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Carnivore, Herbivore, or Omnivore?
By Eliza Bicknell
We have a cultural belief that to be healthy we need to eat animal foods. Yet isn’t it ironic that one of the most common motivations many of us have to reduce or eliminate animal food consumption is improving our health? A friend of mine and I were discussing diet and she said, that humans are by nature carnivores. Interesting idea. First when we look at the human mouth, we see that we lack long sharp canines to tear through flesh as well as the strong, heavy jawbone and jaw muscles or carnivores and omnivores. Our teeth are very soft in comparison to those animals as well. Carnivores are able to crush bones with their teeth to gain access to bone marrow. Our teeth and jaws are clearly not designed for ripping flesh and gnawing bones. We also have no claws to rip flesh. The human jaw is hinged to provide side to side movement, a characteristic shared by herbivores for grinding various plant materials. Carnivores and omnivores have jaws that are rigidly hinged and just snap up and down. Within the human mouth, the main enzyme in our saliva is ptyalin, an enzyme which breaks down complex carbohydrates. Animal flesh contains no complex carbohydrates. Heading to the stomach now, humans do not have strong stomach acids to dissolve flesh quickly or short smooth-walled intestines to pass decaying flesh from our bodies quickly. Instead we have weaker stomach acids and highly convoluted intestines, similar to herbivores. Our digestive system requires high fiber foods to keep the intestinal walls clean and functional. Animal products are derived of fiber. It seems we have the circulatory system of herbivores as well, which have difficulty tolerating saturated fats and cholesterol. Given a continuous diet of meat, a lion, for example, will get no build up or blockage in the arteries, a rabbit, gorilla or human will. Herbivore arteries become coated and over time become clogged leading to heart disease, high blood pressure etc. Animal foods contain more concentrated protein than plant foods which can be unhealthy because it is more difficult for our bodies to derive energy from protein than from carbohydrates. Since we humans need relatively little protein to function well, the excess protein inherent in animal foods drains our body’s energy. Nutritionists agree that our actual protein needs are small: between four and eight percent of our calories consumed. Virtually all grains, legumes and vegetables are between eight and twenty percent protein, some much higher. Fossil records indicate that early humans ate mostly a plant based diet and so did early contemporary foraging cultures. Studies of chimpanzees however indicate that if conditions are exactly right, they will form a hunting party and ambush small monkeys. This however is a very rare occurrence. Deciding upon which category – carnivore, herbivore or omnivore humans fit into has been problematic, not necessarily because of the science, but because of culture. It’s obvious we are not carnivores. It’s also obvious we are not grazing animals like cows or deer that have multiple digestive pouches. Humans may be best classified as frugivorous herbivores, designed for a diet of mostly fruits, seeds, vegetables, nuts, roots and leaves. The great apes are all herbivores. Most physiologists claim humans to be omnivores by nature. I just wonder how much of that classification is the result of being taught what to eat, not truly anatomy and physiology. After all, cows, horses, sheep and goats are taught to eat and relish the flesh of fish, chickens, pigs and even their own kind in confined factory feeding operations. (This allows them to gain weight faster, it also gives rise to diseases such as mad cow disease but that’s a whole different topic.)
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useful information for me
Very good ideas, Eliza. I think, as you seem to, that much of what we eat is not a choice at all but habits learned over a life time. I know that the less meat I eat, the better I feel. Thanks for writing.
"Animal products are derived of fiber." I believe that you meant animal products are "devoid" of fibre. Shoot me if I'm wrong. This intel is excellent reasoning and very interesting!
Well there is one thing about humans being carnivores -- We don't have to catch our food and eat it on the spot (or drag it away) to prevent other carnivore scavengers from interfering with our meals. We don't have to tear raw flesh off of a freshly killed carcass. We can cut off the meat with tools. We can prepare the food - so there's no need for all of those fancy teeth. It's what makes humans unique from other animals. Many (not all) of the health issues regarding meat comes from how an animal is raised and fed, and how the meat is processed.
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