Benefit of a Meat Only Diet

I clicked on the link but did not see the article in question.

However, some questions in response to the OP’s highlights? What anthropological evidence is this “cavemen ate no veggies” theory based upon?

It doesn’t make sense to me. I am guessing that anybody who tries such a diet (caveman or not) is going to become painfully constipated.

[quote]dancar wrote:

Scurvy is also cause by a vitimin C deficiency. You can’t get vitamim C from chicken thighs. You need to get it from fruits & vegitables.[/quote]

I am very sceptical of this diet, but in all fairness, I believe that the muscle meats that we usually eat contain no vitamin C but ORGAN meats do contain ample quantities of vitamin C. Someone correct me if I am wrong about this.

You may be correct. All I know is that sailors who spend months at sea eating salted meats, grains and fish suffered from scurvy due to a lack of Vitamin C. At one point, it was discovered that onions & lemon juice (which keep better than fruit during long sailings) prevented scurvy, but you had to force feed these things to sailors.

These days, scurvy is virtually unheard of because even junk foods (ketchup on burgers and pizza toppings) contain enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy.

On a related note, the diets of pre-historic humans almost certainly contained a lot of insects and grubs, which are high in protein and are easily caught without weapons or other tools. Surviving hunter-gatherer cultures eat insects, as do many primates.

So if you really believe that the pre-historic diet is optimal, be sure to obtain a substantial part of your protein intake from insects and grubs.

[quote]plateau wrote:
Look at the teath of true meat only predator and look at the teath of a caveman.

It was a funny read though![/quote]

Great point.

Humans eveolved to eat both plants and meat.

Claiming we should only eat one or the other is silly.

[quote]plateau wrote:
Look at the teath of true meat only predator and look at the teath of a caveman.

It was a funny read though![/quote]

Humans are omnivores rather than true carnivores, but we’re closer to being carnivores than herbivores/fruitivores. We couldn’t digest the leaves our ape and monkey relatives live on, most un-modified (pre-agricultural) vegetables, roots, legumes and grains are unedible for us unless cooked (at least in larger quantities), we don’t make our own vitamin B12, we don’t make the essential amino acids that all natural plant-eaters make, our stomach empties in 4 hours like that of a carnivore, it doesn’t contain bacteria that help break down complex carbs, etc.

Our australopithecus ancestors evolved into humans only after they picked up eating the brains and bone marrows of carcasses left by predators. This provided the essential fatty acids needed to develop larger brains. Later, the larger brains allowed the early species of homo to hunt animals for their meat, which provided proteins and energy to build and fuel even larger brains and taller, bigger bodies (yes, many plant-eaters are bigger than us, but they don’t have a large, energy-intensive brain like us, and they wouldn’t have much use for it either - they need to spend the day eating anyway).

The ability to hunt and kill wild animals also allowed and motivated our ancestors to leave Africa and populate colder areas. Without eating meat, we’d be bipedal chimps still stuck on the savannahs of Eastern Africa.

As for our teeth: we do not have the ability to grind food like true plant-eaters have. Our jaws are made for chewing (up and down), like those of carnivores.

[quote]entheogens wrote:
I clicked on the link but did not see the article in question.

However, some questions in response to the OP’s highlights? What anthropological evidence is this “cavemen ate no veggies” theory based upon?

It doesn’t make sense to me. I am guessing that anybody who tries such a diet (caveman or not) is going to become painfully constipated.[/quote]

I don’t really buy the idea that you need fiber in your diet or else you’ll be constipated. I haven’t found this to be true for myself, as long as I’ve eaten enough fat. You need a lot of fat if you don’t eat any fiber, but my digestion has never run as smoothly as when I ate no fiber at all. Our ice age ancestors probably got plenty of fat from eating large ruminant mammals.

From Discover magazine, “The Ancient Atkins Diet”:

[i]Because European settlements from around 10,000 B.C. are primarily found along coasts and rivers, archaeologists assumed their inhabitants survived mostly on fish and plants. The latest look at Mesolithic menus suggests, however, that people back then were a lot more interested in steak than salad nicoise. Archaeologist Glyn Davies of the University of Sheffield in England recently performed a detailed chemical and physical analysis on an 8,000-year-old thighbone unearthed along a river in central England.

