglycerides by binding them up with glucose produced by carbohydrate.

Food industry lawyers desgined the Food Pyramid because carbohydrate is cheap and produces a higher profit-margin than expensive proteins. It's a money-making scam on the public, obscenely at the expense of the health of millions, namely our children who are now overweight and unhealthy and developing "Adult-Onset" diabetes, only now called "Type II" for obvious reasons. These are recent developments, having exploded in a generation or two. Oddly at the same time that our low-fat, high-carb diets were pushed on us by the profit-motivated food industry.

Meat is not the problem for our health or our environment. Over-population is the problem for our environment. Moralizing about the natural food chain helps nothing and alienates those who would otherwise support saner food production and agricultural policy.

Big Fat Lies with Gary Taubes (video)

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie? by Gary Taubes, The New York Times

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Avoiding meat makes sense. Here's how:

1. Eating meat is linked to all sorts of health problems

2. the industrial animal ag industry wreaks environmental havoc

3. the meat industry causes billions of animals to suffer unnecessarily.

In most parts of the world, especially in the U.S., there is TONS of healthy vegetarian food readily available, from soy burgers to hummus to vegetarian lasagna. Freston's article just strengthenes the logical argument for vegetarianism.

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The article is ridiculous.

All hunter gatherer groups eat meat. Some get almost all of their calories from meat and fish (which is meat). These groups are mostly in the coldest climates.
As you go more tropical, the hunger gatherers eat more vegetable matter, but still the calories and protein come mostly from meat. And it has been like this for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.

We were ALL hunter gatherers until just very recently.......the last ten thousand years, when grains were brought into the diet by agriculture, along with beans and potatoes and corn and sugar. These are the most recent additions and we have never adapted well as there has not been adequate time. These are responsible for diabetes, heart disease, and cancers, along with grain fed meats full of antibiotics and other poisons.

Anthropologists speculate that as the brain got bigger, it was such a huge demander of calories that man HAD to eat meat to provide the necessary nutrients for the brain. And, of course, the brain made the eating of meat and catching of meat easier by giving us the intelligence we needed to use the tools necessary.

But all of this has been going on for millions of years. Even the earliest humans millions of years ago were eating small mammals, insects, fish, shellfish, birds, eggs.

What they were NOT eating were the grains and potatoes and corn and beans and sugar.

And show me a vegetarian diet that does not include any of this.

Man eats meat. Hundreds of thousands of years he has done it.
It is preposterous and agenda driven to say differently.

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The article is ridiculous.

All hunter gatherer groups eat meat. Some get almost all of their calories from meat and fish (which is meat). These groups are mostly in the coldest climates.
As you go more tropical, the hunger gatherers eat more vegetable matter, but still the calories and protein come mostly from meat. And it has been like this for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.

We were ALL hunter gatherers until just very recently.......the last ten thousand years, when grains were brought into the diet by agriculture, along with beans and potatoes and corn and sugar. These are the most recent additions and we have never adapted well as there has not been adequate time. These are responsible for diabetes, heart disease, and cancers, along with grain fed meats full of antibiotics and other poisons.

Anthropologists speculate that as the brain got bigger, it was such a huge demander of calories that man HAD to eat meat to provide the necessary nutrients for the brain. And, of course, the brain made the eating of meat and catching of meat easier by giving us the intelligence we needed to use the tools necessary.

But all of this has been going on for millions of years. Even the earliest humans millions of years ago were eating small mammals, insects, fish, shellfish, birds, eggs.

What they were NOT eating were the grains and potatoes and corn and beans and sugar.

And show me a vegetarian diet that does not include any of this.

Man eats meat. Hundreds of thousands of years he has done it.
It is preposterous and agenda driven to say differently.

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The article is ridiculous.

All hunter gatherer groups eat meat. Some get almost all of their calories from meat and fish (which is meat). These groups are mostly in the coldest climates.
As you go more tropical, the hunger gatherers eat more vegetable matter, but still the calories and protein come mostly from meat. And it has been like this for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.

We were ALL hunter gatherers until just very recently.......the last ten thousand years, when grains were brought into the diet by agriculture, along with beans and potatoes and corn and sugar. These are the most recent additions and we have never adapted well as there has not been adequate time. These are responsible for diabetes, heart disease, and cancers, along with grain fed meats full of antibiotics and other poisons.

Anthropologists speculate that as the brain got bigger, it was such a huge demander of calories that man HAD to eat meat to provide the necessary nutrients for the brain. And, of course, the brain made the eating of meat and catching of meat easier by giving us the intelligence we needed to use the tools necessary.

But all of this has been going on for millions of years. Even the earliest humans millions of years ago were eating small mammals, insects, fish, shellfish, birds, eggs.

What they were NOT eating were the grains and potatoes and corn and beans and sugar.

And show me a vegetarian diet that does not include any of this.

Man eats meat. Hundreds of thousands of years he has done it.
It is preposterous and agenda driven to say differently.

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However we evolved, it seems that somewhere we developed an instinctive taste for meat protein that wasn't driven by corporate marketing or the conveniences of modern civilization.

To me, it's not a matter of either/or, but of how much meat we eat, in terms of our health, our stress on the environment, and the quality of life for all animals. If we lived closer to nature, and our population was smaller, our animal protein would come from natural sources, and we would have to hunt it ourselves, out in the fresh air with homemade bows and arrows. The meat would be leaner and more healthy. The rest of our diet would come from nuts, berries, etc., and we'd be eating meat in more natural proportions.

I know this debate can and probably will go on forever. But to this article's credit, at least it comes from a more scientific angle, and isn't just another guilt trip or rant against evil meat-eaters.

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And our bodies cannot synthesis it.

The only sources of B12 are meat, insects and some types of yeast and algae. There is no evidence to support the idea that cavepeople ate pond scum and cultivated yeast in large quantities, if at all, though they may have eaten a bug now and again.

As for complete protein, it is difficult to get this from a hunter-gatherer (even here the word "hunter" appears) diet because roots and berries do not contain complete protein. It takes agriculture, with grains and beans as its products, to supply this if there is no meat.

Humans did a lot more than just scavenge the kills of other creatures. That's why Paleolithic campsites are full of arrowheads, spearheads and carved up bones.

Canine teeth, a moderately short digestive tract, a stomach which secretes hydrochloric acid, as well as proteolytic enzymes in human intestines did not evolve in the last few thousand years. Strict herbivores have an entirely different digestive system.

Sorry, but anyone who says humans did not evolve as meat eaters simply does not understand human physiology.

The vegetarians whose columns appear with boring regularity on Alternet are simply uneducated ideologues with an axe to grind, at best, and outright liars at worst.

There may or may not be advantages to eating a purely vegetarian diet, but it is not natural. Personally I suspect Mother Nature knows best. Whenever humans tamper with nature, it always seems to backfire in the long run.

As someone with a science degree, I get really tired of reading the output of these uneducated people on Alternet ... though I guess everyone has the right to free speech. That's about the best that can be said for this flat-earth crowd.

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Another thought provoking and well researched article, Kathy.

Indeed, given all that we know about the health, environmental, and ethical issues related to adopting a vegetarian diet, it's impossible to understand how so many turn a blind eye. For those who "can't" give up meat, what about trying to do so a few times a week? One meal a day? That's not impossible and you'll quickly see there's little to "miss."

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It amazes me how many "meat-eaters" get stuck on the term canines to justify their gluttony. Ignoring the fact that their teeth don't resemble Fido's fangs any more than they do a whale's baleen plate they seem to belief God Himself popped down from the clouds for a moment to name everything - just so we'd know what He intended.

Of course, regardless of what's natural or what we've been doing for millennia, eating meat is simply morally wrong right now. For oh so many reasons.

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I am getting extremely annoyed with every other email I get from Alternet bearing yet another screed against eating meat. I do not eat much meat in my diet, but I know that I do need it for what it gives me. And I have no tolerance for holier-than-thou ultravegans trying to convert all of humanity from its omnivorous ways to virtuous veggie-munching alone.

Eat less meat. Eat less red meat. Eat humanely-raised/killed meat. Have fewer/no children and reduce overall consumption of resources. Eat no meat if that's what works for you, but don't think that you can browbeat the whole world -- or even just the "progressive" world -- into following your personal agenda. People have different physiologies and food allergies, and the most important thing foodwise is that they gain the best nutrition for their actual phenotype and activity level.

I don't believe that the veganazi crusade deserves to be featured with Alternet's reader-solicited funds. Perhaps some voting with the wallet and/or feet might convince the editorial board that it's really ticking a lot of people off to keep posting Kathy Freston's shrill one-track-mind essays week after week after week.

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Ya and when I was gettting my degree in Anthropology, Neaderthal was our ancestor. Now suddenly he isn't,we just Bred with them- WTF? Great apes are our ancestors but Neaderthal isn't- BS!
Anthropology is a ever changing science- dependent on the last bone they discovered and who wants to make an outrageous claim to get some publicity.
Why is it we lack the various organ structures of herbivores- cecums (horse),Crop (Avian), Fermentation stomach (Bovine).. Or even the microbial life forms which help in fermentation and become protein upon their death to the host animal???
We ahve the same digeestive system as a Swine, which is an omnivore. Funny they, along with many other omnivores and carnivores hav eno hands either. And what are you talking about canine length- length has nothing to do with it- it's shape, degree of pointiness. There are a lot of little animals with sharp small canines- rats?
And Pray tell are our eyes set on the front of our face and not the sides. Why such superior binocular vision- like all other land predators? Depth perception. Ya think we have to sneak up on those berries?And what about out Bipedalism, our Toes instead of hooves?
By the Way Great Apes also eat meat- even wage wars and eat their enemies.At the very least your point fails in the reality the Great apes have devised tools & methods to eat insects- them there ain't berries either!
If there is any reason man became an bipedal,erect, binocular, creature with opposible thumbs- it was to see, catch and eat other animals, not apples.
Your 'Experts' have done what some many have done throughout history- made a hypothesis and cherry picked the facts to Support it.
And don't bother venturing to claim you know exactly what the appendix evolutionary function was- no real expert knows for sure.

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... is natural.

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on a scale magnitudes greater than either carnivores or omnivores. Conveniently overlooked is the forgotten treasure: "The Secret Life of Plants" written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird.

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But when you can do without B12 (no plants contain it) or iron (our bodies can utilize little or none of the iron from plants), you'll have a scientific case. Until then, this is religion and evangelizing. And irresponsible, making no difference between the greatly differing nutritional needs of men, women, and pregnant or nursing women. Women low in iron while pregnant (50% of pregnant women are, as opposed to 3% of men) are at much greater risk of premature labor and low birthweight babies. These are not things you want to experience. Nursing mothers low in B12 will not pass along any meager stores they have to their babies. Once the babies show the symptoms of the deficiency, the damage is irreversible. Yet I have read NO articles about the wonders of inventing your own nutritional needs that mention the differences between women and men, and the dangers to pregnant or nursing women.

That's because religions never give warnings.

Most vegetarians I know still eat meat, and this still baffles me, but I'm sure it's the norm. Some never intended to really give it up, but still call themselves that; some maybe do intend that, then give in when their bodies speak up and crave it; who knows? But maybe 2 of the 10 or 11 people I see regularly who call themselves this religious term have not yet eaten meat in my presence, or mentioned having it very recently. (One who mentioned having meat the day before still waxed poetic about 10 minutes later on the wrongs of eating animals). All other people I know who once were vegetarians gave it up after 1 1/2 to 3 years, the length of time it takes a body to use up B12 and iron stores.

Oh, and the one vegan I encounter regularly breaks her vegan diet whenever there's good food to be had that doesn't fit the rules. I think most "vegetarians" and "vegans" have diets quite similar to most of ours, but for the titles. Most of us don't eat meat too heavily. I'm realizing I had none yesterday or the day before, maybe the day before that. That means I'm about to start craving it, and if I don't listen to my body's messages, I'm not going to feel very good if I ignore the warnings. If I wait a few more days, I'm going to have a couple of very lousy feeling weeks ahead, as I have the 9 or 10 times I gave in to proselytizing and tried to be a "vegetarian".

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"To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”

Tell that to the Inuit or African Massai, who live almost exclusively on meat and don't have those problems.

