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By Jaye Kenzie
What is the natural human diet?
down flesh and kill the dangerous bacteria in it, which would otherwise sicken or kill them. Our stomach acids are much weaker in comparison, because strong acids aren’t needed to digest prechewed fruits and vegetables.
Are humans meat-eaters? Quick test: When you see dead animals on the side of the , are you tempt- Intestinal Length ed to stop and snack on them? Do you daydream about killing cows with your bare hands and eating them raw? If you answered “no” to these questions, Animals who hunt have short intestinal tracts and colons that allow meat to pass through their bodies then, like it or not, you’re an herbivore. relatively quickly, before it can rot and cause illness. Humans’ intestinal tracts are much longer than The following points help prove that a natural human those of carnivores of comparable size. Longer diet is, in fact, vegan—and that enslaving animals, intestines allow the body more time to break down stealing their milk and eggs, and killing them simply fiber and absorb the nutrients from plant-based isn’t what nature intended. foods, but they make it dangerous for humans to eat meat. The bacteria in meat have extra time to multiThink you’re a paleo caveman or -woman? Well ply during the long trip through the digestive system, …Although many humans choose to eat both plants increasing the risk of food poisoning. Meat actually and meat, earning us the dubious title of “omnivore,” begins to rot while it makes its way through human intestines, which increases the risk of developing we’re anatomically herbivorous. The good news is colon cancer. that if you want to eat like our ancestors, you still can: Nuts, vegetables, fruit, and legumes are the basis of a healthy vegan lifestyle. Human Evolution and the Rise of Meat-Heavy Diets Our Teeth, Jaws, and Nails If it’s so unhealthy and unnatural for humans to eat meat, why did our ancestors sometimes turn to flesh Humans have short, soft fingernails and small “canine” teeth. In contrast, carnivores all have sharp for sustenance? Author of the book The Power of Your Plate, Dr. Neal Barnard, talks about humans’ claws and large canine teeth that are capable of early diet, explaining that we “had diets very much tearing flesh. like other great apes, which is to say a largely plantCarnivores’ jaws move only up and down, requiring based diet …. Meat-eating probably began by scavenging—eating the leftovers that carnivores had left them to tear chunks of flesh from their prey and swallow them whole. Humans and other herbivores behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence can move their jaws up and down and from side to side, allowing them to grind up fruit and vegetables of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.” with their back teeth. Like other herbivores’ teeth, humans’ back molars are flat for grinding fibrous plant foods.
Briana Pobiner, paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, adds, “Fruit and different plants and other things that we Dr. Richard Leakey, a renowned anthropologist, summarizes, “You can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t may have eaten maybe became less available. . . . tear hide by hand. Our anterior teeth are not suited The meat-eating that we do, or that our ancestors for tearing flesh or hide. We don’t have large canine did even back to the earliest time we were eating teeth, and we wouldn’t have been able to deal with meat, is culturally mediated. You need some kind of processing technology in to eat meat .… So I don’t food sources that require those large canines.” necessarily think we are hardwired to eat meat.” Stomach Acidity Carnivorous animals swallow their food whole, relying on extremely acidic stomach juices to break
There’s Something About Dairy Humans started domesticating cattle only 10,000
years ago. Until then, children who stopped breastfeeding also stopped making the enzyme lactase and became lactose intolerant. After the domestication of cattle, however, the human began to process dairy “products.” Groups who do not rely on cattle— like the Pima tribe, the Chinese and Thai, and the Bantu of West Africa—continue to be lactose intolerant today. The Unfortunate Modern Diet Until recently, only the wealthiest people could afford to feed, raise, and slaughter animals for meat, while everyone else ate mostly plant foods. Consequently, prior to the 20th century, only the rich were plagued routinely with diseases such as heart disease and obesity. Now that animal flesh has become relatively cheap and is easily available (thanks to the cruel, costcutting practices of farming), deadly ailments such as heart disease, strokes, cancer, diabetes, and obesity have spread to people across the socioeconomic spectrum. And as the Western lifestyle spills over into less-developed areas of Asia and Africa, people there, too, have begun to suffer and die from diseases associated with meat-based diets. When humans consume animal Jaye Kenzie tein, research shows a prolink to cancer of the colon, breast, prostate, and pancreas. According to nutrition expert T. Colin Campbell, the director of the Cornell-China-Oxford Project on Nutrition, Health, and the Environment, “In the next ten years, one of the things you’re bound to hear is that animal protein . . . is one of the most toxic nutrients of all that can be considered.”
