Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter

Originally posted by Mr Knowledge
Just more mindless lies for beings looking for ways to defend their right to eat meat when meat is single-handedly responsible for most of the digestive and degenerative diseases that exist today including colon cancer, Crohn's disease, heart disease, premature-aging, and pre-mature death, but no one can convince any of the mindless, biased meat-eaters out there of the real truth. Meat didn't make us smarter, it made us dumber. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

Source, please.

Originally posted by Mr Knowledge
Just more mindless lies for beings looking for ways to defend their right to eat meat when meat is single-handedly responsible for most of the digestive and degenerative diseases that exist today including colon cancer, Crohn's disease, heart disease, premature-aging, and pre-mature death, but no one can convince any of the mindless, biased meat-eaters out there of the real truth. Meat didn't make us smarter, it made us dumber. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

1. No one knows what causes Crohn's disease (www.medicalnewstoday.com... www.ehealthmd.com...)
2. The rest are caused by unbalanced diets, not eating meat.

Cut the pseudoscientific nonsense. Well, at least you didn't include appeal to emotion like most vegans/vegetarians do in their arguments.

[edit on 3-8-2010 by technical difficulties]

Originally posted by Mr Knowledge
Just more mindless lies for beings looking for ways to defend their right to eat meat when meat is single-handedly responsible for most of the digestive and degenerative diseases that exist today including colon cancer, Crohn's disease, heart disease, premature-aging, and pre-mature death, but no one can convince any of the mindless, biased meat-eaters out there of the real truth. Meat didn't make us smarter, it made us dumber. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

It takes Lots of protein, meat based protein to grow that gray stuff between your ears or in your case the lack there of. It is a proven fact the differences between primates that eat meat and brain sizes compared to those that don't. It seems that you and the non-meat eaters seem to be in denial about the benefits of meat consumption. If your ancestors didn't take that first bite of flesh we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I have a big gut and i feel i'm smarter than normal, because i am more awake and here on ATS hahaha whereas alot of my skinnier friends and family who are health freaks have no idea about looking outside their constructed box and aren't that smart.

I always say my gut=a keg and their flat ab's=6 pack beer hahaha a keg is better than a 6 pack.

When I was in college I was in a lecture course with this professor who was a very big, opinionated southern boy. And he got on the subject of vegans and vegetarians one day and what he had to say was probably one of the most insightful things I have heard. It's a tongue in cheek story and it basically goes...

Vegans are like the enemies of civilization. Think about it. If you were a caveman, trying to subsist on this diet of leaves and whatever else you could scrounge up, keeping in mind that this is before the era of agriculture, You'd spend easily 8, 10, 12 hours a day gathering enough caloric content for you and your family. However, because humans have the ability to prey on animals you see the rise of hunting and that considerably shortens the work day for them. A man spends 3 or 4 hours out finding some game to kill and take home to feed his family. He then has time to fool around, and make more young ones, then get to work painting that cave wall, or discovering the concept of music, developing communication skills, and on and on and on. If we as humans didn't have this meat included in our diet we would have missed out on several key things including animal protein, lipids, iron, and frankly animal meat is much more dense with calories. It allows for better brain development and gives prehistoric man spare time to explore his own sentience. Vegan diets are based not on health but on guilt. And a vegetarian caveman probably would have been laughed out of his cave.

cute sentiment.

reply to post by Doc Velocity


www.sciencedaily.com...

After reading your posts, I immediately thought of Richard Wrangham. This is the first link I could find containing some his work.

This article is from 1999!

The researchers link the advent of tuber cooking to changes in body size and tooth size that separated Homo erectus from earlier hominids such as australopithecines, of which "Lucy" is the most famous specimen. They said that tuber cooking could also have brought about basic changes in hominid social structure. The key word is cooking, not tubers

Now, it's not 9 million years ago like you were talking about but is definitely before homo sapien!

If meat makes you smarter then all pure carnivorous animals would be smarter than us!

I think you'll find cooking made us smarter. It allowed more energy to be absorbed in a shorter time and with less effort and thus free up our time to become smarter instead of running around hunting all the time. Cooking also killed bugs so made us healthier and live longer and thus accumulate more knowledge to be passed on to our children.

Originally posted by malcr
If meat makes you smarter then all pure carnivorous animals would be smarter than us!

Not without the same genetic potential. That's the other half of the equation.