Do not confuse the unhealthy way we now produce our meat with meat itself. Our meat is raised purely on grain instead of grasses and with massive fat content. If we eat meat from healthy animals we are healthy, period.

I believe we may eat too much meat compared to plant matter but meat is an essential part of our diet. Even if it wasn't I am carnivorous by choice and won't cange no matter what anyone says so get over it.

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Every time I run into a vegan who tries to push their choice on everyone, I ask one question - what would you like to do with Eskimos or Masai? Should the entire world move to California so they can be close to a Whole Foods?

I have a friend who was a vegan. Then she became a farmer. She soon discovered that she couldn't survive there without a dairy. So she got cows.

She thought it would be hypocritical to raise cows and not consume dairy, so she became a vegetarian, rather than a vegan.

After a while, they had to face the problem of population control with their cows. The land could only support so many animals. And they were going to need to do something with the animals that died.

It didn't take long before she gave up vegetarianism too.

Outside of unusually temperate places like California, I've never met a vegan farmer. Even in Cali they were pretty damn rare.

Most vegans who want the whole world to follow them are too far from the land to really know what they are talking about.

Yes, we should all eat less meat. Yes, we should buy local, organic, and humanely treated animals from small scale holders who act responsibly. But trying to make everyone vegan is ignorant extremism and cultural elitism.

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my favorite comment ever from a friend of mine was that she was not a vegitarian, but a vagitarian.

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I love this line: "When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us…". Talk about payback!

Seriously:

I already knew the arguments about longer intestines and the shape of our teeth. I would add that, not only are our "canines" not the same as those of carnivores, but NONE of our teeth are! All our front teeth are flat and have more in common with the kinds of teeth one would find in an animal that grazes and crops the vegetation: a cow or deer, for instance. And our back teeth bear out our herbivorous natures, as well. They are intended for grinding not rending.

I have been a vegetarian for over 35 years and I've never missed meat. In fact, whenever I eat out, I can always tell if my meal was prepared with animal fat…or, even, cooked in same pan or pot as meat was. There is a subtle but distinct rancidness that comes through, no matter how many spices and seasoning are in the meal…and I love extremely spicy food!

I don't totally agree with the writer, however. I suspect that we probably do require a certain very limited amount of animal protein in our diets. However, this need is easily met by the occasional egg or bit of cheese.

The only objection I have to these dairy products is how the animals that produce them are raised by Big Agro, which I consider cruel and inhumane!

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of the left.

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Do you know what survives geological time in the archeological record? Bone and stone, the first stone tool makers were homo habilis (800cc) 2.5 million years ago. The core Oldowan tools were used for hammering, chopping and digging. However, they hung on to the flakes maybe for knives. Beginning about 1.6 million years ago there were some new kids on the block. Homo erectus’ (1000cc) archeulean tools were more advanced. Something else occurred in the record of homo erectus sites, fire. The record is clear homo erectus was a cooked meat eating creature. So, we have larger brains, better tools, fire, meat eating homo habilis. Which came first you can argue about, but you can not argue about the bone and stone record.

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We started eating meat when we were HOMO ERECTUS. All hunting and gathering tribes eat meat. We were eating meat before we were even modern human beings. Kathy Freston is a former model misquoting experts and showcasing fringe opinions outside the mainstream of science.

It is scientific fact that humans need B-12 and omega-3-fatty acids (the kind you find in insects and fish, not the stuff you get in nuts and flaxseed). We've been scavenging and hunting since we stood upright and lost our tails. Go into Wholefoods and check out the products for vegans - you find "protein supplements" with concentrated rice, potato, pea, and spirulina protein that mimics the nutritional profile of meat. These supplements note that they add several amino acids not naturally found in plant sources so the vegans can have complete protein. Ironically, these "vegan" supplements contain more saturated fat than whey protein isolates, and taste like utter sh*t, too.

Sure, Americans eat too much meat. I more or less only eat mammal flesh on weekends, and three or four days a week I don't eat any kind of animal (fish and bird included) flesh at all. But you do need some. Children need more than adults (and the tragedy is that vegans proselytize among college students, who aren't really full-grown because the brain doesn't stop developing until you're 25). Veganism is junk science.

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because you have to take them if you are a pure vegan and don't eat eggs or dairy, or you have to eat b12 fortified veggies like cereal or b12 fortified soy or rice milk.

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n/t

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The author is presupposing there is an external authority that justifies a responce that is neither informed or responsible.

One of the workable challenges to cultural morality is the information glut. It makes available immediately counter-arguments to any moralistic stance and reveals a pattern of other methods and standards of work, which in turn, reveal s the cruelty of "moral" enforcement.

In such binding cultural frameworks, deviation from the expectations of culture are often put into the context of insanity, for in the cultural limits, the behavior is not rational.

If you yourself are Prussian, and everyone around you is Prussian, it is not easy to deal with the world in non- Prussian terms, or those who are not part of the Prussian culture, with those people who do not know the "right" way to behave, that is the Prussian way.


The same may be said for Zulu or Saudis.

Again, this "morality" is a device imposed upon individuals to justify the imopsition of suffering , and inevitably leads to a proliferation of the very conduct it seeks to eradicate, by polarizing the choices available.

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Leakey says evidence for meat eating began 2000 years ago and his colleague Jane Goodall has observed hunting and meat eating in chimps, both observations would trace the phenomenon to Australopithecus.

Now modern humans with some very hard work can live without meat, by taking vitamin b12 supplements, and eating tons and tons of legumes and or eating eggs and milk, but don't be like the creationists and present facts in a misleading manner.

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and provide a source to backup your claim that this plant has vitamin b12 in it.

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name plants which have b12 in them

and provide a source to backup your claim that this plant has vitamin b12 in

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Thanks for this informative piece! I can say from experience that since going vegan, I have more energy, clearer skin, and a trimmer waistline. I get all the nutrients I need from eating a wide variety of foods. Best of all, I know that no animals have to suffer for my breakfast, lunch, or dinner!

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...attached to the roots of leguminous plants, but not from the plants themselves. It's the bacteria attached to the roots that synthesize the vitamin.

Eating animal products or unwashed vegetables with the soil still attached to them represent the only ways of getting B12 from "natural" sources.

Other than that, you have to take a manufactured supplement, i.e., a pill or brewer's yeast. Neither of the latter qualifies as a "natural" source, whatever Ms. Freston might like to claim.

I suspect that's why Mr. Friedrich opines that he "doesn't care" about whether a vegan diet is "natural" or not. Deep down, he knows that on a practical level it can't be.

But that's not the issue here. The "it's natural" argument is, like other arguments (i.e., environmentalism, health concerns) once again being deployed by the extremist vegan crowd as a Trojan Horse for concealing their true agenda - i.e., "animal welfare". In other words, raising animals for food is morally unacceptable.

At least Friedrich, unlike Freston, is up front about it.

No doubt vasumurti will appear shortly with reams and reams of cut-and-paste...

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Leakey notes that “[y]ou can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t tear hide by hand ... We wouldn’t have been able to deal with food source that required those large canines” (although we have teeth that are called “canines,” they bear little resemblance to the canines of carnivores).

Not to delve too deeply into the obvious (which might offend your sense of religion), but you really can't cultivate all that effectively with your fingernails and teeth, either.

We're omnivores, in possession of enzymes and tools (teeth, stereoscopic vision, etc.) that make us relatively adept at harvesting whatever food we choose.

To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”

A lifespan long enough to "enjoy" living to see these diseases is a recent thing. Like other "sciencey" creationist arguments, this one exists in a bubble.

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About the ancient man homo habilis or the handyman according to paleontologist Louis Leakey, history and behavior of this species related to man.

AMONG THE FIRST 5 PERSONS TO WALK THE EARTH

HANDYMAN (Homo habilis)

It is very likely that Homo habilis either evolved from or is a later sample of Australopithecus africanus ("South African apeman"), who first appeared at least 2 million years ago. Then, in South Africa, the wet forests, where vegetables and fruits grew abundantly, were receding; parts of the land became barren, and others turned to savanna. It is possible that A. africanus had been a vegetarian and now had to turn to meat-eating; that the small, fleet members of his group were those who survived because they were better able to hunt. Even so, the australopithecines could not stride as we do, but walked with bent knees.

In the beginning, they probably ran down game. Leakey, who had studied and even personally tried ways of hunting used by primitive people, said, "When you see a hare, it runs straight away and you run straight after it... The ears move all the way back when it's about to dodge, a sharp right or a sharp left. Now if you're right-handed you always dash to the right anticipating a dodge to the right. That means the odds are fifty-fifty.... If you've guessed correctly, the hare runs by instinct directly at you and you can scoop it up like fielding a fast grounder...."

Ancient Man Louis Leakey's Handyman Homo Habilis Part 2

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...does not necessarily involve overt physical manifestations of itself. Genetic adaptations often follow far behind, adapting the form to fit what epigenetic processes have determined to be the function. Even herbivorous great apes eat meat if it is small enough to be finger food. Physiology is not the final arbiter of diet; diet often guides the development of physiology. Opportunity and necessity can change diet. These doctors do not know if omnivorous diet is on balance good or bad for humanity in the long run any more than the eugenicists of a hundred years ago knew what the proper course of human evolution was. Thanks for the data, but the data does not prove your point.

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"Meat eating... So easy a cave man could do it." You meat eaters should know, and many of your post here corroborate this, that studies conclude that choosing to not eat the flesh of dead animals shows a sign of intelligence in that people who don't eat meat are smarter than people who do eat meat. For example Einstein, Darwin, and Plato were vegetarian just to name a few. Willful ignorance does seem to be an American value though.

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b12 supplements didn't exist in their day, and they would have died without a source of it. Meaning they ate eggs or dairy or both.

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While on occasion, they would supplement their diet with game, by and large they were comfortable and were rendered physically strong with their vegan diet.

In fact, sometimes there were shortages of grain so cattle (used mostly as beasts of burden) was temporarily slaughtered for food, but Roman soldiers, who had conquered most of the known world, were loudly complaining and tired of eating meat, preferring their meatless rations.


Want to be big and strong, eat like a bull. (hint: bulls don't eat meat!)

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Vegans just reside on the other side of the spectrum. And just like the deniers, vegans love to trot out their experts to defend their opinion. But facts are facts, and total veganism in humans is not a natural state.

Yes, we should definitely eat much less meat, especially in the US- cutting back would come with a great many benefits, especially ecological and health benefits. Treating meat as a condiment is the way to go. For instance, a whole chicken should last a family of four 2 weeks- the first week for meat, the second week for soup.

Think about evolutionarily appropriate foods--

--Since we should be eating much less meat, adding nuts, seeds, and *corn-free, non-vegetarian* eggs would be a plus. Like us, chickens are not vegetarians either. In a perfect world, every family would keep a couple of chickens in the yard, and let chickens do what chickens do, which is eat whatever they can catch.

--we should be foraging or growing our own seasonal, nutritionally dense wild greens, like lamb's quarter, watercress and fresh herbs, alongside the more recent garden greens. But it's doubtful we need fresh greens year-round, and all the way from California in a little plastic box, no less.

--Potatoes and other roots are good and necessary- they got us through many thousands of winters.

--Eating fruit daily is unnatural- fruit intake should be limited and seasonal.

--If there's one food in our diet that's really "unnatural", that would be grain. We're still not adapted to grain- we've only lived 10,000 years with it. Though, fermenting grain first is a big help to the flora in our guts, whether it be beer, fermented porridge or sourdough.

I love Alternet, but hate that AlterNet has become a site for the misinformed vegan agenda. I trust Alternet for facts, but must look the other way when Alternet allows yet another vegan to get up on the soapbox.

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and if the fact that some roman soldiers reported not liking meat is not surprising given that some modern humans don't like it. Bulls also don't eat eggs or milk which would have been necessary in that time or they would have suffered b12 deficiency syndrome.

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Perhaps Dr Leaky should stop looking so hard at that ancient jaw bone and take a look at the stone tools that surround it. The size and shape of our teeth doesn't matter, we don't need large teeth and we never have. We have an advantage that other carnivores don't have, and thats the ability to make tools.

If Dr. Leaky knew a thing about paleontology, then he would know that human brain development kicked off with the introduction of meat based protein into hominids diet. The first meat proto humans consumed were bugs. Then we scavanged carrion. Two million years later we were able to make spears capable of taking down a wholly mammoth.

