Vegetarian, Omnivore or Carnivore?

It seems, when you read the Bible carefully, that humans didn't eat meat until God told Noah he could after the flood. So I guess you could say that humans were originally made to eat only a vegetarian diet. But after that, human diets developed differently depending where they lived. The Inuit (northern Canada/Alaska) only ate whale and seal meat traditionally, no veggies at all (because nothing grows up there). In India, they've eaten a mainly vegetarian diet for hundreds of years.

If you go by the human body/teeth/digestive system/etc., humans are omnivores. We have the flat teeth and side-to-side chewing action for grinding grains and veggies that carnivores don't have, but we don't have the really powerful digestive enzymes for digesting grasses and wood like rabbits, cows, and other true vegetarian animals have. But humans are extremely adaptable, so it's hard to put a percentage on it.

Hmmmmmmm Since human evolution and the diverse spiritual, cultural beliefs are polar opposites and continue to be the argument of the beginning of human existence......................Why would it matter? If this is a personal guestimation, then who cares? Other then one's self?

I think it's the brain that makes the design rather moot. The design of human teeth would suggest having a herbivore origin, and are not suited at all to killing and eating raw meat like a carnivore. If not for human's ability to harness fire and use tools, we would otherwise be very, very poorly equipped for hunting and consuming meat.

I agree. Our teeth say vegetarian! But for our taste buds it isn't good enough!

Omnivore. We would be in some neanderthal type of stage if the early homo sapiens hadn't started hunting (before that, scavenging). Our teeth are designed to eat plant stuff (molars) and (canines to tear) meat.

You wouldn't poll the average person on the right answer for a brain surgery technique, you'd ask for consensus among brain surgeons.

The consensus among the scientific community that studies pre-history man and our evolution as a species is that not only did humans eat meat, but that the human brain is an enormously expensive organ and its growth simply could not have been fueled to reach the size to body ratio we enjoy today without access to bone-marrow and meat from scavenged kills. The arms race for bigger brains was fueled by the access that provided the most intelligent to that very rich food source. The more clever the human, the more access to meat, the more meat, the more the human animal could afford to fuel a larger brain, which made the person more clever, and so on.

In fact, it is argued as the single most influential change in human behavior that caused us to divert from similar great ape species.

And for the record, a human's teeth, saliva, lip muscles, and gastrointestinal system are consistent with that of an omnivore. Studying fossil remains of similar bipedal vegetarian great apes shows that they had far more powerful jaw muscles, thicker enamel on the teeth, much larger stomachs, and considerably lesser brain to body size ratio compared to man. In general, omnivores and carnivores are far more clever than their prey, as it doesn't take a lot of brain power to hunt down shrubs and chew grass. It would further not have been possible for early humans to gain access to the variety of plant proteins available to modern vegetarians to compensate for shortages from the lack of meat in a healthy balanced diet. Every primitive society we have observed throughout the world, many particularly isolated, has also found it necessary to hunt for the precious meat/liver/heart protein and vitamins for our diet, not to mention the tools that are available from slaughtering animals from the leather and fur to the bladder. And our closest living relatives, the chimpanzee, is likewise an omnivore. They don't consume as much meat as a tribal human, but they also aren't as successful and intelligent either.

Cliffs Notes: Meat-eating was absolutely VITAL to the evolution of our species, and humans are defined as omnivores. From what I have read, an estimate of 40% of calories from meat sources is unusually high except on the coast of tropical villages, as meat would have been difficult to come by without modern tools. I would wager 10-15%. Modern technology has provided a diet that is diverse enough to make eating meat optional with proper supplementation.

BTW, canines really aren't really useful for eating meat, but for killing and holding onto prey. For eating, its really just incisors used for tearing off manageable chunks and molars for some additional shredding.

There are vegetarian monkeys and great apes that have very impressively large canines, such as gorilla for example. Panda bears have some serious choppers on em too, and they evolved to eat only bamboo, but the powerful jaw and long sharp canines remains a powerful defensive tool. They are so tiny in humans though due to disuse IMO as they became impractical as our jaws shrunk and we used our hands more.

But. . .as I pointed out earlier, certain populations (such as in India) have been eating a meatless diet for centuries, and doing well on it even before modern supplementation/variety. Unless by "modern" you just mean "not prehistoric".

