Many people think of humans as omnivores, designed to eat a diet with a substantial contribution of nutrients coming from both plants and animals. However, there is strong evidence that humans are in fact herbivores, meaning that the overwhelming majority of their diet should be comprised of plants. This common misunderstanding may well be the leading cause of premature human death worldwide.
What most think of as omnivores, for instance, bears, dogs, raccoons and so on, are in a lineage that descended from dog-like carnivores and should be thought of as carnivores modified to be omnivorous, distinct from herbivores that have been modified to be omnivorous.
Katharine Milton, from the University of California Berkley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management says “there seems general agreement that the ancestral line leading to apes and humans was markedly herbivorous” and that for most of our approximately 150,000-year existence our diet appears to have been based on plants.
Milton has also pointed out “the lack of evidence supporting any notable diet-related changes in human nutrient requirements, metabolism, or digestive physiology relative to those of great apes.”
Iris F.F. Benzie, D.Phil. at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon argued that we lost the metabolically costly ability to synthesize vitamin C because of the abundance in our ancestors’ diets. Scientists can examine plaque on and isotopes in ancient teeth, fossilized waste and more to learn about what our ancestors ate. Prof. Benzie estimates that our ancestors 10,000 years ago ate around 10 times more vitamin C and fiber than we do today.
William Clifford Roberts, MD and former Editor in Chief of The American Journal of Cardiology argued in a Letter from the Editor that humans are anatomically and physiologically herbivores. Herbivores, he says, have hands or hoofs, flat teeth, long intestines, sweat to cool the body, sip water (cheeks and lips facilitate the creation of a vacuum in the mouth), and get our vitamin C from our diet. Carnivores have claws, sharp teeth, short intestines, pant to cool themselves, lap up water (because they lack cheeks and lips), and make their own vitamin C.
Plants have tough cell walls made of fiber, sugar molecules bonded together, that provides protection and rigidity without using cholesterol. No mammal produces an enzyme that can digest fiber. Instead, herbivores developed a mobile jaw and flat teeth that slide past each other horizontally to chew their food and crush the cell wall, plus a long digestive tract to provide time to extract nutrients.
Carnivore’s food, animal cells, have a flexible, fat-based cell membrane embedded with cholesterol to give it some rigidity. Animal cells are easily digestible but the bones in animals are not, so carnivores have strong stomach acid and a short digestive tract. No chewing is necessary beyond reducing the size of the chunks enough to swallow because there’s no cell wall. As a result, carnivores like cats and omnivorous carnivores like the bear and dog can only move their jaw up and down; their molars slide past each other vertically like a pair of scissors.
Animals like rabbits, cows, and humans can easily move their lower jaw side to side, and most experts agree that humans have generalized herbivorous dentition that, if anything, is best suited for eating seeds.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world according to the World Health Organization. It’s also the leading cause of death in the U.S. according to the CDC, which states that “diets high in saturated fats, trans fats, and cholesterol have been linked to heart disease and related conditions, such as atherosclerosis,” the mechanism underlying most heart disease. Trans-fats and cholesterol are only found in animal foods.
Dr. Roberts points out that “it is virtually impossible… to produce atherosclerosis in the dog” even when feeding them around 200 times the average amount of cholesterol Americans eat daily. Herbivores like rabbits on the other hand “rapidly develop atherosclerosis” if fed comparatively small amounts of fat and cholesterol.
Cholesterol is made from fat, something most plants have little of. Herbivores have evolved to be efficient at producing adequate cholesterol from a low-fat diet. They also have mechanisms that hold onto and recycle fat and cholesterol. When herbivores eat animal-foods, the excessive fat and cholesterol facilitate the formation of atherosclerotic plaques in artery walls.
There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that humans aren’t carnivores like cats or omnivores like dogs but are in fact primarily herbivores. It’s recommended we eat a diet low in saturated fat, trans-fat and cholesterol because of atherosclerosis, a disease that herbivores are susceptible to. The approximately 20-million-year evolutionary lineage of great apes is markedly herbivorous. Our digestive anatomy and physiology, nutrient requirements, and metabolism do not appear to differ notably from the other great apes or herbivores generally, and for most of the approximately 150,000-year history of our species we appear to have eaten mostly plants.
As ever-increasing evidence illuminates this issue, it’s time for humans to consider a change to a plant-based diet.
