Humans are naturally plant-eaters

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/natural.html

Try argue with this... you bunch of low life eat meat-eating sinkie losers.

A fair look at the evidence shows that humans are optimized for eating mostly or exclusively plant foods, according to the best evidence: our bodies. We're most similar to other plant-eaters, and drastically different from carnivores and true omnivores.1,2,3 Those who insist that humans are omnivores, especially if their argument is based on canine teeth, would do well to look at what the evidence actually shows. We'll cover that below.
I first wrote this article many years ago, but since then Milton Mills, M.D. published an excellent paper which covers the anatomy of eating, so let's skip right to my table-ized summary of his research:

The anatomical evidence tells us that we're optimized for eating mostly or exclusively plant foods. The only way to come to another conclusion is to ignore the bulk of the anatomical evidence. (Critics of this article either use inferior evidence, such as disputed assumptions about the prehistoric diet, or they cherry-pick the anatomical evidence while ignoring the bulk of it.)
Most plant-eaters eat small amounts of non-plant foods, usually insects (either intentionally or inadvertently). The small non-plant consumption of plant-eating animals doesn't mean that they're "omnivores" in the classical sense, and certainly doesn't justify the idea that humans are adapted to a very mixed diet of plant and non-plant foods.

"Omnivore" doesn't mean 50% plants and 50% animals. Many of my critics consider chimpanzees to be omnivores but 95-99% of the chimp diet is plants, and most of the remainder isn't meat, it's termites. (see below) If humans are omnivores, then the anatomical evidence suggests that we're the same kind: the kind that eats almost exclusively plant foods.

The animals most similar to us, the other primates, eat an almost exclusively vegan diet.

Saying we're omnivores because we're capable of eating meat is just silly. We're capable of eating cardboard, too. And by the "capable" argument, then cats are omnivores too, since nearly every commercial cat food has plant ingredients. (Check the label.) Nobody would ever make the argument that cats are omnivores based on what they're capable of eating. But they sure make that argument for humans, enthusiastically.
Our so-called "canine teeth" are "canine" in name only. Other plant-eaters (like gorillas, horses, and hippos) have "canines", and chimps, who are almost exclusively vegan, have massive canines compared to ours. (See picture below.)
Our early ancestors from at least four million years ago were almost exclusively vegetarian. (source, article #5)
Among animals, plant-eaters have the longest lifespans, and humans are certainly in that category (and yes, this was true even before modern medicine).

We sleep about the same amount of time as other herbivores, and less than carnivores and true omnivores.

The most common cause of choking deaths is eating meat. (source) Real carnivores and omnivores don't have that problem.

The idea that a switch to meat-eating is what sparked early humans' brain development has no more evidence to support it than the competing theories (such as that it was a switch to cooked foods that did the trick), and certainly doesn't square with what comparative anatomy tells us.


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