{"id":1769,"date":"2016-03-11T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:59:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T06:59:53","slug":"meat-made-us-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/2016\/03\/meat-made-us-human\/","title":{"rendered":"Meat made us human"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div style=\"font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;text-align: justify\">\n<figure><a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/2016\/03\/10\/meat-made-us-human\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/files\/2015\/10\/meat.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/figure><p><\/p>\n<p>I know that in some circles it&#8217;s cool to portray yourself as a morally superior being who has given up on meat \u2014 I already <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/2014\/10\/15\/veg\/\">debunked this fashion<\/a><\/strong>, but data keeps on coming, and veg myths keep falling like dominoes.<\/p>\n<p>One of the worst is that which claims <strong>humans have always been vegans and never needed meat<\/strong>. Now, I know not every veg person agrees with this, but the more extremist ones hold such a viewpoint. Turns out, <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/4252373\/meat-eating-veganism-evolution\/\">science has bad news for them<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>As a new study in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nature16990.epdf?referrer_access_token=mzW0KJZezHrEB2RkVwh6pNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0M8YcVenEcO7CgRz5HSvoTFoxs-22vo5cVzlc-7sejkjL83ZSX8tCP9TAi4GEE5frJaJMgJRLWWJOIVMjH_elhYqsIPOiJI5TaBhYGLDw1ehu4q3TTqBJJW8PVjciWjZ69mKCyhnevMZb3mFRRAz04r&amp;tracking_referrer=time.com\">Nature<\/a><\/em> makes clear, not only did processing and eating meat come naturally to humans, it\u2019s entirely possible that <strong>without an early diet that included generous amounts of animal protein, we wouldn\u2019t even have become human<\/strong>\u2014at least not the modern, verbal, intelligent humans we are.<\/p><p>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\u2014<strong>fruits and vegetables don\u2019t run away, after all. But they\u2019re also not terribly calorie-dense<\/strong>.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Prey that has been killed and then prepared either by slicing, pounding or flaking provides a <strong>much more calorie-rich meal with much less chewing than root foods do, boosting nutrient levels overall<\/strong>. (Cooking, which would have made things easier still, did not come into vogue until 500,000 years ago.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>By the way, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/23090991\">cooking also played a role<\/a> in human evolution.<\/p>\n<p>All of this is something we already knew: the evidence suggests that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plosone.org\/article\/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0046414\">evolutionary ancestors of humans were carnivorous<\/a> and that the vegetarian diet claimed the existence of the <em>Paranthropus<\/em>, while an omnivorous diet allowed the <em>Homo<\/em> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nature\/journal\/v489\/n7417\/abs\/nature11349.html\">outlive their cousins<\/a>. If you want to improve your diet and make sure that your get the nutrients you need, you may take supplements like <a href=\"https:\/\/nativepath.com\/products\/original-collagen-peptides\">NativePath Original Collagen Peptides<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Isn&#8217;t it funny that, just like creationists, some vegans exist today thanks to an evolutionary process they insist on denying?<\/p>\n<p>(via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RDFRS_es\/status\/708067774933946368\">Richard Dawkins Foundation<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Isn&#8217;t it funny that, just like creationists, some vegans exist today thanks to an evolutionary process they insist on denying?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":1527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196,291],"tags":[87,112,122,276,349],"class_list":["post-1769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy","category-skepticism-and-science","tag-evolution","tag-food","tag-popularizing-science","tag-science","tag-veg-veganism-vegetarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2691,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions\/2691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}