He focused on patterns of nitrogen and carbon isotopes that can distinguish plant eaters from meat eaters. “We know the bone belonged to a woman who ate an almost exclusively carnivorous diet, only occasionally supplemented with berries or plants,” Davies says. Cut marks seen on the bones of wild cattle, aurochs, and deer found nearby corroborate that view. The research raises new questions about Europe’s inhabitants after the last ice age.

“Everything we know from that period suggests that this woman probably lived in a small family group that traveled seasonally between inland hills and the coast,” Davies says. “But no fish and plant remains suggests she stayed put, doing more hunting than gathering.”[/i]

[quote]CaliforniaLaw wrote:
allNatural wrote:
Cavemen ate whatever they could get their hands on.

They also didn’t live very long. Cavemen ate a certain way because they had to. It’s not like they had any special insight into health or nutrition.

I have always been perplexed that people assume that because cavemen ate a certain way, this is how we should eat. This is a dieting world’s example of the naturalistic fallacy.

[/quote]

I think it makes perfect sense to eat what our ancestors ate by natures instincts. This is how every other creature on the planet survives, why should we be any different?

Weather this article is correct or not is another story.

[quote]Andrew Dixon wrote:
CaliforniaLaw wrote:
allNatural wrote:
Cavemen ate whatever they could get their hands on.

They also didn’t live very long. Cavemen ate a certain way because they had to. It’s not like they had any special insight into health or nutrition.

I have always been perplexed that people assume that because cavemen ate a certain way, this is how we should eat. This is a dieting world’s example of the naturalistic fallacy.

I think it makes perfect sense to eat what our ancestors ate by natures instincts. This is how every other creature on the planet survives, why should we be any different?

Weather this article is correct or not is another story.[/quote]

I agree with Dixon here. When species adapt, its not a matter of finding out “Whats best for this animal?” so much as “How can this animal become best for its surroundings?”

We also, while not eating like cavemen, have life spans of over 100 years with the average for most developed countries being in the last 70’s or early 80’s. Cavemen lived into their 20’s.

You’re also incredibly unknowledgeable on all these things you claim are fact. First off how can you say our muscles don’t use glucose for energy? If you ever took high school biology you might slightly remember the ATP cycle. As for saturated fat being the most health, no. Most fat from meat is actually polyunsaturated and marginally monounsaturated with saturated falling a bit below half.

Plant eaters do not create their own vitamins. That’s why they eat plants…which have (omg here it comes) vitamins! Humans can digest large amounts of uncooked vegetables I don’t know where that came from. Carrots, celery, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, asparagus, beets I’ve had huge platefuls of those uncooked and by golly they digested just fine. High starch vegetables like potatoes are hard for humans to digest raw but the vast majority of vegetables are easily digested.

Also drinking 4 liters of water a day isn’t necessarily “preferred”. On a low sodium diet (which most fresh meat does not have a lot of) you can easily induce hyponatremia which is the dilution of electrolytes which play a vital role in your central nervous system. You fuck that up too bad and you actually can kill yourself. It’s called water poisoning.

So if you want the short version, before you come on here spouting your bullshit why don’t you actually learn how the body uses and absorbs the things you’re claiming to know everything about and get some backup besides some dumbass on a hair loss forum who (gosh) I’m gonna guess doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about either.

[quote]Andrew Dixon wrote:
CaliforniaLaw wrote:
allNatural wrote:
Cavemen ate whatever they could get their hands on.

They also didn’t live very long. Cavemen ate a certain way because they had to. It’s not like they had any special insight into health or nutrition.

I have always been perplexed that people assume that because cavemen ate a certain way, this is how we should eat. This is a dieting world’s example of the naturalistic fallacy.

I think it makes perfect sense to eat what our ancestors ate by natures instincts. This is how every other creature on the planet survives, why should we be any different?

Weather this article is correct or not is another story.[/quote]

It doesn’t actually make that much sense. Nature cares purely about survival, period. If Root Beer and Twinkies was all there was for the cavemen to eat thats what their diet would have consisted of.

Nowadays we have a lot of choice in varying our diets to achieve certain goals, so why not use it rather that eating in a way our ancestors were forced to.

[quote]mharmar wrote:
Andrew Dixon wrote:
CaliforniaLaw wrote:
allNatural wrote:
Cavemen ate whatever they could get their hands on.

They also didn’t live very long. Cavemen ate a certain way because they had to. It’s not like they had any special insight into health or nutrition.

