Vegan Snowflakes

[jonmiles]

LordGrover said:

More bks!
Homo species came up with tools such as sharpened stones to cut flesh, there was no need to develop the teeth for it.

The first humans arrived between 5 and 7 million years ago, tools came about 1.7 million years ago - what were they doing to eat meat from 7m BC to 1.7m BC?

With the exception of rodents, and rabbits nearly all mammals have canine teeth. In fact, several herbivores and primary plant-eaters have ferocious canine teeth here's an examples or two:

[jonmiles]

Supercilious Sid said:

Cut and pasted from someone who owns the IP.

Of course, it's a quick way to make the point.

[vdn]

Thesprucegoose said:

jonmiles said:

You'd be wrong...or at least only half right

We are naturally herbivores who can, if required, eat meat. We have however evolved to now liking meat as much as vegetables and fruit.

Our Teeth, Jaws, and Nails

One thing you forgot to mention, which seems to be missed by a lot of Vegan propaganda, are these times up with using fire to cook meat. All the adaptations in bone structure, stomach etc tie up with using heat to make meat easier nd healthier to eat. Humans could never evolved on a veg diet, just not enough energy to exist. Getting carbs is more energy intensive over meat, well until the last few hundred years.

Even with cooking; we are not particularly well suited to consuming animals: especially the level of consumption the average westerner indulges in. You’d think by now, we might be.

[jonmiles]

Thesprucegoose said:

One thing you forgot to mention, which seems to be missed by a lot of Vegan propaganda, are this ties up with using fire to cook meat. All the adaptations in bone structure, stomach etc tie up with using heat to make meat easier and healthier to eat.

Humans could never evolved on a veg diet, just not enough energy to exist. Getting carbs is more energy intensive over meat , well until the last few hundred years.

Why couldn't we have evolved when bigger and more muscular creatures have? Gorillas are 98% the same DNA as us and yet have been fine with no meat in their diet.

I'm a meat eater so don't make the mistake of thinking I'm banging the vegans drum but I'm afraid modern science has moved on and I just recognise the current thinking.

[anonymous-user]

Pan Pan Pan said:

Roman Rhodes said:

Pothole said:

TheAngryDog said:

‘People can be allergic to pork and potentially die from such a stupid mistake. It’s my choice not to consume meat because it causes cancer. That choice has been taken away from me.’

Pork allergies are uncommon. Meat doesn't cause cancer, but it can increase the risk.

She is definitely a snow flake.

Is she calling herself stupid? She appears to be the only one who made a mistake, unless I've missed something...

I suppose you could call going in Greggs to purchase one of their heavily publicised Vegan Sausage Rolls a "mistake" but I think it fairer to lay the responsibility with the staff who served her a non-vegan sausage roll. Surely that is where the "mistake" was?

If someone comes into a shop and asks them for a sausage roll, without making the distinction that it needs to be a non meat sausage roll, the most probable natural response, would be to serve them with a meat based sausage roll, then the mistake lies with the person who did not make it clear she required the vegetarian version. Unless there was a record of what was actually asked for, there isn't really any way that blame could be attached to either side in this incident.

Not really likely that a vegan would just ask for a sausage roll is it?

[FN2TypeR]

Still here

[anonymous-user]

vdn said:

Even with cooking; we are not particularly well suited to consuming animals: especially the level of consumption the average westerner indulges in. You’d think by now, we might be.

How? Cooked meat we are highly adapt at extracting the calories, which is the whole point humans got to where we are.

Eating meat is massively reqarding over veg as it is highly calorie dense, one animal can feed many, required nearly 40% less energy expenditure over extracting carbs.

Yes our body has less full meat adaptions but it doesnt need teeth etc because intelligence evolved to overcome this combined with the brain requiring more energy to process at higher level, humans wouldn't be where we are without meat.

Edited by Thesprucegoose on Tuesday 22 October 22:49

[Scabutz]

The story isnt clear. Did she ask for a vegan sausage roll and was mistakenly given a meat one, or did she just ask for a sausage roll and assume that they would know she wanted a vegan one. Because if it's the first I can see her point. But the later is massive snowflake behaviour.

[Europa1]

Pan Pan Pan said:

Bearing in mind one can be sausaged into a tube train.

I have never heard that term. Is it a sexual offence?

[anonymous-user]

jonmiles said:

Why couldn't we have evolved when bigger and more muscular creatures have? Gorillas are 98% the same DNA as us and yet have been fine with no meat in their diet.

I'm a meat eater so don't make the mistake of thinking I'm banging the vegans drum but I'm afraid modern science has moved on and I just recognise the current thinking.

Meat consumption evolved with our intelligence. The brain requires massive amount of energy that a veg diet just wouldn't provide. When people look at meat consumption they talk about teeth, gut etc, but the brain is the reason we ate meat, we needed the calories to evolve into what we are today.

[Vanden Saab]

gregs656 said:

To be fair, The Vegan Society, who invented the word, define it as an ethical position and have done almost since inception.

In my opinion it would be much better seen purely as an ethical position as the ethical position builds in some flex which individuals can interpret as they wish. I don't think you have to start from an ethical position, but you have to get there somehow.

I am not sure how you can be a vegan without the ethics, why wouldn't you buy leather shoes otherwise, for example?

In my case it was to avoid the first question everybody who ever found out I did not eat meat asked...

[anonymous-user]

Thesprucegoose said:

jonmiles said:

Why couldn't we have evolved when bigger and more muscular creatures have? Gorillas are 98% the same DNA as us and yet have been fine with no meat in their diet.