How many herbavoires do you know that can do that?

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The premise of this column is absurd.

I respect the opinion of Dr. Leakey, however he seems to be ignoring the research of his late father's protege Jane Goodall whose research on the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream NP discovered the frugivores did in fact eat meat.

And while the fruits and cereals collected by women and children account for the majority of foods consumed by gather-hunter social groups, the meat protein provide by the men is more highly prized.

That we eat too much meat in the Western diet is a given. However those who promote a vegan diet are just as wrong headed as those who believe Big Macs, special sauce, extra cheese, fries and a shake constitute a well-rounded diet.

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now maybe I'm wrong, but if I am provide a credible citation.

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I'm not reading any more Alternet "articles" about the joys and moral highground of vegetarianism. It's become like junk mail, like spam, like telephone solicitations. I did not read the above article, nor will I read the next of this slant.

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There's a fallacy propagated by meat eaters that B-12 is not found in plants. Actually, that's not true. But don't take my word for it. Consult the New England Journal of Medicine and other reputable sources for the facts. We don't even need that much of the vitamin to function properly.

Vitamin B-12 has been found in significant amounts in many plant foods, some of which are bananas, dates, greens, peanuts, and particularly sprouts and raw sunflower seeds.

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She is cherry picking Leakey!

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Says Dr. William C. Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology, “Although we think we are, and we act as if we are, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us, because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”

Although it is commonly believed that saturated fats and dietary cholesterol "clog arteries" and cause heart disease, such ideas have been shown to be false by such scientists as Linus Pauling, Russell Smith, George Mann, John Yudkin, Abram Hoffer, Mary Enig, Uffe Ravnskov and other prominent researchers. On the contrary, studies have shown that arterial plaque is primarily composed of unsaturated fats, particularly polyunsaturated ones, and not the saturated fat of animals, palm or coconut.

Trans-fatty acids, as opposed to saturated fats, have been shown by researchers such as Enig, Mann and Fred Kummerow to be causative factors in accelerated atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, cancer and other ailments (52). Trans-fatty acids are found in such modern foods as margarine and vegetable shortening and foods made with them. Enig and her colleagues have also shown that excessive omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid intake from refined vegetable oils is also a major culprit behind cancer and heart disease, not animal fats.

A recent study of thousands of Swedish women supported Enig's conclusions and data, and showed no correlation between saturated fat consumption and increased risk for breast cancer. However, the study did show,as did Enig's work, a strong link between vegetable oil intake and higher breast cancer rates.

The major population studies that supposedly prove the theory that animal fats and cholesterol cause heart disease actually do not upon closer inspection. The Framingham Heart Study is often cited as proof that dietary cholesterol and saturated fat intake cause heart disease and ill health. Involving about 6,000 people, the study compared two groups over several years at five-year intervals. One group consumed little cholesterol and saturated fat, while the other consumed high amounts. Surprisingly, Dr William Castelli, the study's director, said:

In Framingham, Mass., the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person's serum cholesterol ... we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, [and] ate the most calories, weighed the least and were the most physically active.

Low-fat/cholesterol diets, therefore, are not healthier for people. Studies have shown repeatedly that such diets are associated with depression, cancer, psychological problems, fatigue, violence and suicide. Women with lower serum cholesterol live shorter lives than women with higher levels. Similar things have been found in men.

Children on low-fat and/or vegan diets can suffer from growth problems, failure to thrive, and learning disabilities.

In fact, the body needs saturated fats in order to properly utilize essential fatty acids. Saturated fats also lower the blood levels of the artery-damaging lipoprotein; are needed for proper calcium utilization in the bones; stimulate the immune system; are the preferred food for the heart and other vital organs; and, along with cholesterol, add structural stability to the cell and intestinal wall.

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Thanks for putting this self-serving myth to rest, Kathy! Vegan foods are only compassionate, green, and healthy, they're what our bodies our meant to eat.

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Full disclosure: although I don't smoke and drink but rarely, I DO love my steaks, pork and lamb chops( and of course my thanksgiving Turkey which I fly over to Philly every autumn to spend with my cousins). My family has a history of diabetes and my mother is trying to get me to cut down on my consumption of sausages for Thursday lunch(she showed an article saying that consuming too much red meat can lead to bowel cancer). Maybe rich film stars like Drew Barrymore, Rue McClanahan and Steven Seagal can afford to be full time vegans- but I CAN'T!!!

Terry

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The evidence is strong that we evolved ultimately from herbivorous "proto-apes." However, what was it that caused those apes that ventured out of the forest into the savannas to increase their brain size and complexity and their social organization so much more dramatically than their cousins who remained in the receding forests eating fruits and vegetation?

The fact that, though the human digestive system derived from a plant-eating primate, humans evolved a much longer small intestine, while apes maintain a much larger colon - an indication that humans evolved away from strictly vegetarian diet in favor of one with more concentrated nutrients - to wit: meat.

In addition, hunting meat was much more of a cooperative group activity than foraging for fruit and leaves, so it contributed to the growth of early group behavior and organization that was later to evolve into civilization.

The ancestors of today's humans began eating meat about 2.5 million years ago according to recent discoveries by UC Berkeley professor Tim White. This was most likely to compenste for a serious decline in the quality and availability of plant foods as the forests shrank and the savannas became drier.

It was at this point that the new carnivorous diet began supplying the much-higher protein and general nutrient content that was necessary for the growth of the brain, according to Katherine Milton, an authority on diet in primates.

It was only with the meat diet and subsequent boost in nutrition that our ancestors began the long path of development into a separate intelligent and social species.

Today, with our sophisticated scientific knowledge of foods, we can put together vegetarian diets that provide sufficient protein, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals that our species obtained from a meat diet for over 2 million years.

However, it takes a knowledgeable person assembling a diet from a variety of different vegetarian foods to assure an adequate supply of all of these essentials. It is very easy to eat an unbalanced vegetarian diet and come down with diseases ranging from beriberi to pellagra.

Milton points out that weaned infants could never have digested enough bulky plant material to get the nutrients for growth and the energy for brain development. Meat was essential to their post-weaning development. Milton further asserts, "I disagree with those who say meat may have been only a marginal food for early humans. I have come to believe that the incorporation of animal matter into the diet played an absolutely essential role in human evolution."

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from the vegan society's own webpage.

B12

Very low B12 intakes can cause anaemia and nervous system damage.

The only reliable vegan sources of B12 are foods fortified with B12 (including some plant milks, some soy products and some breakfast cereals) and B12 supplements. Vitamin B12, whether in supplements, fortified foods, or animal products, comes from micro-organisms.

Most vegans consume enough B12 to avoid anaemia and nervous system damage, but many do not get enough to minimise potential risk of heart disease or pregnancy complications.

To get the full benefit of a vegan diet, vegans should do one of the following:

* eat fortified foods two or three times a day to get at least three micrograms (μg or mcg) of B12 a day or
* take one B12 supplement daily providing at least 10 micrograms or
* take a weekly B12 supplement providing at least 2000 micrograms.

If relying on fortified foods check the labels carefully to make sure you are getting enough B12. For example, if a fortified plant milk contains 1 microgram of B12 per serving then consuming three servings a day will provide adequate vitamin B12. Others may find the use of B12 supplements more convenient and economical.

The less frequently you obtain B12 the more B12 you need to take, as B12 is best absorbed in small amounts. The recommendations above take full account of this. There is no harm in exceeding the recommended amounts or combining more than one option.

If for any reason you choose not to use fortified foods or supplements you should recognise that you are carrying out a dangerous experiment - one that many have tried before with consistently low levels of success. If you are an adult who is neither breast-feeding an infant, pregnant nor seeking to become pregnant, and wish to test a potential B12 source that has not already been shown to be inadequate, then this can be a reasonable course of action with appropriate precautions. For your own protection, you should arrange to have your B12 status checked annually. If homocysteine or MMA is even modestly elevated then you are endangering your health if you persist.

If you are breast feeding an infant, pregnant or seeking to become pregnant or are an adult contemplating carrying out such an experiment on a child, then don't take the risk. It is simply unjustifiable.

Claimed sources of B12 that have been shown through direct studies of vegans to be inadequate include human gut bacteria, spirulina, dried nori, barley grass and most other seaweeds. Several studies of raw food vegans have shown that raw food offers no special protection.
vegansociety.com/food/nutrition/b12/

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Keith Akers writes in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983):

"Livestock agriculture is far less efficient in its use of land resources than plant food agriculture. This is one of the oldest arguments in favor of vegetarianism. It played a role in Plato's Republic. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley invoked the argument in his discussions of 'natural diet.' Mikkel Hindhede used the argument to help persuade Denmark to adopt a lacto-vegetarian diet when Denmark was blockaded by the Allies as a result of World War I. 'If Central Europe had adopted a similar diet,' he said, alluding to the disastrous German agricultural policies which emphasized meat production, 'I doubt that anyone would have starved.'"

In her 1971 bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet, author Frances Moore Lappe pointed out that it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. Most of the arable land in this country is used to grow feed for animals. Mathematics professor Dr. Richard Schwartz, author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, writes about the "insanity" of animal agriculture.

In his book Consuming Passions, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes:

"The case for vegetarianism is at its strongest when we see it as a moral protest against our use of animals as mere things, to be exploited for our convenience in whatever way makes them most cheaply available to us. Only the tiniest fraction of the tens of billions of farm animals slaughtered for food each year--the figure for the United States alone is nine billion--were treated during their lives in ways that respected their interests. Questions about the wrongness of killing in itself are not relevant to the moral issue of eating meat or eggs from factory-farmed animals, as most people in developed countries do.

"Even when animals are roaming freely over large areas, as sheep and cattle do in Australia, operations like hot-iron branding, castration, and dehorning are carried out without any regard for the animals' capacity to suffer. The same is true of handling and transport prior to slaughter. In the light of these facts, the issue to focus on is not whether there are some circumstances in which it could be right to eat meat, but on what we can do to avoid contributing to this immense amount of animal suffering.

"The answer is to boycott all meat and eggs produced by large-scale commercial methods of animal production, and encourage others to do the same. Consideration for the interests of animals alone is enough justification for this response, but the case is further strengthened by the environmental problems that the meat industry causes...

"Environmentalists are increasingly recognizing that the choice of what we eat is an environmental issue. Animals raised in sheds or on feedlots eat grains or soybeans...To convert eight or nine kilos of grain protein into a single kilo of animal protein wastes land, energy, and water. On a crowded planet with a growing human population, that is a luxury that we are becoming increasingly unable to afford.

"Intensive animal production is a heavy user of fossil fuels and a major source of pollution of both air and water. It releases large quantities of methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We are risking unpredictable changes to the climate of our planet...for the sake of more hamburgers. A diet heavy in animal products, catered to by intensive animal production, is a disaster for animals, the environment, and the health of those who eat it."

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KATHY'S NEW LITTLE PEOPLE CLUBBING THEIR VEGGIES TO DEATH

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not enough that a vegetarian diet can be called natural is well documented by honest vegans.

the vegan society quotes:

vegansociety.com/food/nutrition/b12/

Is there a vegan alternative to B12-fortified foods and supplements?

If for any reason you choose not to use fortified foods or supplements you should recognise that you are carrying out a dangerous experiment - one that many have tried before with consistently low levels of success. If you are an adult who is neither breast-feeding an infant, pregnant nor seeking to become pregnant, and wish to test a potential B12 source that has not already been shown to be inadequate, then this can be a reasonable course of action with appropriate precautions. For your own protection, you should arrange to have your B12 status checked annually. If homocysteine or MMA is even modestly elevated then you are endangering your health if you persist.

If you are breast feeding an infant, pregnant or seeking to become pregnant or are an adult contemplating carrying out such an experiment on a child, then don't take the risk. It is simply unjustifiable.

Claimed sources of B12 that have been shown through direct studies of vegans to be inadequate include human gut bacteria, spirulina, dried nori, barley grass and most other seaweeds. Several studies of raw food vegans have shown that raw food offers no special protection.

Reports that B12 has been measured in a food are not enough to qualify that food as a reliable B12 source. It is difficult to distinguish true B12 from analogues that can disrupt B12 metabolism. Even if true B12 is present in a food, it may be rendered ineffective if analogues are present in comparable amounts to the true B12. There is only one reliable test for a B12 source - does it consistently prevent and correct deficiency? Anyone proposing a particular food as a B12 source should be challenged to present such evidence.

