I know that in some circles it’s cool to portray yourself as a morally superior being who has given up on meat — I already debunked this fashion, but data keeps on coming, and veg myths keep falling like dominoes.
One of the worst is that which claims humans have always been vegans and never needed meat. Now, I know not every veg person agrees with this, but the more extremist ones hold such a viewpoint. Turns out, science has bad news for them:
As a new study in Nature makes clear, not only did processing and eating meat come naturally to humans, it’s entirely possible that without an early diet that included generous amounts of animal protein, we wouldn’t even have become human—at least not the modern, verbal, intelligent humans we are.
It was about 2.6 million years ago that meat first became a significant part of the pre-human diet, and if Australopithecus had had a forehead to slap it would surely have done so. Being an herbivore was easy—fruits and vegetables don’t run away, after all. But they’re also not terribly calorie-dense.
[…]
Prey that has been killed and then prepared either by slicing, pounding or flaking provides a much more calorie-rich meal with much less chewing than root foods do, boosting nutrient levels overall. (Cooking, which would have made things easier still, did not come into vogue until 500,000 years ago.)
By the way, cooking also played a role in human evolution.
All of this is something we already knew: the evidence suggests that the evolutionary ancestors of humans were carnivorous and that the vegetarian diet claimed the existence of the Paranthropus, while an omnivorous diet allowed the Homo to outlive their cousins.
Isn’t it funny that, just like creationists, some vegans exist today thanks to an evolutionary process they insist on denying?
