Dr. Jagan Mohan

Man is generally believed to be a Omnivore, eating both plant food and cooked meat.
I Disagree and try to prove that Man is basically well off with a Vegetarian Lifestyle and wish to use a few basic and watered-down-to-earth arguments instead of highly philosophical or scientific arguments. However Medical Science recognises that Modern Man is neither a pure Herbivore nor a typical Omnivore: It is a bit difficult to classify Man strictly into either of those two taxonomical classes. Perhaps Man falls outside the purview of this division since our Intellectual capabilities have enabled us to modify our food and eating habits using Technology instead of eating purely what nature had meant for us, which is vegetarian as we will see..

Firstly understanding that feeding your Dog with biscuits for its whole life will not make it a herbivore, nor the modern Cattle farms which fatten their herds with feed prepared from previously slaughtered animal's waste/leftovers, make these cattle, carnivorous.
Thus when Man consumes Meat by cooking it, won't make him a Omnivore too.
It is a simple fact that we cannot eat fresh meat without converting it into a pleasant and palatable form by various forms of cooking. ie. Boiling, Steaming, Stir Frying, Deep Frying, Smoking, Curing etc etc. This art and sense of cooking wherein we combine various ingredients and techniques to convert the raw flesh into a tasty, appetising meal like a hamburger or steak, has helped us to adapt ourselves to a Meat eating lifestyle. Anyway you see it, We Don't feed on Meat as such, but on meat derived food. Thus, thanks to our cooking genius, we are termed (wrongly) omnivores.. Otherwise, we are most comfortable when we peel a Banana or take a juicy bite off a rosy Apple.

A Comparative Anatomy can be read here <a href="http://www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm" target="_blank">http://www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm</a>

In simple terms, considering Anatomy of Man, we have our noses placed at a crucial point in our face.. Pointing downwards and towards the mouth, the primary idea behind this evolutionary design is that our olfactory sense best serves to smell what we put into our mouths. (Carnivores and other animals hunt for prey using hightly evolved sense of smell which best suit their blood thirsty lifestyle). A 'vomit center' in our brain is a reflex action center which will faithfully force us to 'throw up' what ever it senses to be contradictory or unacceptable for our general health. The Point is that if we try to force ourselves to eat fresh Meat from a just slaughtered Lamb, which in the first place is hardly appetising to look at nor does it tingle our noses the same way as a baked pie would do, we will be sure to vomit it. Anyway, you won't be able to chew it, you will have to force-swallow it without adequte mastigation and softening.
If you don't vomit it out for any reason, you will suffer the next day from indigestion.

Nature has not endowed us with a keener sense of smell to track down our 'prey', nor are we well equipted in terms of claws and nails to slaughter even a small animal like a Rabbit, not to mention our inability to tear the thick skin/coat of a animal. Our teeth are hardly sharp or well placed to bite into a uncooked Pork shoulder... our Jaws are inconvinient for mastigating thick Meat. Ah.. I forgot: How in the first place would you catch your rabbit without bringing in your scientific mind for building snares?
We can't smell fresh Blood from as near as one feet. We have already shed the capacity to turn our Pinna (ears) independent of our Heads.

Our Fingers are build for Industrial purpose, to grasp, fashion tools, climbing, sculpturing, painting, and at times for (bare-handed) defense. Our Nails serve the function of protecting our finger ends which are rich in blood vessels and nerve-endings. We can use our nails to dig up the ground a bit to find potatoes (Ladies using long nails to leave love-signs: exceptional use), but not as claws.

We stand upright to reach branches above with our long arms; We bend or kneel to reach the ground for foraging. Most fruits fit in the palm of our Hand- coincidence? We can run, but not behind any prey.. but away from danger (adrenaline: fright, fight and flight). We can swim with our limbs but can hardly catch fish while in water. It pleases us to hear to Music, but we cannot distinguish the sounds of the forests adequetely like a hunting animal.

Forced by various factors such as taste, habit, culture, We make up for these inadequencies by Knives, Culinary skills and the fork at the table.

Instead of facing the fact that we are not gifted by nature to eat meat, we try to convince ourselves that since we can substitute for these inadequencies of nature with intelligent design and technology, we have evolved into 'Omnivores'. Hardly Correct isn't it?

The conclusion: Man as an Animal without using his Intellectual Scientific Mind is a Vegetarian.