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The frugivores (gorillas, chimpanzees and other primates) have intestinal tracts twelve times the length of the body, clawless hands and alkaline urine and saliva. Their diet is mostly vegetarian, occasionally supplemented with carrion, insects, etc.

Flesh-eating animals lap water with their tongue, whereas vegetarian animals imbibe liquids by a suction process. Humans are classified as primates and are thus frugivores possessing a set of completely herbivorous teeth. Proponents of the theory that humans should be classified as omnivores note that human beings do, in fact, possess a modified form of canine teeth. However, these so-called "canine teeth" are much more prominent in animals that traditionally never eat flesh, such as apes, camels, and the male musk deer.

It must also be noted that the shape, length and hardness of these so-called "canine teeth" can hardly be compared to those of true carnivorous animals. A principle factor in determining the hardness of teeth is the phosphate of magnesia content. Human teeth usually contain 1.5 percent phosphate of magnesia, whereas the teeth of carnivores are composed of nearly 5 percent phosphate of magnesia. It is for this reason they are able to break through the bones of their prey, and reach the nutritious marrow.

Zoologist Desmond Morris makes a case for vegetarianism in his 1967 book, The Naked Ape: "It could be argued that, since our primate ancestors had to make do without a major meat component in their diets we should be able to do the same. We were driven to become flesh eaters only by environmental circumstances, and now that we have the environment under control, with elaborately cultivated crops at our disposal, we might be expected to return to our ancient feeding patterns."

In The Human Story, edited by Marie-Louise Makris (1985), we read: "...recent studies of their teeth reveal that the Australopithecines did not eat meat as a regular part of their diet, and were mainly peaceful vegetarians, rather like chimps or gorillas. The popular image of the murderous ape is now as extinct as the Australopithecines themselves."

Dr. Gordon Latto notes that carnivorous and omnivorous animals can only move their jaws up and down, and that omnivores "have a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth, a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth--showing that they were destined to deal both with flesh foods from the animal kingdom and foods from the vegetable kingdom...

"Carnivorous mammals and omnivorous mammals cannot perspire except at the extremity of the limbs and the tip of the nose; man perspires all over the body. Finally, our instincts; the carnivorous mammal (which first of all has claws and canine teeth) is capable of tearing flesh asunder, whereas man only partakes of flesh foods after they have been camouflaged by cooking and by condiments.

"Man instinctively is not carnivorous," explains Dr. Latto. "...he takes the flesh food after somebody else has killed it, and after it has been cooked and camouflaged with certain condiments. Whereas to pick an apple off a tree or eat some grain or a carrot is a natural thing to do; people enjoy doing it; they don't feel disturbed by it. But to see these animals being slaughtered does affect people; it offends them. Even the toughest of people are affected by the sights in the slaughterhouse.

"I remember taking some medical students into a slaughterhouse. They were about as hardened people as you could meet. After seeing the animals slaughtered that day in the slaughterhouse, not one of them could eat the meat that evening."

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my shit is a dark greenish brown.lol

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This article is a complete waste of time and space. Can I have the 5 minutes it too me to read it and reply back?

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The references the author gives are not peer-reviewed science, but opinion pieces by a few. In the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985 Eaton and Conner published their comprehensive study called "Paleolithic Nutrition," a look backwards 100,000 years. Meat is prominent in our diet far past one gene cycle of 40,000 years. We ARE genetically programed to eat some meat. This is basic science, analyzed and published.

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What do you see in there?
Pointy teeth in front - for tearing meat
Flat teeth in the back - for grinding plants.

We're omnivorous. That means we can eat whatever the hell we want and whatever the hell we can find that's slower than we or our tools are. If we were herbivorous we'd have a mouth like a horse and our eyes would be on the sides of our heads just like every herbivorous I've ever heard of. You don't need stereoscopic vision to stalk plants!

Good grief, between the vegetarians, the 9/11 truthers and the freaking potheads I swear alternet is becoming the Liberal equivalent of a Pat Robertson site with every "WE MUST DO X" post that comes down the RSS feed. If I wanted to have somebody preach to me I'd go to church.

If you want to eat vegetables all the time that is entirely your right and your business and I'm not going to fault you for it. Especially if you grow them yourself. But you know what? I like meat and I'm freaking tired of having to apologize to a bunch of holier than thou vegans for it.

Yes I like eating dead animals. Nothing I like better than hacking off a piece of cow, cooking it over an open fire and serving it up still pink in the middle. I do not apologize for that. I'm not going to apologize for that and I will continue doing it for as long as it is available to me. If it ceases to be available - I'll pick up a rifle and go find my own damned meat by killing poor defenseless furry animals that happen to taste good.

If that means I die a year or two before you "beans taste just like burger!" eating types then so be it. Because both you and I are going to die anyway. You can eat all the broccoli and lettuce you want and you're still not immortal - you're still going to die and your stinking corpse and all the 'organic' farming BS will still pollute the environment.

Just so you're aware, you don't see lions asking gazelles how they're doing before they rip their damned throats out and eat them ALIVE either.

The problem IS NOT that we eat meat. The problem is that we eat TOO MUCH MEAT.

Get over yourselves. Good grief.

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Author R.H. Weldon writes in No Animal Food:

"The gorge of a cat, for instance, will rise at the smell of a mouse or a piece of raw flesh, but not at the aroma of fruit. If a man can take delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still living body apart with his teeth, sucking the warm blood, one might infer that Nature had provided him with a carnivorous instinct, but the very thought of doing such a thing makes him shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his mouth water, and even in the absence of hunger, he will eat fruit to gratify taste."

As far back as 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that: "A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our coronary occlusions." More recently, William S. Collens and Gerald B. Dobkens concluded: "Examination of the dental structure of modern man reveals that he possesses all the features of a strictly herbivorous animal. While designed to subsist on vegetarian foods, he has perverted his dietary habits to accept food of the carnivore. It is postulated that man cannot handle carnivorous foods like the carnivore. Herein may lie the basis for the high incidence of arteriosclerotic disease."

Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), responds to the argument that killing animals for food is natural:

"This is quite an admirable argument. It explains practically everything; why we do not eat each other, except under conditions of unusual stress; why we may kill certain other animals (they are, in the order of nature, food for us); even why we should be kind to pets and try to help miscellaneous wildlife (they are not naturally our food). There are some problems with the idea that an order of nature determines which species are food for us, but an examination of human history indicates the broad outlines of just such an order, though inhibitions against eating certain species may vary from culture to culture.

"The main problem with this argument is that it does not justify the practice of meat-eating or animal husbandry as we know it today; it justifies hunting. The distinction between hunting and animal husbandry probably seems rather fine to the man in the street, or even to your typical rule-utilitarian moral philosopher. The distinction, however, is obvious to an ecologist. If one defends killing on the grounds that it occurs in nature, then one is defending the practice as it occurs in nature.

"When one species of animal preys on another in nature, it only preys on a very small proportion of the total species population. Obviously, the predator species relies on its prey for its continued survival. Therefore, to wipe the prey species out through overhunting would be fatal. In practice, members of such predator species rely on such strategies as territoriality to restrict overhunting and to insure the continued existence of its food supply.

"Moreover, only the weakest members of the prey species are the predator's victims: the feeble, the sick, the lame, or the young accidentally separated from the fold. The life of the typical zebra is usually placid, even in lion country; this kind of violence is the exception in nature, not the rule.

"As it exists in the wild, hunting is the preying upon isolated members of an animal herd. Animal husbandry is the nearly complete annihilation of an animal herd. In nature, this kind of slaughter does not exist. The philosopher is free to argue that there is no moral difference between hunting and slaughter, but he cannot invoke nature as a defense of this idea.

"Why are hunters, not butchers, most frequently taken to task...for their killing of animals? Hunters usually react to such criticism by replying that if hunting is wrong, then meat-hunting must be wrong as well...If any form of meat-eating is justified, it would be meat from a hunted animal."

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In his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes:

"Killing an animal is in itself a troubling act. It has been said that if we had to kill our own meat we would all be vegetarians. There may be exceptions to that general rule, but it is true that most people prefer not to inquire into the killing of the animals they eat.

"Very few people ever visit a slaughterhouse; and films of slaughterhouse operations are rarely shown on television...Yet those who, by their purchases, require animals to be killed have no right to be shielded from this or any other aspect of the production of the meat they buy.

"If it is distasteful for humans to think about, what can it be like for the animals to experience it?"

Peter Singer concludes in Animal Liberation that "by ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation, too."

Dr. Milton Mills' "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating,"

www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm

and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,

www.pcrm.org ,

argue persuasively that the optimal diet for humanity is a vegan diet. However, even if humans really are omnivores and not frugivores, the diet of natural omnivores is mostly (80 percent) plant food.

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Studies have demonstrated that Vitamin B-12 is heat sensitive and normal cooking can destroy as much as 89% of it. High consumption levels of fat and protein, refined foods and tobacco increase the need for B-12, while at the same time interfering with the synthesis and absorption of B-12.

Thus the conventional meat-eater may indeed be a more likely candidate for Vitamin B-12 deficiency and pernicious anemia than the individual on an adequate vegetarian diet.

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From

"The Comparative Anatomy of Eating", by Milton R. Mills, MD

Which category are humans most suited for?

*Facial Muscles*
CARNIVORE: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
OMNIVORE: Reduced
HERBIVORE: Well-developed
HUMAN: Well-developed

*Jaw Type*
CARNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HERBIVORE: Expanded angle
OMNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HUMAN: Expanded angle

*Jaw Joint Location*
CARNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HERBIVORE: Above the plane of the molars
OMNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HUMAN: Above the plane of the molars

*Jaw Motion*
CARNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
HERBIVORE: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
OMNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side
HUMAN: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back

*Major Jaw Muscles*
CARNIVORE: Temporalis
HERBIVORE: Masseter and pterygoids
OMNIVORE: Temporalis
HUMAN: Masseter and pterygoids

*Mouth Opening vs. Head Size*
CARNIVORE: Large
HERBIVORE: Small
OMNIVORE: Large
HUMAN: Small

*Teeth: Incisors*
CARNIVORE: Short and pointed
HERBIVORE: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
OMNIVORE: Short and pointed
HUMAN: Broad, flattened and spade shaped

*Teeth: Canines*
CARNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HERBIVORE: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
OMNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HUMAN: Short and blunted

*Teeth: Molars*
CARNIVORE: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
HERBIVORE: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
OMNIVORE: Sharp blades and/or flattened
HUMAN: Flattened with nodular cusps

*Chewing*
CARNIVORE: None; swallows food whole
HERBIVORE: Extensive chewing necessary
OMNIVORE: Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing
HUMAN: Extensive chewing necessary

*Saliva*
CARNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HERBIVORE: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
OMNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HUMAN: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes

*Stomach Type*
CARNIVORE: Simple
HERBIVORE: Simple or multiple chambers
OMNIVORE: Simple
HUMAN: Simple

*Stomach Acidity*
CARNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HERBIVORE: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
OMNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HUMAN: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach

*Stomach Capacity*
CARNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HERBIVORE: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
OMNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HUMAN: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract

*Length of Small Intestine*
CARNIVORE: 3 to 6 times body length
HERBIVORE: 10 to more than 12 times body length
OMNIVORE: 4 to 6 times body length
HUMAN: 10 to 11 times body length

*Colon*
CARNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HERBIVORE: Long, complex; may be sacculated
OMNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HUMAN: Long, sacculated

*Liver*
CARNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HERBIVORE: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
OMNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HUMAN: Cannot detoxify vitamin A

*Kidney*
CARNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HERBIVORE: Moderately concentrated urine
OMNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HUMAN: Moderately concentrated urine

*Nails*
CARNIVORE: Sharp claws
HERBIVORE: Flattened nails or blunt hooves
OMNIVORE: Sharp claws
HUMAN: Flattened nails

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Folks, whenever Alternet wants to stir it up, we get an article about the virtues of not eating meat. This usually gets a bazillion comments, always consistently more than any other subject, some of which are antagonistic and/or downright rude.
It's tiresome - I don't think anyone will change anyone elses's mind here - people seem very entrenched about this.
I'm all for debate but at some point it becomes pointless.

