I had a conversation recently where the other person thought that vegetarianism is dumb, since "people were designed to eat meat." So I had to explain why this isn't the case, at all. Originally, humans were primarily consumers of plants for very practical reasons. We were too weak and clumsy to be able to gather enough food to survive off of animal sourced foods. Even when we finally developed tools (which took a very long time) they were clumsy and inefficient at gathering enough food for our survival. In the beginning most of the animal foods we ate we got by scavenging from the leftovers from carnivore predators, or from eating worms and bugs which were much easier for us to catch.
If we had evolved from a diet high in animal foods, most of our teeth would be pointed and sharp - like the teeth of natural carnivores. Only 4 out of 32 of our teeth are like this, whereas 28 of our teeth are the teeth of herbivores. Further, our digestive tract is more like that of herbivores and less like that of carnivores. A carnivore's much shorter digestive tract allows it to eliminate animal foods much faster than we can. As a result, they don't suffer from the maladies caused by putrification that we, with the much longer gut, experience. We are able to handle small amounts of animal foods without undue distress. Lot's of plant based fiber helps us eliminate the undesirable side effects more quickly and efficiently. But if this is not available in adequate amounts, then we suffer from the more negative effects of animal food consumption.
In general, we did not evolve to where we are now on a diet of high meat consumption. As a result, over the long haul, most people will not do well on a diet of mostly animal foods. This is a diet that became popular in the 1950's and 1960's. Prior to that, even in recent history, we had a much lower ratio of animal food consumption (unless many generations of your ancestors lived in arctic regions.)There have been plenty of societies that were 100% vegetarian for dozens of generations, such as Hindu communities in India, and they are just fine, health-wise.
Good posting!I'm an omnivore but i should try to cut down on meats for my health.
The long, pointed, and sharp teeth of carnivores are used to hunt, to cach a living prey and keep it in the mouth while killing it. The fact that we do not have that kind of teeth do not indicates that we didn't eat meet in our evolutive history, but that we do not hunt our preys with them.
A second point is that our teeth now are the product of evolution after millenia of eating cooked food. In fact, archeologist know whether an ancient human eat coocked or raw food by looking at the teeth and part of the skull where mouth muscles were inserted. The present weakness of our teeth and mouth muscles is not evidence of our past diet, but of our present habits.
It is true that our diet has much more meat now than in the past, which is probably not healthy. But it is also true that, as our primate cuisins, our origins are omnivore, not herbivore, and that's probably the reason why we were able to spread around the globe.
A final point: in my opinion, the best way to spread vegetarianism is not making appeal to natural/heath issues, as "we are naturally vegetarians"/ "meat is bad for health". None of them is completely true and people notice it. The best way is a moral/ethical discourse, "a better society do not kill animals to eat them"/"any life deserves the same respect". This is something many people could agree with, independently of whether it is natural or healthy.
The youtube channel Kurzgesagt has a beautiful recent video about carnivorism/vegetarianism.
(Sorry about the long comment)
If this is truly your research, oh my good god
I"ll be damned.