For those who are worried about nutrition value of a vegetarian lifestyle: PEM (protein-energy malnutrition) does not have Vegetarianism in its aetiology, but risk of Ischaemic (Conorary) Heart Disease, the single largest Killer in western societies, increases with Non-vegetarian lifestyle. (Oxidised Low Density Lipoproteins- LDL are the factors that contribute to the build up of fattly steaks which transform into plague and eventually thrombosis that mark the disease). The Point is that dont shun Vegetarianism for the fear of malnutrition while embracing Meat for extra and easy proteins hereby putting yourself at greater risk.
For bodybuilders: Come to think of it, If a man were to ride a Lion, the lion won't make it to half a mile. While a Horse can take you five times that distance. A Elephant has more muscle mass than a pitiful hyena. The largest animals (Mountain Gorilla for example) are Herbivores. Its a Myth that Meat=Muscles. Vegetarian diet puts lesser strain on your Digestive System, Excretory systems and most importantly, your Heart (And your conscience that you are depriving the life of an animal for your plate), thus increasing your Stamina and Longevity (Bodybuilders don't live that long anyway!)

Historically, for at least 99% of the time Homo Sapiens has been evolving from his primate precursors, he and she were Gatherers and occasional Hunters. There has not been time for full genetic adaption to the diets that humans have been eating since 10,000 years ago.
(Source: Davidson's Principles and Practice of Medicine; Chapter: Nutritional Factors in Disease) May be because of this short time (10,000 years of varied diet) we weren't able to evolve yet into a true Omnivorous animal.
Our ancestors till 10,000 years ago or less gathered and collected a wide range of Vegetarian foods. Hunting was difficult and only sometimes they were in for a lucky Hunt. If you were a Deer or Duck hunter, even with modern equiptment, decoys, shotguns, camouflage etc etc.. you know how difficult is it to hunt. Many people will try to make us believe that our ancestors with primitive weapons were somehow very successful hunters having Venison and other tasty meat everyday for food. Sporaging berries from bushes is much easier, you must agree.

Yellow3

Common sense is an amazingly bad way to go about trying to figure out how the natural world works. This becomes only more pronounced the smaller in scale you go; few things are more counterintuitive than things on the subcellular level, at least as near as I've been able to figure out.

And who do you think gave us the brain that allows us to eat what we do, if not nature?

And when we eat nothing but vegetables, that won't make us an herbivore. Do we not see the logic here?

Went over this the last time this topic went around. For crying out loud - HAVE YOU VEGETARIANS NOT HEARD OF SASHIMI, SUSHI, STEAK TARTARE, OR CEVICHE. Just because we're culturally trained not to eat raw meat (and because our current slaughtering/packing methods frequently render raw meat too dangerous to do so) doesn't mean that we can't.

I seem to recall a book of 'Ethnic Recipes from Germany' (or something along those lines) that gave a good recipe for a pile of raw ground beef with a raw egg cracked on top. No American would dare eat something like that - between the dangers of raw eggs and the dangers of ground beef in this country, that's like sinking your teeth into a canister of live bubonic plague - but apparently somebody, somewhere, thought it right tasty.

Two things here. First off - yes, we may very well throw up when presented with raw meat. However, I at least would also throw up if I ever tried to eat mealworms, live periwinkles right off the rocks, and possibly live termites, yet I have had three professors who will cheerfully munch on them in front of their students (my professors have strange senses of humor). The reflex has a strong psychological factor; when I was younger, egg foo young (eggs scrambled with noodles in them) had a very similar effect on me. I could not eat that stuff. Since I could eat noodles and eggs just fine, it obviously wasn't anything in the food itself.

Secondly, I've eaten raw fish flesh without sicking up or getting sick later (although I'm not fond of the texture, the flavor is impeccable), and although I don't dare eat raw meat as such I've manhandled it enough to know that it's quite soft. Probably easier to chew raw than cooked in some cases.

If it came out of this country, yes. Heck, even if it was cooked you may still get this. Gotta be careful with your meat. Of course, given the recent findings of salmonella and worse on melons and imported raspberries, gotta be careful with all of your food around here, don't you?

Hello hello. You know, even the most 'primitive' (by our standards) cultures need to use digging sticks to get down far enough to get at potatoes. Compared to the tough hands of baboons, which are designed to dig up roots bare-handed, our own hands are very soft. By your criteria we are evidently not supposed to be eating tubers.

As for our inability to track. . . have you ever heard of the !Kung? Best trackers on earth apparently, able to look at an animal's footprint and know what it is, where it was going, and how long ago it passed that way. We're very visual animals; if we track, it will be with our eyes. And we can be very damn good at it.