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Some people are fearful that a diet which does not include animal proteins will be deficient in Vitamin B-12, and that they may become victims of pernicious anemia. Beef and beef liver are said to be the finest sources of B-12. Well, where does the herbivorous cow get this vitamin? Vitamin B-12 is manufactured by the friendly bacteria in the animal's intestinal tract. This is true for all vegetarian animals, including the human being, as well.

A deficiency of Vitamin B-12, which is a forerunner of pernicious anemia, is not necessarily due to dietary inadequacy.

------------
Study after study has shown that the deficiency of Vitamin B-12 is due to the lack of absorption of the vitamin from the intestinal tract, due to the absence of "intrinsic factor," a substance which is normally present in the gastric juices.

---------------

There have been repeated instances of improvement in the condition of the blood as a result of fasting, plus subsequent improvement in the diet, especially when flesh foods are eliminated.

The myth that plants do not contain B-12 has been propagated and fostered by vested interests. The truth is that B-12 is found in plants in very small amounts. This is consistent with the fact that our need for Vitamin B-12 is miniscule (under one microgram (a millionth of a gram) daily, and the body can store it for two to eight years. (Vitamins of the B Complex, 1959 U.S. Department of Agriculture Yearbook of Agriculture, Section on Food, pp. 139-149) Robin Hur's article in this lesson suggests that our actual need for Vitamin B-12 is considerably less than one microgram per day.

Vitamin B-12 has been found in significant amounts in many plant foods, some of which are bananas, dates, greens, peanuts, and particularly sprouts and raw sunflower seeds.

A correspondent to the New England Journal of Medicine (12/7/78, p. 1319) notes that vitamin B-12 is manufactured by micro-organisms, making it possible to obtain B-12 from certain seeds and nuts, and from soybeans. He also cites synthesis of the vitamin in the digestive tract of humans when adequate amounts of unheated seeds are eaten, and points to healthy babies who are breast-fed by strict vegetarian mothers.
---------
Dr. Karl-Otto Aly of Sweden examined the Hunzakuts and they showed no B-12 deficiency symptoms, though they have been almost 100% vegetarians for 2,000 years.

Dr. Alec Burton (Australian Hygienic professional) has seen countless people go for 25 to 30 years on vegetarian diets, and never display a deficiency of Vitamin B-12.

Current research at Loma Linda University found excellent B-12 levels for tested vegans (people who eat plant foods only), who eat all, or most, of their food fresh and unheated. Vitamin B-12 is water soluble, and therefore best obtained in raw foods.

Studies have demonstrated that Vitamin B-12 is heat sensitive and normal cooking can destroy as much as 89% of it. High consumption levels of fat and protein, refined foods and tobacco increase the need for B-12, while at the same time interfering with the synthesis and absorption of B-12. Thus the conventional meat-eater may indeed be a more likely candidate for Vitamin B-12 deficiency and pernicious anemia than the individual on an adequate vegetarian diet.

I have known a number of people who were found to be deficient in B-12 and who were receiving injections of this vitamin, but they were all flesh eaters. I have never known a Hygienist or vegetarian who was receiving these injections.

www.rawfoodexplained.com/why-we-should-not-eat-meat

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Humans are not strictly herbivorous. The human body can't break down cellulose, the principle component of plant foods (though it does serve a purpose as dietary fiber). This is the reason we can't graze or live on grass. Anatomically, we resemble the other primates (frugivores), whose diet is mostly vegetarian. We're meant to live mostly, if not entirely, upon plant foods. Only vitamin B-12 cannot be obtained from plant foods.

Predators are found in nature, but so are cannibalism and rape. Killing other animals for food, in this sense, really is an ethical issue, not a "dietary" issue.

Keith Akers writes in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983): "There is no question that lacto-ovo-vegetarians easily obtain enough vitamin B-12; dairy products and eggs are generous suppliers of vitamin B-12. The controversy pertains only to those who live on plant foods and do not eat any animal foods at all--the 'total vegetarians' or 'vegans.'...The evidence shows, however, that there are numerous sources of vitamin B-12 other than animal foods, and that vitamin B-12 is not a particularly difficult vitamin to get. In short, the Great Vitamin B-12 Controversy, like the protein controversy, is largely generated by lack of information concerning already available research data.

"Only incredibly small quantities of vitamin B-12 are thought to be needed in the diet. According to the National Research Council, 3 micrograms daily will meet the body's requirements. but Victor Herbert, a noted authority on the subject, puts the requirement at 0.1 micrograms, making even the National Research Council's microscopic figure 30 times in excess of the actual need."

John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America (1987), says that vitamin B-12 is found naturally around us: on the dirt on a carrot pulled out of the ground, in rainwater, etc., but we live in a sanitized society, removed from nature.

Keith Akers similarly observes:

"Vitamin B-12 has been found in rainwater and in many plant foods. In small quantities, Vitamin B-12 has been found either in or on various foods such as the roots and stems of tomatoes, cabbage, celery, kale, broccoli, leeks, and the leaves of kohlrabi. An ounce of the roots of leeks, beets, and other vegetables will provide 0.1 to 0.3 micrograms of B-12, which is more than a day's requirement.

"There are other plant foods which provide 'massive' quantities of vitamin B-12--'massive,' that is, in relation to human requirements for the vitamin. These include nutritional yeast, tempeh, seaweed, algae, kelp, and fermented soy sauces. The human liver can store vitamin B-12 for years, so once it is ingested from one of these sources, one can go for long periods of time without having to worry about a source of B-12."

In his 1979 book, Vegetarianism: A Way of Life, Dudley Giehl writes that some ancient Egyptian priests were vegetarian to help them with their vows of celibacy and that they avoided eggs and milk, which they called "liquid flesh." Giehl writes that Leonardo da Vinci was a vegan, out of ethical concern for animals.

In his 1923 book, The Natural Diet of Man, Adventist physician Dr. John Harvey Kellogg writes: "The Ladrone Islands were discovered by the Spaniards around 1620. There were no animals on the islands except birds, which the natives did not eat. The natives had never seen fire, and they lived entirely on plant foods--fruits and roots in their natural state. They were found to be vigorous, active, and of good longevity."

The Garden of Eden was vegan, but veganism as an actual historical trend is a fairly recent phenomenon. The Vegan Society was formed in England in 1944.

The ethical, environmental, and nutritional arguments are compelling enough to encourage millions of Americans to reduce, if not eliminate entirely, their consumption of animal products.

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that I can add to this article is that I'm on my thirty-first year of zero meat and I think that I made a wise decision.

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There is also a this citation from wholefoods on the bean.

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=87

It doesn't mention b12

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slow news day eh???

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"Thousands of years ago when we were hunter-gatherers, we may have needed a bit of meat in our diets in times of scarcity, but we don’t need it now."

I disagree. I NEED bacon. Sometimes I need it by itself, sometimes I need it wrapped lovingly around a steak, sometimes I need to have it placed on top of ground beef with cheese and jalapenos, and sometimes I need it to become one with a spinach salad. No matter how you look at it, I NEED bacon.

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...including even briefly to Europe. Or Quebec, for that matter. They always make this extreme conflation of modern factory farming - which probably no one in the AlterNet audience is going to defend, except maybe our pal Honky - with ALL meat-eating in general. That's a cheap argument and intellectually shoddy.

Traditional European eating habits, which include moderate amounts of healthy and humanely-raised meat, run counter to the admittedly lamentable American diet, as does the modern European "slow food" trend.

East Asia and South Asia do have great traditions of vegetarianism, of course, but they also have the most wildly inventive carnivore recipes you'll find anywhere.

And if you go to Peru, you'll probably see roasted guinea pigs for sale on carts. (I advise Kathy Freston never to go to Peru!)

I'm not convinced of the premise. There may be a few pockets of long-time vegan humans on the planet, here and there. But meat-eating, in moderate quantities, is so widespread and nearly ubiquitous that her premise doesn't ring true to me.

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Vegetarians and vegans claiming their diet is healthier than a meat inclusive diet are completely ignorant of science. There is nothing to support this. In fact, the opposite can easily be argued if you read the research. Eating meat is VERY healthful and I challenge anyone to prove it isn't. Eating animal flesh is in no way linked to cancer or diabetes or any other known disease. Problems arise from farming methods, which can be solved. If you have a moral issue, that's your choice. I have accepted meat eating as a very natural act. Animals are eating each other all the time, it's called L-I-F-E.

Unless you're starving, food is a choice. I recommend choosing healthy organic food. I also recommend reading Nobel Laureate Otto Warburg's research. Cancer is caused primarily by low cellular oxygenation. Carbs turn to sugar which causes cellular fermentation. Fatty acids found in animal protein facilitate cellular oxygenation. Sugars and cooking oil and processed food is cancer food. I am eating much smaller amounts of organic carbs and more essential fatty acids, i.e. fat and protein which I believe is what the body needs. We need essential fatty acids, but not crappy fish oils. Animal protein or even hemp oil, has Omega 6 and 3 in the right ratios. Cut the crap, and cut the carbs! There is no known link between animal fat and cancer, or cholesterol. Carbs and bad oils (transfats) are the enemy. Pseudo-science and propaganda has no place in this discussion. Ask most doctors and they will spout the conventional wisdowm of eating less meat and more plants (carbs). And soy??? Don't get me started. Soy is BAD news. You can't get away from it though, it's in everything. The soy industry is killing people, along with HFCS, high fructose corn syrup, (aka POISON).

There is a reason cows have FOUR STOMACHS. I actually increased my meat intake and decreased my carb intake and I feel much better, not so tired, and not bloated. Vegans are causing global warming.

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Wildest ice cream story in a long, long time: the animal rights group People for the Ethical...
Publication: Ice Cream Reporter
Date: Monday, October 20 2008
Wildest ice cream story in a long, long time: The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) wrote to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, co-founders of Ben & Jerry's, asking them to replace the cow's milk used in their ice cream with human breast milk. PETA noted that using breast milk "would lessen the suffering of dairy cows and their babies on factory farms and benefit human health at the same time." A PETA representative admitted the letter was somewhat tongue-in-cheek but added: "It would certainly be a more healthy and natural choice than using cow's milk, considering that a cow's milk is designed for baby calves that are physically different from us." Ben & Jerry's official rejected the idea, although the company did go out of its way to praise PETA for brining attention to the issue of how animals are treatment.

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In case you haven't noticed Kath, humans use TOOLS. Clothes, cooking, houses, computers are all unnatural, they are manufactured.

I don't think you are advocating for humans go back to being scavangers like hyenas and coyotes.

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healthalternatives2000.com/fruit-nutrition-chart.html

The chart also lists several other fruits and there is no mention of b12.

Now, I suspect your cherrypick relates to dirt on food, in which case that might SOMETIMES provide a source of b12. Ok, eat dirty food for all I care.

both you and the original author are misleading people about science to further a moral agenda.

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This article is crap. A million or two years ago, homo erectus was an omnivore who ate quite a bit or meat.

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"A diet that can lead to heart attacks, cancer, and numerous other diseases cannot be a natural diet," writes Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook. "A diet that pillages our resources of land, water, forests, and energy cannot be a natural diet. A diet that causes the unnecessary suffering and death of billions of animals each year cannot be a natural diet."

I understand there are conservative Christians who fear vegetarianism...which is kind of like being afraid of nonsmoking, nondrinking, or recycling. Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain fed to livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

A pamphlet put out by Compassion Over Killing says raising animals for food is one of the leading causes of both pollution and resource depletion today. According to a recent United Nations report, "Livestock's Long Shadow," raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and other forms of transportation combined. Researchers from the University of Chicago similarly concluded that a vegetarian diet is the most energy efficient, and the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by not eating animal products than by switching to a hybrid car.

A 2007 journal published by the American Dietetic Association found "meat protein production required 26 times more water than vegetable protein on rain-fed lands." The journal further states that dieticians "can encourage eating that is both healthful and conserving of soil, water, and energy by emphasizing plant sources of protein and foods that have been produced with fewer agricultural inputs."

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation."

---Union Nations' Food and Agriculture Association

A single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day, which is equivalent to that of 20 to 40 humans.

70% of the grain grown and 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. are used by the meat industry. (Audubon Society)

On average 990 liters of water are required to produce one liter of milk. (United Nations)

Over 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow grain for livestock. (Greenpeace)

It takes nearly one gallon of fossil fuel and 5,200 gallons of water to produce just one pound of conventionally fed beef. (Mother Jones)

Farmed animals produce an estimated 1.4 billion tons of fecal waste each year in the U.S. Much of this untreated waste pollutes the land and water.