Originally posted by SeventhSeal
Meat isn't bad for you, never was and never will be. What is bad for you is the meat industry. You can cook all the hamburgers you want, but someday you're going to have to remove your head from the sand.

The abuse the animals go through is tremendously haunting and downright depraved. Also, with the amount of chemicals and toxins that go into meat, there should be some kind of human rights watch with how the industry is killing meat eaters. But I guess karma is a bitch huh? Eat meat and die.

I recommend checking out my other thread:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Some studies link colorectal cancer to the avid consumption or red meat. Avid being the key word. Obviously, moderation is the key to pretty much anything.

On your other point about the meat industry, I can't agree more. The mass consumption of meat has forced the kill practices to become quite "sloppy" over the years, causing much unneeded suffering to the animals. Also, if you have a heart at all you won't look into Kosher/Halal slaughterhouses - they take things to a new level.

It seems we haven't come very far as a species in 6,000 years.

Other than that, you get a star for pointing out the atrocities in the meat industry.

[edit on 3-8-2010 by immortal coil]

reply to post by DevolutionEvolvd


Hooray!!!

Maybe I show my age, but I've been watching/reading about sciences for many decades now...and I recall a LONG time ago a television documentary that said this same thing...wish I could remember, now. It was at least twenty years ago --- so to me, this isn't "news".

BTW...I used to read just about every science magazine I could scrounge, too...back when airlines still HAD complimentary magazines on board!! ( We'd scarf them up for ourselves...always put them back of course! When we were done.... )

OMNI (now defunct)...Scientific American...Popular Science...just to name three.

I find it disturbing, and vexing, how the over-all levels of science awareness/comprehension have sunk so low, of late. Last few decades...

AND, the levels of mis-information seen, as evidenced by some of the claims by a few that pounced on this thread...kinda like hungry carnivores, actually....


I've said this before; guess the "vegetarians/ovo-lactarians" or whatever the current trend is (and proper spellings) haven't noticed the HUMAN TEETH!!

There is an evolutionary reason for the variety, shapes, and arrangement of our normal teeth...and it doesn't indicate a reliance on a diet of mostly fruits, vegetables and grains.

But, these logical reasonings usually fall on deaf ears...

Cooking has been incredibly important to human development. It not only destroys harmful bacteria, but it makes some nutrients more bioavailable i.e. more readily absorbed in a usable form by the body.

I have no source, but I would guess that cooking also damages some nutrients so I tend to eat an abundance of both cooked and raw foods.

In addition to the bodily means of mastication and enzyme action, the digestibility of food matrices, especially of plant foods, is aided by cooking or pureeing the food. For example, whereas raw carrots and spinach are good sources of dietary fibre, cooking them allows the human body to also extract a much larger fraction of the carotenoids contained.

- Nutrient bioavailability - getting the most out of food (EUFIC)

I don't know the reputation of the EUFIC but the info at that particular page seems legit and is sourced.

It played a part but that is all, just a part. For hunter gatherers it was easier to hunt and eat other animals then to farm, therefore less energy spent for the most gains as animals were everywhere during the seasons and the hunting was good. I once went on a vegan diet for about 2 months and lifted weights and I was gaining more weight then I did with meat, but I was eating a lot more then I would eat of meats/proteins and I had a little more energy. I don't think that eating meat had everything to do with brain size it is probably one of many, look at other carnivores like big cats or even the dinosaurs many of them were carnivores or herbivores but not many were omnivores like humans are.

In fact I read that up in Alaska, people that stick to a lean meat only diet end up dead from malnutrition or other complications. It's called Rabbit starvation I think, here is a link to something about it.
en.wikipedia.org...



Or in another case were some dude named Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson spent more then a decade with the Inuit eating nothing but fish and meat and was fine. But when he tried to replicate his findings in a controlled environment with only lean meat/protein and no fish or fats, he became sick fast so they introduced fats in to his diet and then he recovered in 2 days. Same as when he was with the Inuits in the artic he only got sick when he ate nothing but lean meat and no fish or fats.
Quote from him on this site.
inhumanexperiment.blogspot.com... -men-who-ate-nothing-but-meat.html

As said, in the Arctic we had become ill during the second or third fatless week. I now became ill on the second fatless day. The time difference between Bellevue and the Arctic was due no doubt mainly to the existence of a little fat, here and there in our northern caribou - we had eaten the tissue from behind the eyes, we had broken the bones for marrow, and in doing everything we could to get fat we had evidently secured more than we realized. At Bellevue the meat, carefully scrutinized, had been as lean as such muscle tissue can be.