Speaking of the !Kung. . .

!Kung kill their prey with small arrows, which requires them to be able to follow it for hours until it drops. They can and do do such a thing.

Man as an animal without his "Intellectual Scientific Mind" is not a human. Our mind is the apomorphy that made us and defines us. That's like saying that a cat without claws must also be a vegetarian.

Omnivores do not eat meat every day, either. Plants are easier to get at. Kodiak bears, those consummate fishers around salmon time and predators of large herbivores, can get by most of the time on grass.

I will give you one thing. Our diets have drastically changed over the last few thousand years, and our bodies have not had time to adapt to the rapid changes; we're not evolved to eat so much, period, let alone all the strange chemicals we ingest with our food (all the more so if you eat much in the way of twinkies or Maruchan Ramen). However, this does not mean that we are not adapted to eat meat at all. Perhaps, given the example of the hunter/gatherer diet, our bodies are not equipped to handle as much meat as we ingest. But to say that we can't eat it at all is quite a leap, and an unwarranted one.

Oy. If you're going to make an argument for vegetarianism this way, at least try and do a little more research?

- Jen

Megatron

Not again...

SmashingIdols

Hmmm.

So, can you give me a list of how many primates are herbivores? Surely, there must be one herbivore in our family tree, right?

Providing this evidence would give great credence to your argument. If you could.

Let me know.

SmashingIdols

Here is a <a href="http://net.indra.com/~mc/dietref.html" target="_blank">pretty good reference list</a> to get you started on your quest to prove man's vegetarian nature! (I tried to just post it here, but for some reason (size?) it wouldn't work.)

{I was formerly a vegetarian/vegan myself [14 years], as was my wife. We were involved in the development of a lot of 'literature' for vegetarian/vegans. But that's another story...}

You might start with Chapman, Chivers, Sussman and Milton on the list (specializing in primate diet), then begin following the other references. Don't forget Jane Goodall (oh, never mind, we all remember her reaction to the chimps hunting then tearing the bush piglets to tiny pieces)!

Good luck!

[ April 26, 2002: Message edited by: SmashingIdols ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Man may be an Herbivore, but Woman is definitely Carnivorous.

Vorkosigan

NOGO

Wrong!
Have you ever heard of locust, ants etc.
I don't think that they can be classified as vegetables.
Primates even today get protein through these kind of insects making them omnivorous.
I don't believe that primates would survive on a strictly vegetarian diet.

At the sea man was able to find some mollusks which people eat raw even today. Oysters is one kind. I personally throw up if I try to eat this stuff but my wife loves them raw.

I don't think that the discovery of fire can be classified as "science" and therefore categorised as unnatural. Fire does occur naturally and therefore cooked meet must also occur naturally. When a forest fire is finally extinguished from rain the result must have been some naturally cooked meet laying around ready to be eaten.

I think that you are forcing your conclusion despite the evidence.

Man is omnivorous in his natural state.

NOGO

Quite the opposite. Agriculture has been around for 10,000 years or so and man has still to adapt to a mostly vegetarian diet. Carbohydrates are responsible for many of the modern diseases such as heart attacks, cardio-vascular problesm, type II diabetes etc.

Even today tribes with rather primitive weapons hunt very successfully thank you. It may take several days to capture a girafe but at the end you will have meet for several weeks. Berries, on the other hand, are not there year around.

SmashingIdols

Actually many anthropologists are convinced that "man" has been eating meat for about 2.5 million years. Nobody is really sure if we hunted the animals, or scavenged carcasses (something other primates do today).

I really must insist you check your references, Dr., or follow through the substantial reference list I provided.

You may be able to make a case for man adapting to a vegetarian now (I'll be gald to discuss that as well), however you will be hard pressed to provide any evidence of man's prior vegetarian nature. The fossil evidence tells a different story entirely.

Man, like the rest of the Order Primate, and especially the Family Homindae, are physiologically omnivorous.

Dr. Evil

Inuits successfully hunt for seals among the ice flows and also hunt caribou on the tundra with primitive weapons. Once the seal has been killed, the hunters gather around to eat the liver (raw) and drink its blood.

Here's a couple of links:

<a href="http://www.der.org/films/netsilik.html" target="_blank">The seal hunt</a>

<a href="http://www.workersforjesus.com/esk.htm" target="_blank">Inuits</a>

BTW, I love the url for the second site he he.