The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.

“If anyone wants to save the planet,” says Paul McCartney in a PETA interview, “all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it! Linda was right. Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century.”

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can leech into rain water and be found on veggies. So what?

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“the birth of agriculture only started about 10,000 years ago at a time when it became considerably more convenient to herd animals. This is not nearly as long as the time [that] fashioned our basic biochemical functionality (at least tens of millions of years) and which functionality depends on the nutrient composition of plant-based foods.”

It's true that agriculture is relatively recent. That means the opposite of the conclusion here, though. Agriculture is what allows/forces people to subsist on carbohydrates. Before agriculture, the only way to get anything like adequate food supplies is through hunting and eating meat. We see hunting motifs in the most ancient human art.

We also have seen within recent history what happens to hunters who ate largely meat when they are forced onto a carb-based diet--the native Americans and the Eskimos. It devastates their health. Also, as mentioned by another commenter, the Japanese went from high-carb to high-protein within this century, and are taller and healthier for it.

Agricultural work and grain eating stunts human growth.

Also note that there is no example of a natural culture with a vegan diet. None. And virtually every culture associates meat-eating with prosperity and success and grain-eating with deprivation and subsistence. Why? Because it's true.

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The subject is a non starter for me.

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You cannot get heme iron from plants. We require heme iron, from meat. Heme iron in our blood allows for transport of oxygen upon the blood.
http://www.naturalways.com/iron-deficiency.htm

I find some sense in the blood type diet as well.

This article was written by a deluded individual, and her sources are laughable, in my opinion.

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Reading some recent articles on Alternet, I get the impression that the world will never be right for Progressives until we are all vasectomized vegetarian bike-riders.

And it seems to me THAT is "not natural".

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Read "Catching Fire" by Richard Wrangham and see if you still believe there is something unnatural about eating meat.

But a more troubling aspect of this article is the presupposition that if something is natural it is good or right, and if something is unnatural than it is bad or wrong. This is known as the naturalistic fallacy and I'm always kind of disappointed to find so many of my sisters and brothers on the left committing it.

If you believe that eating meat is morally wrong than it makes no difference whatsoever if it is natural or not. I.e. if we found out that it was perfectly natural to eat meat, and our digestive systems were obviously designed for precisely that purpose, would that change the immorality of eating meat, making it all o.k.? No. If you think eating meat is wrong, then whether or not it serves some evolutionary benefit or not is irrelevant.

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I have been mostly vegetarian for about 15 years. Mostly I have chosen this because of the horrible conditions in the factory farms. I also just don't care for meat much and so haven't missed it. As a vegetarian, I am down on processed soy foods and really all over-processed foods in general. I think meat is bad for us now mostly because of the almost exclusively GMO corn/soy diet that the animals are fed. Our ancesters only ate grass-fed meat/beef with very little grain and no GMO's. That is why they were not harmed by eating it. Although I agree that we don't need to eat meat, many people replace meat with processed soy foods which are just as bad if not worse-in my opinion. I would like to see us all work toward more humane and healthful practices in the meat industry. We do this by seeking out local grass-fed meat. It is not realistic to say that most Americans are going to give up flesh altogether but less meat is the natural direction when buying local as it is spendy and harder to get.

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Wow, there is a lot of anger in many of these comments. Perhaps the key is a little balance and whole bunch of moderation.

First, I don't subscribe to the notion that humans were simply vegetarian. I think it is far more complicated than that. One commenter noted that while we may have gathered and eaten more naturally-grown vegetable matter, we did not eat grains. I agree. And these days, it is nearly impossible to have any diet without grains.

One can look to the Native Americans who hunted and gathered on this continent for thousands of years. They hunted deer, elk, buffalo (lean, grass fed meats), caught salmon (great brain-developing Omega-3) and gathered roots and berries (no grains). Now tribal people, with a grain-based diet, suffer from obesity , diabetes and heart disease at far greater levels than the rest of the country.

I also believe that the best diet for a particular person depends on the person's own biological needs. When I was a teenager I hated meat, so before it was popular, I became mostly a vegetarian (I did eat some fish and eggs) for nearly 25 years, and even tried being a vegan for a time too.

But I am also an endurance athlete, and I became anemic as I aged. I was very careful to eat lots of leafy greens, and other natural iron providers, and when I cooked, I always used an iron skillet, but my iron (and B vitamin) levels did not improve. My doctor (a vegetarian herself) told me that I probably needed to include some red meat in my diet. So I research and found a local CSA organic farm that raised grass-fed cows and bought some of their beef. Instead of feeling sick or tired after eating my firststeak, I felt fantastic. I continue to eat that beef once a week and it has helped me significantly. My iron and B levels are doing well and I have more energy than I have in a long time.

I really believe that there are some people who can thrive successfully on a vegan diet, and I applaud them. I believe there are others who may need fish and/or dairy to be healthy. And there are those, like myself, who need a dose of meat-based iron.

If we support more moderation - in our diet and our consumption patterns - we won't need factory farms. Small, organic CSA-type farms with sanely raised animals would be sufficient to feed many.

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Vitamin B12 deficiency is not more widespread in vegans or vegetarians - this is probably just another marketing lie! In fact, many so-called studies 'showing vegans deficient' have to be carefully studied themselves - many of them do not prove vegans to be deficient at all! In fact, contrary to meat and dairy industry propaganda, meat-eaters are known to be more likely to have a vitamin B12 deficiency - this has been known since 1959!!

I would also suggest that just because a wild fruit or organic plant food contains only a small amount of B-12, this does not mean it is deficient. It may just be because we only need a small amount anyhow.

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"Meat and dairy products provide the only dietary source of cyanocobalamin for humans [40,97]. The Western diet contains 5 to 7 mcg of cobalamin per day, whereas the minimum daily requirement is listed as 6 to 9 mcg per day.

Lactoovovegetarians and lactovegetarians can, but do not always, consume sufficient amounts of vitamin B12 from eggs, milk, and milk products. Vegans, whose diets are based entirely on plant food, are at considerable risk for vitamin B12 deficiency [46,83,97,98]. For example, in one study,10 of 25 vegans had vitamin B12 deficiency manifested by macrocytosis (show blood smear 1) and low serum vitamin B12 [99]. In another report, serum vitamin B12 concentrations were determined in 83 volunteer subjects attending an American vegetarian society conference [100]. In subjects who did not supplement their diets with vitamin B12 or multivitamin tablets, the percentage with serum vitamin B12 levels below the normal range was a function of the dietary restriction:

Vegans — 92 percent
Lactovegetarians — 64 percent
Lactoovovegetarians — 47 percent
Semivegetarians — 20 percent

Vegan children and other vegetarians whose diet does not contain adequate vitamin B12 should consume a regular and reliable source of the vitamin, either in fortified foods or an oral B12 supplement providing 6 to 9 mcg per day [39,49]. Some listings of vitamin B12 content do not differentiate between the vitamin and its inactive analogs. Much of the vitamin B12 present in spirulina, sea vegetables, tempeh, and miso is inactive and can compete with active forms for absorption [86,101]. The food nutrition label should list the content of cyanocobalamin, the active form of the vitamin."


39. Murphy, SP, Allen, LH. Nutritional importance of animal source foods. J Nutr 2003; 133:3932S.

40. Venti, CA, Johnston, CS. Modified food guide pyramid for lactovegetarians and vegans. J Nutr 2002; 132:1050.

46. Messina, V, Melina, V, Mangels, AR. A new food guide for North American vegetarians. J Am Diet Assoc 2003; 103:771.

49. Larsson, CL, Johansson, GK. Young Swedish vegans have different sources of nutrients than young omnivores. J Am Diet Assoc 2005; 105:1438.

83. Sanders, TA. Vegetarian diets and children. Pediatr Clin North Am 1995; 42:955.

86. Haddad, EH. Meeting the RDAs with a vegetarian diet. Top Clin Nutr 1995; 10:7.

97. Herrmann, W, Geisel, J. Vegetarian lifestyle and monitoring of vitamin B-12 status. Clin Chim Acta 2002; 326:47.

98. Krajcovicova-Kudlackova, M, Blazicek, P, Kopcova, J, et al. Homocysteine levels in vegetarians versus omnivores. Ann Nutr Metab 2000; 44:135.

99. Haddad, EH, Berk, LS, Kettering, JD, et al. Dietary intake and biochemical, hematologic, and immune status of vegans compared with nonvegetarians. Am J Clin Nutr 1999; 70:586S.

100. Dong, A, Scott, SC. Serum vitamin B12 and blood cell values in vegetarians. Ann Nutr Metab 1982; 26:209.

101. Dagnelie, PC, van Staveren, WA, van den, Berg H. Vitamin B-12 from algae appears not to be bioavailable. Am J Clin Nutr 1991; 53:695.

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In my opinion, there will come a time when food production won't involve livestock, chickens, fish, or any animal origins at all. We'll be able to synthesize nutricious, papatable food entirely from plant sources, from land and sea.
Convincing enough people that this is the ONLY moral and sustainable way to feed everyone will be the biggest obstacle to overcome.
If we don't do this or something very much like it, it won't be too long before we wish we had.

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Paleolithic Diet vs. Vegetarianism:
www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview1a.shtml#TOC

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I hate the god damn motherfucking pols in Washington, I hate the gun control gun grabbing fascists, and I hate wackos preaching veganism shit ! Learn to have a life of your own hunting for a living or part thereof and stop raping mother earth for oil just to process your vegan shit !

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A vegetarian since 1982, I attended my first anti-vivisection protest in the spring of 1985, as anti-apartheid demonstrations rocked the UC San Diego campus. I first got interested in promoting vegetarianism in mainstream society after reading John Robbins' Diet for a New America (1987). Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, it makes veganism seem as reasonable and mainstream as recycling.

Half the water consumed in the U.S. goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock. Huge amounts of water wash away their excrement. U.S. livestock produce 20 times as much excrement as does the entire human population; creating sewage which is 10 to several hundred times more concentrated than raw domestic sewage. Animal wastes cause 10 times more water pollution than does the U.S. human population; the meat industry causes three times as much harmful organic water pollution than the rest of the nation's industries combined. Meat producers, the number one industrial polluters in our nation, contribute to half the water pollution in the United States.

Joanna Macy, author of Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, depicts the advantages of America moving towards a vegan diet in her foreword to Diet for a New America:

"The effects on our physical health are immediate. The incidence of cancer and heart attack, the nation's biggest killers, drops precipitously. So do many other diseases now demonstrably and causally linked to consumption of animal proteins and fats, such as osteoporosis...

"The social, ecological, and economic consequences, as we Americans turn away from animal food products, are equally remarkable. We find that the grain we previously fed to fatten livestock can now feed five times the U.S. population; so we have become able to alleviate malnutrition and hunger on a worldwide scale...

"The great forests of the world, that we had been decimating for grazing purposes, begin to grow again. Oxygen-producing trees are no longer sacrificed for cholesterol-producing steaks.

"The water crisis eases. As we stop raising and grinding up cattle for hamburgers, we discover that ranching and farm factories had been the major drain on our water resources. The amount now available for irrigation and hydroelectric power doubles. Meanwhile, the change in diet frees over 90% of the fossil fuel previously used to produce food. With this liberation of water energy and fossil fuel energy, our reliance on oil imports declines, as does the rationale for building nuclear power plants..."

Joanna Macy admits, "This scenario is wildly, absurdly utopian. It is also clearly the way we are meant to live, built to live." What could possibly make it a reality? "It is this very book!"

Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights similarly says:

"Merely by ceasing to eat meat
Merely by practicing restraint
We have the power to end a painful industry

"We do not have to bear arms to end this evil
We do not have to contribute money
We do not have to sit in jail or go to
meetings or demonstrations or
engage in acts of civil disobedience

"Most often, the act of repairing the world,
of healing mortal wounds,
is left to heroes and tzaddikim (holy people)
Saints and people of unusual discipline

"But here is an action every mortal can
perform--surely it is not too difficult!"

When I first read Diet for a New America, I felt it could have the same kind of impact on mainstream American society that Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet had in the '70s.