Sean can be reached at [email protected]
Dan
correct we are plant based eaters , all plant eating animals have seminal vesicles , man have them . Discussion closed .
carla
sorry, I meant this for the guy above you, totally agree with you! Lol
yashin
Totally bullshit
Andrew
This is the most dishonest, inaccurate, and biased piece of bullshit lie i have ever read... there is not one but of truth here, its sad that such a moron has to spread pseudo-science to push an agenda
IDon'tCare
So you just going to tell people "Oh this is full of lies don't believe it, I'm smarter" without providing any evidence whatsoever? That is highly unscientific and dangerous.
Jase
What’s incorrect about it? Do your teeth slice past each other like scissors? NO THEY DO NOT THEY GRIND SIDE TO SIDE LIKE ALL OTHER PLANT EATERS. Do you lap up water or sip it? YOU SIP IT, YOU SUCK YOUR CHEEKS TOGETHER AND FORM A VACCUM TO DRINK LIKE ALL OTHER HERBIVORES. Do you synthesise your own vitamin C? NO YOU DO NOT LIKE CARNIVORES BECAUSE OVER YOUR EVOLUTIONARY PERIOD YOU GOT IT FROM YOUR PLANT BASED DIET. Do you have an appendix? (breaks down cellulose in fibrous plants) YES YOU DO LIKE OTHER ANIMALS WITH PLANT BASED DIETS LIKE OURS SO YOU CAN BREAK DOWN CELLULOSE AND ALSO KEEP GOOD GUT BACTERIA WHICH FEED ON INSOLUBLE FIBRE FROM PLANTS. Can you sprint at top speed for more than 150m or do you get lactic build up and slow down? NO YOU SLOW DOWN AND ONLY RUN BETWEEN 10-15mph WHICH FOR A HUNTER IS SHIT HOUSE AND YOU WOULD CATCH NOTHING! GREAT FOR RUNNING AWAY FROM BEES AND INSECTS WHEN YOU DISRUPT THEIR NEST WHILE GETTING FOOD IN THE TREES THOUGH. Are your finger nails brittle and snap easily if you applied force to them? YES THEY DO IF YOU GRABBED ON TO A MOVING ANIMAL WITH YOUR NAILS THEY WOULD SNAP CLEAN OFF AND YOU WOULD RISK BREAKING FINGERS TOO. I COULD GO ON FOR DAYS AND DAYS You see everything about YOU and EVERYONE else is strict plant water. It’s undeniable and it’s proven time and time again the more meat we eat the sicker we get! Keep telling yourself you’re an omnivore! Let’s see how them “canines” go in a fight! Haha pffft
Kyle
Lmao you’re comparing us to herbivores as carnivores not herbivores. Also, my rabbit laps water so that comment was false too. We are omnivores. We have the characteristics of both carnivores and omnivores. We need vitamin B12 and that’s not in meat along with 6 other nutrients. Literally compare us to our ancestors too. Apes for God’s sake ate what would have been our main diet of fruits, nuts and small mammals and some have very sharp teeth. Then, the first people had to hunt and forage for mostly berries. Never greens. Then we started to farm grains like wheat, maize, and rice. Which would make sense for needing an appendix because there was a time we mostly ate cereal grains and they are coated in cellulose, so that would help your case you would think, but that’s because at the time our bodies needed to change to what we were eating. We didn’t grow a whole new gut. People think that different species evolved to just eat plants or just eat meat but that doesn’t happen. Maybe special cases, but all primates were omnivores. Some eat mostly fruits and nuts and the occasional animal and baboons for example eat mostly meat, but still omnivores just like us. It’s true we eat too much meat right now, but honestly, later generations will adapt and be better at something to counter this meat intake like making more HDL cholesterol to counter the bad LDL cholesterol we get from meat. Cholesterol is required for your cells to function properly by the way. Anyways, that’s all.
Mike
We don't need meat. You lost, move along and stop lying to people.
Leo
Yes we do have an appendix. Can you guess why its useless in our time though? Also I see no problem eating animals if I can live a good life off of it. Not saying that how they kill the animals is ok, though.
Angie Liszt
Absolutely! People don't care to think about the damage they're doing. I call it obstinate ominvorism. The only thing missing from a vegan diet is compliance to a dangerous lie.