I'm a meat eater so don't make the mistake of thinking I'm banging the vegans drum but I'm afraid modern science has moved on and I just recognise the current thinking.

Meat consumption evolved with our intelligence. The brain requires massive amount of energy that a veg diet just wouldn't provide. When people look at meat consumption they talk about teeth, gut etc, but the brain is the reason we ate meat, we needed the calories to evolve into what we are today.

Which means we weren't intelligent when we decided to start eating meat so it must be wrong!

[jonmiles]

Thesprucegoose said:

jonmiles said:

Why couldn't we have evolved when bigger and more muscular creatures have? Gorillas are 98% the same DNA as us and yet have been fine with no meat in their diet.

I'm a meat eater so don't make the mistake of thinking I'm banging the vegans drum but I'm afraid modern science has moved on and I just recognise the current thinking.

Meat consumption evolved with our intelligence. The brain requires massive amount of energy that a veg diet just wouldn't provide. When people look at meat consumption they talk about teeth, gut etc, but the brain is the reason we ate meat, we needed the calories to evolve into what we are today.

Using that as your criteria the largest brain by far is the Elephant brain - a herbivore. So I'm not sure that's a great measure although I appreciate what you are saying.

I'd also argue that there are many people around the world who are vegan/vegetarian - 40% of Indians are - and they don't seem to be suffering due to a lack of meat in their diet.

[LordGrover]

India has +60 million diabetics, and rising.

[anonymous-user]

Roman Rhodes said:

Which means we weren't intelligent when we decided to start eating meat so it must be wrong!

Its hard to distil an extremely complex process into short sentences as there are a multitude of factors involved, you can have intelligence with veg diet, but for humans, cooking meat accelerated the process to where we are now. Meat is calorific denser than veg. The expenditure over getting it is much less than veg.

Gorillas have a lot less neurons than humans, and there brain cannot develop further due to lack of calories needed to develop further, that the veg diet could provide.

Eating meat meant more time to develop, eating veg would consume time, just like most herbivores’ life , half the waking hours eating.

This development meant humans could evolve social groups which further accelerated the brain development combined with meat meant we evolved very quickly in intelligence.

[jonmiles]

LordGrover said:

India has +60 million diabetics, and rising.

Is it because they are vegans/vegetarians?

I'd add that 60m of India's 1.3bn population is 4%

The UK's percentage of Diabetics is 6%

So what's your point?

[gregs656]

Vanden Saab said:

In my case it was to avoid the first question everybody who ever found out I did not eat meat asked...

Fair enough.

Thesprucegoose said:

Meat consumption evolved with our intelligence. The brain requires massive amount of energy that a veg diet just wouldn't provide. When people look at meat consumption they talk about teeth, gut etc, but the brain is the reason we ate meat, we needed the calories to evolve into what we are today.

The brain runs on glucose, the process of converting protein to glucose is convoluted, much easier to convert carbs to glucose.

Plenty of calorie dense non-meat food sources.

In any case, arguing about how we got here is a diversion. The simple fact is is that adult humans can flourish not eating meat. I like eating meat, so what ever, but it is frankly a joke to sit at a computer in a building with electricity and so on and debate how humans 'should live'. It's a farce.

[anonymous-user]

gregs656 said:

The brain runs on glucose, the process of converting protein to glucose is convoluted, much easier to convert carbs to glucose.

Plenty of calorie dense non-meat food sources.

Only in the last Few hundred years. The point was humans could evolve without meat which i was stating was incorrect which you seem to be thinking i am talking about modern life, which is clearly massivily different to a few hundred years ago, or millions of years ago. When you get a bus you don't forget about the journey that got you there.

gregs656 said:

In any case, arguing about how we got here is a diversion.

Yet the point was how we got to this point, which you seemed to have missed.

[anonymous-user]

Thesprucegoose said:

Roman Rhodes said:

Which means we weren't intelligent when we decided to start eating meat so it must be wrong!

Its hard to distil an extremely complex process into short sentences as there are a multitude of factors involved, you can have intelligence with veg diet, but for humans, cooking meat accelerated the process to where we are now. Meat is calorific denser than veg. The expenditure over getting it is much less than veg.

Gorillas have a lot less neurons than humans, and there brain cannot develop further due to lack of calories needed to develop further, that the veg diet could provide.

Eating meat meant more time to develop, eating veg would consume time, just like most herbivores’ life , half the waking hours eating.

This development meant humans could evolve social groups which further accelerated the brain development combined with meat meant we evolved very quickly in intelligence.

Lions and Tigers?

[RTB]

vdn said:

Even with cooking; we are not particularly well suited to consuming animals: especially the level of consumption the average westerner indulges in. You’d think by now, we might be.

How are you measuring the level of suitability given that human beings are the most numerous large mammal on the planet and we and our primate ancestors have been eating meat for millions of years.

I agree that we eat too much meat these days, and I agree that we're not as well suited to eating meat like a carnivore is.
Then again, we're not as well suited to eating vegetable matter either. We only have a single stomach, we have a relatively short intestinal tract (compared to herbivores), we don't have large continually growing grinding teeth, we don't have the full complement of gut fauna that herbivores have etc etc. We're like most primates in that we're opportunists. Most of the great apes will eat meat if they are presented with it. Their biochemistry isn't perfect for it, but natural selection has made compromises and our physiology is good enough to derive enough of a benefit from eating meat that natural selection hasn't selected against it.

Whether its green monkeys eating rats (and insects/small birds/lizards) in palm oil plantations or Chimps hunting colubus monkeys through the rainforests, higher primates are certainly suited to having meat as a part of their diet, just not perfectly suited.