I have always been perplexed that people assume that because cavemen ate a certain way, this is how we should eat. This is a dieting world’s example of the naturalistic fallacy.

I think it makes perfect sense to eat what our ancestors ate by natures instincts. This is how every other creature on the planet survives, why should we be any different?

Weather this article is correct or not is another story.

It doesn’t actually make that much sense. Nature cares purely about survival, period. If Root Beer and Twinkies was all there was for the cavemen to eat thats what their diet would have consisted of.

Nowadays we have a lot of choice in varying our diets to achieve certain goals, so why not use it rather that eating in a way our ancestors were forced to.
[/quote]

If Root Beer and Twinkes was all there was for cavemen to eat, thats what humans would adapt to, and become most efficient at living off of. Humans would evolve so that Root Beer and Twinkies make them healthier.

Species adapt to the food around them.

Looking at our physiology in its entirety, we are omnivores through and through. If we are meant to be carnivores, we’d look it and we really don’t.

In terms of health, I think limiting intake of certain foods runs counter to the basic premise of evolution and biology, which is diversity and to eat a wide variety of foods to cover as large a span of various nutrients available to us from nature for optimum health and avoid disease.

Eating meat is great, but there are a LOT of phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables that you will NOT find in meats that are very very good for us and will be an unnecessary loss/harm to avoid.

floripa

[quote]dancar wrote:
Thank god! For a moment I thought you were one of these guys… Were Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark? | Answers in Genesis
[/quote]

hahahaha I knew it!

Humans seem to be omnivore oportunists. They eat whatever is available in the environment they are currently in.

Humans specialize in being adaptable. That’s one of the reasons why we’re the most wide-spread land mammal on earth.

[quote]Skrussian wrote:

You’re also incredibly unknowledgeable on all these things you claim are fact.

So if you want the short version, before you come on here spouting your bullshit why don’t you actually learn how the body uses and absorbs the things you’re claiming to know everything about and get some backup besides some dumbass on a hair loss forum who (gosh) I’m gonna guess doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about either.

[/quote]

Twat.
I didnt claim anything was fact. Im not ‘spouting bullshit’. I found an interesting article and brought it up for discussion. Did you learn to read in high school when you wern’t learning about the ATP cycle and water poisoning?

Anyway, that was a good read, it makes a really interesting idea. That hairless guy swears by it though. I like to see how much he can deadlift :stuck_out_tongue:

I was talking to the dip shit OP. Not you.

[quote]W@LRUS!1 wrote:
Humans seem to be omnivore oportunists. They eat whatever is available in the environment they are currently in.

Humans specialize in being adaptable. That’s one of the reasons why we’re the most wide-spread land mammal on earth.[/quote]

True, but evidence also suggests that pre-agriculture, when sufficient quantities of meat were available, we didn’t eat much else. It also seems clear that decreased life span and decreased stature was the price to pay for adopting agriculture in much of the world, although this can also be attributed to the increased vulnerability to disease and the general resource scarcity that come with living in larger communities, not just to the change in diet. But only recently have we surpassed the stature of our “cavemen” ancestors.

Whoever said paleolithic man had a life expectancy of 20-something, I don’t think that is correct, though of course they were vulnerable to deaths by accidents, being eaten by sabre-toothed tigers and so on…so on average it could be quite low, but it’s not like they died of old age or heart attacks at 24 (heart attacks were probably unknown anyway). I’ll see if I can find some more links to anthropological evidence from that period, it’s fascinating stuff.

[quote]Skrussian wrote:
I was talking to the dip shit OP. Not you. [/quote]

Um, Benreturns was the “dip shit OP”.

The article is very dangerously wrong for many points that others have pointed out already.

Chicken skin in today’s badly reared chicken is a concentrate of crap.

Animals were NEVER as fatty in the old days as they are today.

The primary diet of man for a long time was shellfish e.g clams etc… and the main source of developed intelligence - as well as the marrow / brains of animals.

I guarantee you ancient man ate anything they could that tasted good - and some things that didn’t.

If you neglect alkaline foods you end up in a terrible state.

[quote]Benreturns wrote:

Did you learn to read in high school when you wern’t learning about the ATP cycle and water poisoning?

[/quote]

LOL. Agreed.
Skrussian, YOU are the dipshit.