John Robbins spoke before the United Nations in 1994, where he received a standing ovation.

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Regarding the evolutionary traits, the one things not mentioned in the article, or any of the comments that I did read [I did not read them all], is that early humans started using TOOLS.

We don't have the anatomy to kill animals, and we don't have the teeth to chew the meat, but TOOLS makes up for all that. A simple pointed stick and a sharp-edged rock are all that is needed to make up for anatomical deficiencies.

Crops and veggies were not allways available; meat was, and the males enjoyed going to get it while the women stayed behind and gathered food and made a nice home and cared for the babies - as relates to their different anatomies. This is not a slur on women at all, just a fact of primitive life.

So, this article is shortsighted, possibly on purpose, just to support the point he is trying to make.

As for modern humans, our intellect is sufficient to show us that we should be reducing the amount of meat we eat for a few reasons, one of which is that we have allowed ourselves to become OVERPOPULATED and therefore we cannot all be eating meat every day because of the strain on resources.

Old habits die hard, and so many wealthier human societies still eat a lot of meat. We are ignoring even bigger issues too, such as our use of fossil fuels and petrochemicals, which is causing worse problems than eating meat. {PS - abortion issues do not belong in this discussion].

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This requires a detailed answer. Why does Alternet sometimes publish nonsense? There are MANY important reasons to cut back on meat eating. Reducing meat intake, even vegetarianism (which I consider dangerous to health) can be rationally defended to prevent animal suffering and additional environmental degradation. But don't make up or quote claims which 99% of reputable anthropologists would laugh at. Our basic problem with reducing our meat and fat intake is just the opposite--that we are hardwired to devour as much meat as we can get!

First of all, our Paleolithic ancestors survived through 99% of the existence of humankind. Whatever they ate we are built to eat. Early humans survived hand to mouth and were too practical to deny themselves food for mythical reasons. We can be reasonably sure that they must have foraged for any kind of food they could find, like all pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers. Of course they ate wild berries, mushrooms, fruits, honey, root and soil-surface vegetables and, beginning around 14,000 years BCE, began to grind wild grain and domesticating a few wild animals to hunt with them and maybe to eat. By cooking their food, which began over a million and a half years ago with the pre-sapiens species homo erectus, they rendered out poisons and expanded their diet, both plants and otherwise.

But game animal herds were all over the landscape, and even if they took nothing but carrion (doubtful) they ALSO cooked ate as much meat as they could get, especially during the four major glaciations--the final one was the most frigid--when fat and protein from meat were essential for survival. Their lives may have been much like the modern Inuit people. Until forced into Western culture, the Inuit were nomadic, following the Arctic animals, and almost exclusively meat-eaters. Plants don't grow well in ice and tundra, and the ones that do, like grass and moss, require specialized stomachs and are difficult or impossible for humans to digest.

Why do diggers find so many remains of ancient stone fist axes and spear points? There is little evidence of violence among early sapient species. Warfare seems to become widespread between territorial settlements in the Neolithic, as recently as 12,000-10,000 years ago. The "Killer Ape" theory, a byproduct of the Cold War, was demolished by paleontologists decades ago. Why should there have been constant competition and enmity? There’s no evidence of ancient territoriality -- if there had been, modern races would be separate species and unable to interbreed. The world was populated by vast herds of animals but genus homo of all kinds were few. Chromosomal differences may have made interbreeding unlikely, but social exchanges between species--e.g., homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens neandertalensis--may have been common. For all we know, early humans welcomed anyone who resembled their kind. Both our ancestors and Neandertals could speak, both were fully human, both had culture. There are sites where the two evidently exchanged beadwork and tools.

Nearly all that's left of early humans (dating back to homo habilis, about 2.6 million years ago) are the tens of thousands of fist axes and spearheads made primarily of knapped flintstone. In fact, improvements in stone tool technique provide the sequence of prehistoric "periods"--like the Mousterian, Aurignacian, and so on. See linked text

This whole vastly long period is called, familiarly, the Stone Age--Old Stone Age, Middle and New. Stones were the largest source of meat-hunting technology. That’s not guesswork. Many spear points have been found embedded between the ribs and spinal joints of mammoths, giant cats, cave bears, aurochs and other Pleistocene mammals. [Contd]

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Last week I dined at the Butler Inn in Pewaukee Wisconsin. I ordered the New York Strip, medium-well.
It was done to perfection and would urge you to try it.

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To this end vegans should avoid high levels of fat and protein and avoid tobacco and refined foods.

Vegans who want to get their B12 ready-made need look no further than their gardens. An ounce of the roots of leeks, beets, and other vegetables would provide 0.1 to 0.3 micrograms of B12 which is more than a day's needs. By eating vegetables right out of the garden one inevitably takes in a little soil and healthy soil contains healthy amounts of B12.

www.rawfoodexplained.com/why-we-should-not-eat-meat/
the-facts-about-vitamin-b12

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Conclusion:
Most early humans from homo erectus about 1.6 million years ago cooked food. Poisons and decay in raw vegetation, and the calcified texture that made certain plants dangerous to humans, could sometimes be cooked out. Cooking also helped make meat safer, more chewable and digestible. In the later Paleolithic, salting, smoking and other methods of preserving provided a more reliable meat diet.

Hunting for dangerous large animals--even more than plant foraging--created group organization and planning skills that improved our ancestors' mental acuity. Better stone tools shaped wood, animal bone and mammoth ivory, providing other tools like sophisticated fishhooks--made in southern Africa 90,000 years ago. Domestic bone awls and needles improved shoes and clothing--and most clothing under the ice was very likely animal fur. Animals also enhanced human technology by providing simple things like glue from hooves to bones for building winter igloos, as mammoth ribs were used in Siberia, and thus coping better with the frigid Wisconsin glaciation (which lasted about 100,000 years, until about 10,000 to 8,000 BCE, and formerly was called the Wurm glaciation).

Why our species is the only one to survive is mysterious. There are many theories. Earlier humans may simply have relied too heavily on gathering particular vegetation and hunting special animals through cycles in which whole species disappeared--including their food--when the ice returned or when it melted. After 10,000 BCE most of the Pleistocene animals became extinct. So did many plants. No longer could humans chance finding food. If the Neolithic agricultural revolution hadn’t begun humanity would have become extinct too. From that time on, especially from about 1500 AD, humans have relied mostly on domestic livestock and agriculture.

We are lucky that our ancestors were non-specialized omnivores like pigs. Species that eat both plants and animals have a better chance of surviving major changes. A mixed diet of meat and vegetation gave women needed vitamins and calcium to prevent rickets, making it easier to bear children, and ultimately hunting, gathering and preparation of a mixed diet developed brain-power, knowledge and handcraft dexterity that could cope with the radical global warming of the late Mesolithic and Neolithic. Sadly, by then all human species but ours had become extinct--with the possible but as yet unproven exception of H.s. floresiensis--gradually dwindling during the five major climate swings. The Neandertals were the last to entirely disappear. It may be indicative that the last small enclave of them was as recent as 15,000 years ago--about the time global warming started killing off the glacial food supply.

Even for our ancestors, the Neolithic and the subsequent Bronze and Iron ages were a hard change. There is plenty of evidence that from the time of the Neolithic, grain eaters lived shorter and unhappier lives, often as slaves, had rotten teeth and weaker bones than their Paleolithic meat-and-mixed plant ancestors. If there is anything we aren’t hardwired to eat in such excess, it’s bread and milk. Meat, fruit, vegetables, berries, honey, or anything else our deep time forebears ate are safe, cooked food is safer than uncooked, but milk from domestic animals is indigestible in many parts of the world. Eating grains (descended from grass) causes innumerable digestive and carbohydrate problems. Those two were about the only innovative foods until the 20th century when so-called refined foods (actually chemicals which should be avoided) were foisted upon us by advertisers.

In summary--to claim that meat eating is something new is about as silly as claiming that creationism explains evolution! You need someone on the Alternet staff who is knowledgeable in science, or good enough in research to catch quack claims.

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I am going to make this real simple for all you artery clogged meat eaters out there....the bottom line is meat eaters are STUPID!!! There, argument over, now go back to work!

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Nope nope nope and no and nuh uh....

Does the writer of this article know anything about physical anthropology or did she just read the pamphlet she got at the PETA rally?

Look, I'm not gonna go into the facts of the whole thing. There's nothing wrong with meat eating. What's wrong is industrialized meat eating. But then nobody on alternet is gonna be lining up to write pro-industry articles in the first place.....

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I take great personal pleasure in watching a meat eater climb a flight of stairs!!! Fucking hilarious!!!

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therefore [......................... ............................................ ..................... ........................... ...........................................]

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By definition any food that can be retrieved from the animal without actually killing the animal - that means any dairy products and eggs - is vegetarian.

That we need more fruits and vegetables, particularly in American, than most of us consume on average is pretty obvious but why throw in dairy there at the end with no justification and undermine the rest of the article?

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The issue of what humans were eating at what point in history is really interesting, but it doesn't have anything to do with whether people should be vegan or not.

The diet of an organism's ancestors has little bearing on whether the current diet is "natural." Was it "unnatural" for the first birds to fly, because their ancestors didn't? If anything, eating meat is "natural" because it seems to be universally practiced.

The underlying assumption that we should be doing things because they're natural is incorrect. Horrible violence has also been practiced throughout human and pre-human history. I shouldn't go to war (or eat meat, or do anything) because chimpanzees do.

Nutritionally adequate vegan and nonvegan diets exist. All things being equal, whichever diet causes the least suffering is ethically superior. It really has nothing to do with empirical questions about who was eating what and how long ago.

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They deserve it, since they annoy the living fuck out of me.

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I have been a dairy farmer all of my life. And I have to tell the world---I have to tell it NOW!

THE COWS ARE OUT TO GET US!!!!!

I have been clued-into their evil plan for a long time now. The plan to eventual cow domination of the world!

They stand around in the middle of the night, placidly chewing the cud. But secretly conspiring for the Big Takeover! Using our weakness for T-bones and ground chuck to clog-up our arteries and reduce us to servitude!

Oh...we can try to fight back, using Lipitor and lettuce.

But once we smell that sirloin on our neighbor's grill, we surrender to temptation and call out: "Put one on for me..and make it rare!

They already control me! Here I am, spending my days hauling feed and water. Keeping Evil Bossy satisfied while her and her sisters implement their insidious plan!

Sure...they know that some of their sisters will be sacrificed--victims of McDonald's and the beef roast specials at your local meat counter.

But the ultimate goal is in sight. Where someday the cows can order "bring me my hay, human....and don't forget the napkin!"

Thank you, oh...THANK YOU Kathy Freston for enlightening the rest of us dumb schmucks! You've got to help stop this sinister plan!

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Although it is an agnostic (i.e., no recognition of a personal God) moral philosophy a few centuries older than Christianity, Buddhism teaches a consistent ethic of reverence for all life. No wars have ever been waged in the name of Buddhism. The act of abortion is also explicitly condemned in the Buddhist canonical scriptures. Sir Edwin Arnold’s poetic biography on Siddhartha Gautama, The Light of Asia, caused quite a controversy in Victorian England: centuries before Jesus, an earlier teacher lived “the Christ life.”

The ethical teachings of the Buddha are quite similar to those found in the Gospel of Jesus: One must never be proud nor harbor anger against anyone. He who humbles himself shall be exalted, while the one who exalts himself shall be degraded. Harsh language must never be used against anyone.

Avoid lust, anger and greed. One should not scrutinize the mote in a neighbor’s eye without first noticing the beam in one’s own. One must “turn the other cheek” if attacked or abused. One’s own possessions must be shared with the less fortunate. If a man obtained the whole world and its riches, he still would not be satisfied, nor would this save him.

In 261 B.C., the Indian emperor Ashoka witnessed firsthand the innumerable casualties he caused during one of his many military campaigns. His heart was filled with grief. He converted to Buddhism. 19th century scholar and writer H.G. Wells considered Ashoka’s conversion to Buddhism one of the most significant events in world history.

Ashoka, formerly a bloody and ruthless emperor, became a remarkably kind and gentle leader. Ashoka established some of the first animal rights laws. He stopped the royal hunt, stopped the sacrifice of animals in his capital city, stopped the killing of animals for food in the royal kitchens, and gave up the eating of meat. Ashoka made it illegal to kill many species of animals, such as parrots, ducks, geese, bats, turtles, squirrels, monkeys and rhinos. He forbade the killing of pregnant animals, or animals that were nursing their young. He declared certain days to be “non-killing days,” on which fish could not be caught, nor any other animals killed. He established wells and watering holes, places of rest and hospitals for humans and animals alike.