So I am guessing eating nothing but lean meat, is not optimal need to mix it up a little once in a while hence why humans are herbivores. And fish and fishing probably played a bigger part in human prehistory and history then hunting land animals did. Since fish have some lots of other nutrients that humans need.

Meats and protein from dairy sources - yes, even fresh organic sources - have been conclusively linked to dozens of long-term chronic ailments and cancers.

The theory presented in the OP is not new, I remember reading about it over a decade ago. Makes a great deal of sense. For a wild animal, getting enough nutrients is by far the most demanding action. Because meat is rich in a wide variety of nutrients, as we added more to our diets, our bodies became more efficient and evolved.

However there is a catch - meat is great for nutrients, but it is also a slow killer along with dairy. It helped us in terms of evolution, hundreds of thousands of years ago, but only because it allowed us to more effectively get our species to the point of procreation. The fact that all these diseases and chronic ailments started appearing later in life means nothing to the force of evolution.

Now that we have an over-abundance of nutrients available, eating meat is not only not required, it is simply hurting our bodies.

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health

edit trying to fix link

[edit on 3-8-2010 by Son of Will]

Originally posted by fooks
henery the 8th ate nothing but meat, that's why he looks like he does and died from all protien diet.

Actually that's not true. He ate vegetables (about 20% of his diet), nuts, sugar, fruitcake, and drank PLENTY of wine and ale. You don't think gross amounts of sugar and alcohol could have contributed to his health?

Source

Interesting thread and I love the discussion!

reply to post by technical difficulties


No one knows the cause of Crohn's Disease? It's laughable because of course those that studied the disease probably traced it back to the very foods they were eating. I can tell you this: Crohn's Disease is without question a degenerative disease linked to diet. I can also tell you that the only safe way to ensure you remain disease free and young is to eat mostly raw foods.

Meat is dead matter bka 'slow kill' because it slows down cellular/metabolic/biological processes in the body and causes fatigue and eventually disease and death. This is a complex issue that will never be resolved because everyday people continually ignore evidence that's right in their face and they're blind to it and a slave to 'meat that tastes good'. Would you die in the name of meat? Would you be able to survive if meat was suddenly banned? Probably not because you're a slave to it. Meat is a poisonous drug and you're addicted my friend.

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic



great web site about the tudors, thanks!

but it said him and his court had less than 20% veggies but that doesn't mean he ate any.

still, the beer and wine would mess you up by itself, lol.

the beaver tail sounds interesting.

i've eaten whale in the 60's but it was med rare. very good btw. only once!

Originally posted by The Utopian Penguin
Could there be a correlation between getting smarter and incorporating "meat" in our diets being that meat,eggs and dairy are the only viable sources of B-12 ?
[edit on 3-8-2010 by The Utopian Penguin]

If meat were the only viable source of B12 then we, as creatures made of meat, would have plenty of it.

*fixed spelling*

[edit on 3/8/10 by CuteChimaera]

@Doc Velocity

Very good write up. But please explain this. First I will reiterate
what you say that a heavy cooked protein diet affords us the
leisure to use the brain more for doing other things, correct?

So, in that regard, how do you explain lions, who eat a high
protein diet, to sleep 20 hours a day? Should they have more
energy to do more creative stuff? In all actually, blood is pulled
away from the brain and the rest of the body to digest all that
protein, verses a high water content (vegetarian) diet that is
predigested and affords the body more energy. Eating heavy
makes me lethargic. I would rather eat watermelon before a
marathon than a huge steak. Food for though, pardon the pun.

...And lets not forget that different blood types need different diets.
O types are the meat eaters, and the other types are more or less
vegetarian. A very proven science.

Note on grains. No matter what blood type you are, grains are not
a natural part of humans diet. They should at least be sprouted.
Even a cow has enough sense to go for the greens and not the
seeds. You can obviously see a jump in mans obesity when the
combine was invented and we all started eating massive amounts
of grains, hence gluten intolerance. Even live stock, fed a man
made diet starts to show disease.

[edit on 3-8-2010 by keithallenlaw]

Originally posted by Xtrozero
Well also he takes more brains to hunt than to graze, and so much of our abilities I think is based on a species that is slow and weak but still needed to hunt....

True but hunting came long after we began to eat meat. The first cooked meat was probably game killed in forest fires. From there we learned to cook over a fire and even later hunt live game.

[edit on 3-8-2010 by TheComte]