Ashoka educated his people to have compassion for animals, and to refrain from killing or harming them. He sent missionaries to all the neighboring kingdoms to teach mercy, compassion and nonviolence. Through Ashoka’s patronage, Buddhism was spread all over the Indian subcontinent. Buddhism would eventually reach the rest of Asia; today there are an estimated 300 to 600 million Buddhists worldwide.

The first precept of Buddhism is: “Do not kill, but rather preserve and cherish all life.” There is an ancient poem, reputed to be the only text ever written by the Buddha himself, which states:

“Let creatures all, all things that live, all beings of whatever kind, see nothing that will bode them ill. May naught of evil come to them.”

The Buddhist emperor Ashoka (268-223 BC) declared in one of his famous Pillar Edicts: “I have enforced the law against killing certain animals..The greatest progress of Righteousness among men comes from the exhortation in favor of non-injury to life and abstention from killing living beings.”

Mahayana Buddhism supports the vegetarian way of life. According to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra: “The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion.”

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The Lankavatara Sutra says:

“For the sake of love of purity, the bodhisattva should refrain from eating flesh, which is born from semen, blood, etc. For fear of causing terror to living beings let the bodhisattva, who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh…It is not true that meat is proper food and permissible when the animal was not killed by himself, when he did not order others to kill it, when it was not specifically meant for him…Again, there may be some people in the future who…being under the influence of the taste for meat will string together in various ways many sophisticated arguments to defend meat-eating…But…meat-eating in any form, in any manner, and in any place is unconditionally and once and for all prohibited…Meat-eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit…”

The Surangama Sutra says:

“The reason for practicing dhyana and seeking to attain samadhi is to escape from the suffering of life. But in seeking to escape from suffering ourselves, why should we inflict it upon others? Unless you can control your minds that even the thought of brutal unkindness and killing is abhorrent, you will never be able to escape from the bondage of the world’s life…After my parinirvana in the final kalpa different kinds of ghosts will be encountered everywhere deceiving people and teaching them that they can eat meat and still attain enlightenment…How can a bhikshu, who hopes to become a deliverer of others, himself be living on the flesh of other sentient beings?”

The Dalai Lama has said, “I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat.”

Contemporary Hindu spiritual masters have taught us that if one wishes to eat cow’s flesh (or the flesh of any other animal for that matter), one should wait until the animal dies of natural causes, rather than take the life of a fellow creature. This indicates that we are vegetarian first and foremost out of nonviolence toward and compassion for animals, rather than because we follow “dietary laws.”

Avoidance of onions and garlic is not limited to Hindus in India; there is a tradition of avoiding these foods in China, antedating the arrival of Buddhism. ‘Enjoy’ Vegetarian Restaurant in San Francisco, CA is run by Chinese Buddhists, and they do not serve onions or garlic in any of their preparations.

In Theravada Buddhist countries (Burma, Ceylon, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Tibet, Malaya), although the monks are forbidden to kill animals, they beg for food and are expected to eat whatever is offered them. Contrasting the Mahayana Buddhist countries (e.g., China) with the Theravada, in A Vegetarian Sourcebook, author Keith Akers writes:

“In the Mahayana countries, the custom regarding monks is completely different, reflecting a different attitude towards meat consumption. The Mahayana Buddhist monks do not beg for food at all; they prepare their own food, which is either bought, grown, or collected as rent. The Mahayana monks in China were strictly vegetarian in ancient times and remain so today.

“Dietary abstinence from meat was an ancient Chinese tradition that antedated the arrival of Buddhism. In China, all animal foods, onions, and alcohol were either forbidden or customarily avoided. Animal products were avoided in dress as they were in diet. There was a prohibition on the use of silk or leather (not observed in Theravada countries).

“Not only are the Mahayana Buddhist monks vegetarian, but so are many Buddhist lay people in China. Lay people usually receive a lay ordination, in which they must take from one to five vows. Almost everyone takes the first vow, which is not to take the life of any sentient creature.”

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I am a vegetarian, but also a biologist. A pro-vegetarian article throwing out 'facts' that aren't based on science undermines the real reasons to cut back on meat consumption.
For example: regarding "carnivores have short intestines so they can quickly get rid of all that rotting flesh they eat..."
Actually, scientists who study the digestive systems of mammals suggest that "A large gut size is to be expected mainly when the food is of low quality, which requires a long period for digestion and fermentation to occur, or when an organism has a high nutrient need: grazers and browsers have long intestinal tracts." - McNab, B.K. 2002. The physiological ecology of vertebrates: a view from energetics. Cornell University Press. 576 pp.
Your body is designed to expend the least amount of energy and carry around the least amount of excess baggage to get the job done. In other words...a body develops long intestines to maximize the amount of energy obtained from eating a low-energy food...not creating a shorter intestine to get rid of rotting flesh. Our digestive tracts are somewhat in the middle when it comes to length...which goes right along with being omnivorous.

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I was pretty sure that George Bush wasn't the only one creating science to meet his personal needs. This "science" only makes sense if you ignore archeology, anthropology, zoology and a whole lot of other science that shows that many apes actively hunt and eat meat, baboons and chimpanzees to name a few. Many lemurs also eat meat. It sounds like the ones having a hard time adapting are the authors of this article who apparently think that "believing something is true" is science.

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The following quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter: What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."

---John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation

One study puts animal waste in the United States to between 2.4 trillion to 3.9 trillion pounds per year. The United states produces 15,000 pounds of manure per person. This is 130 times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of the United States.

A 1,000-cow dairy can produce approximately 120,000 pounds of waste per day. This is the functional equivalent of the amount of sanitary waste produced by a city of 20,000 people.

A 20,000-chicken factory produces about 2.4 million pounds of manure a year. Poultry factories are one of the fastest growing industries throughout Asia.

One pig excretes nearly three gallons of waste per day, or 2.5 times the average human's daily total. One hog farm with 50,000 pigs in France produces more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles, and some pig farms are much larger.

Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution. This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.

Meat production causes deforestation, which then contributes to global warming. Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the globe to make room for grazing cattle furthers the greenhouse effect. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from 9 million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately, this destruction has accelerated since then. By 1994, a staggering 200 million hectares of rainforest had been destroyed in South America just for cattle.

"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined."

---Philip Fradkin, in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York

Agricultural meat production generates air pollution. As manure decomposes, it releases over 400 volatile organic compounds, many of which are extremely harmful to human health. Nitrogen, a major by-product of animal wastes, changes to ammonia as it escapes into the air, and this is a major source of acid rain. Worldwide, livestock produce over 30 million tons of ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical released from animal waste, can cause irreversible neurological damage, even at low levels.

The World Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic.

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The following quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

The United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year from cropland and grazing land, and 84 percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture. While this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing soil at a much faster rate than we are able to replace it. It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil, but due to livestock grazing and feeding, farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year.

Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. That includes the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used to produce the crops that feed the animals. By comparison, urbanization only affects 3 percent of the United States land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom. Meat production consumes the world's land resources.

Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock. Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.

The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock. The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.

The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in a feedlot costs: five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of topsoil.

33 percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into livestock destined for slaughter. In a vegan economy, only 2 percent of our resources will go to the production of food.

"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."

---Jeremy Rifkin, author, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent per year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption--or enough to feed 60 million people.

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FTA "In fact, our hands are perfect for grabbing and picking fruits and vegetables." And as well at the time,our hands were perfect for creating and holding a weapon used to bring down an animal.

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A comment from an associate who knows a thing or two...

Total nonsense.

An opinion generally taken by people who have already decided being herbivores is right according to their philosophy (animal rights activists, anti-cattle farm environmentalists, etc.). It's the same kind of thinking that has people trying to train their cats and dogs to be vegetarians. (You'll kill your cat and make your dog unhealthy.)

You can't tear flesh with your hands, but you can heft a pretty nasty spear, rock, bow and arrow, etc. Opposable thumbs allow us to create all kinds of mischief with our hands and have done since before we were human. Prehuman species used tools up to millions of years ago. Some of those tool users were mostly vegetarian. Most were omnivores. If you're a 100 million year herbivore, and you have herbivore guts, and you suddenly get a tool, you don;t use it to kill something and swallow it -- what would be the point? You wouldn't have the biochemistry to deal with it. No -- you use it to kill if you already have the taste (and biochemistry) for meat.

The exact biochemical and physical opposite to the veggie premise is true: we are designed from the ground up as omnivores.

Teeth:

Omnivores - various patterns that mix these two sets of features. Humans have piercing canines, but smaller ones than pure carnivores. We also have 4 sets of incisors for cutting flesh. We also have grinding molars, but they are completely covered in enamel to allow us to crack small bones. We do not have the alternating dentin-enamel pattern needed to really grind up cellulose, which puts us immediately out of the herbivore group – note only can we eat meat, but our teeth indicate that we're supposed to.

Digestive System:

The general rule is that the more dependent on vegetation you are, the longer and more complex your digestive system for your body size. Cows, deer, etc. have multi-chambered stomachs to break down plant material in stages. Their intestines are very long and allow them to fully break down the plant material and absorb the nutrient locked inside the plant. Cats have a short digestive system and a single chambered stomach.

We have an intermediate length digestive system and a single chambered stomach – no multi chambers for plant digestion.

Biochemistry:

True herbivores can break down cellulose, generally by virtue of having commensal organisms living in their digestive system (just like we have bacteria for other purposes in our bowels). Non-herbivores (like us) cannot break down cellulose. That's why we can eat some types of vegetation but not others. There are some nutritious plants that are useless to us because we do not have the biochemical machinery to get the nutrient out.

We also have robust biochemical mechanisms to deal with rapid and sudden influx of fat. (Think plains aboriginals who subside on small game and lots of non-meat much of the year, then feasting on big kills occasionally, especially during buffalo migration.) The idea is to get the nutrient, grab it, convert it, and store it for lean times. Herbivores don't have these kinds of systems because they don;t have sudden influxes of fat. They have systems for storing plant nutrient.

We also have proteases in our stomach that break down animal proteins.

But there's no evidence I've ever seen that says a well balanced diet including an appropriate amount of meat isn't equal or better in healthiness to a vegetarian diet. There have been studies, on the other hand, that suggest complete exclusion of meat can decrease overall health by keeping some base nutrients in short supply.

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I am an omnivore. I completely respect and support the choices of those friends who are vegan and vegetarian, and I expect the same respect for my choices. We are all thinking adults and have come to our conclusions after careful deliberation.

I do have criticism for *some* vegans/vegetarians for the way they interact with omnivores.

1. Using the tactics of the anti-abortion movement to try and shock omnivores into not eating meat, much the same way anti-abortion activists use shocking pictures of dismembered fetuses to make a point. It is disrespectful and in poor form for the anti-abortion activists, just as for the anti-meat activists. As a woman, I am hurt by this kind of rhetoric.

2. Using the tactics of creationists to cherry-pick science and create specious pseudo-scientific arguments. We are talking about a moral choice, and it is clear that there are convincing scientific arguments on both sides. When I see a side of an argument refuse to accept evidence simply because it contradicts a preferred world-view, I am reminded of creationists. We all know that science can't prove morality.

3. Using the tactics of the anti-gay movement. For me, as a queer person, a huge red flag goes up when I see an argument for what's "natural" or not. Humans are also animals. We are part of nature, not separate from it. Humans and our behavior is just as natural as any other animal and their behavior. Natural is a subjective and loaded term, and is often used by bigots against marginalized groups in society. Why would anti-meat activists choose such a term?

4. Comparing meat-eaters to slave-owners, and animals to black people. As an anti-racist, it raises red flags when I hear the anti-meat argument put this way. It makes vegetarians seem as though they must all be white and privileged to be unaware of how insulting this rhetoric is to blacks. This in itself is a racist construction, and it makes me wonder why a movement would be willing to further marginalize an already marginalized group in order to further their cause.

Again, I am only speaking to those vegetarians and vegans who use this sort of disrespectful language. I have nothing but respect for those of you who respect me in return!

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