Life expectancy in India even as recent as 1960 was estimated to be 41 years. By contrast, Europe and the United States at the time averaged mid sixties. There is a difference between surviving and doing well, and much of Indian vegetarianism was a matter of crippling poverty more than mere religious conviction, and of those they typically included milk, butter, honey, and eggs in their diet when possible. AFAIK, the majority of India has never been vegetarian, and only small religious groups have practiced pure vegetarianism.

IDK. My grandma was never allowed to eat meat growing up (her dad was an abusive jerk who took all the meat for himself) and she's almost 91 now. All of her siblings are still alive (except the next oldest who worked in a shipyard with asbestos and smoked for 70 years, and died of lung cancer. . .surprise. But even he just died a few years ago). And in her Army pictures (right when she left home--too poor to have pics taken before that) she was pretty and well-built, not scrawny and malnourished. Can't have affected them too badly.

I would suspect the lowered life expectancy in India at that time was more due to poor hygiene and lack of medical care than poor diet. Lentils are just as good as meat, nutritionally speaking, and they have always been a staple in India.

According to many anthropologists, humans started out as herbivores. A change in vegetation caused man to seek out other forms of food.

I haven't heard any reputable anthropologists make that claim, at least not if you are referring to homo sapiens as a species. There are others in the homo genus (no, not that homo heheh), that are believed to be more of divergent cousins than an ancestor though, if that is what you are referencing, but I still know of none that are believed to have been herbivorous. The climate and flora changes that accompanied it predated homo sapiens by quite some time though, and our distant cousins the Neanderthals predate humans but were omnivores as well. If you go all the way down the tree to Homo Egaster, again I haven't ever seen any dispute that this species was an omnivore, which is supported by cutmarks and tool induced break patterns found on fossil bones at hominid sites.

Our closest living cousin is the chimpanzee, which is over 98% genetically similar, and it is an omnivore. In medicine, pigs are often used for training and even organ replacement (skin, heartvalves, etc) since they are physiology so similar to us, and they are omnivores as well.

If there is evidence to the contrary, it is certainly news to me, and I try not to miss any documentaries or articles posted in the mags heh.

The info I could find said that a chimp's diet includes maybe 2% of meat, which I suppose qualifies them as omnivores, but doesn't seem dietarily significant to me. More like a personal taste preference than actual need (my diet could be 2% Doritos, but I don't need them ).

I couldn't tell from the info. But it would take a LOT of termites to add up to even an ounce, much less a significant source of protein. So it could be included in that 2%. I suspect they snack on termites because they think they're yummy, not because they need the nutrients.

I think vitamins and trace minerals are different from an entire food group. Your diet being 2% calcium would be a lot of calcium but your diet being 2% meat wouldn't be a lot of meat.

Of course, but even so, insects don't weigh all that much. You could eat every bug you saw in a day and it would probably add up to less than a few ounces' worth. Granted, where chimps live there are more bugs, but still. I'm just not sure that chimps are true omnivores (there seems to be some debate on the subject even among chimp experts, since not all chimps do eat meat) or just herbivores who like a meaty snack now and then.

It was your comparison first. . .

The simplest test of an omnivore is to see if the animal can gain significant nutrition both from primarily plant based and meat based diets respectively. This shows a lack of specialization and adaptability of the digestive system from teeth, to saliva, to gut. Clearly humans pass this test since we can do fine on low plant or low meat diets, and can be opportunistic eaters. Plants are a lot easier to find and catch than prey though, at least until recently, which is why humans I believe leaned toward the plant side of the scale. Man would happily pig out when coming across a big kill or being so lucky as to take out a very nutritious and high calorie woolly mammoth though, and it was clearly of importance to do so from time to time considering the effort and risk often made to get at those rich sources of food.

A true herbivore though is generally able to draw significant nutrition from readily available but poor plant sources such as grasses, leaves, ferns, flowers, and the like. Unlike horses, cows, sheep, rabbits, elephants, gorillas, and so forth, a human would likely starve on such a diet after an extended period or at least be very malnourished, and likewise those animals would get indigestion from more than small amounts of animal protein as they lack the enzymes and strong stomach acids.

PS: http://www.chimphaven.org/chimps-facts.cfm

I wouldn't see why not really. Cats are classed as carnivores, yet a lot of them enjoy a green snack every so often. Some even make it a regular thing, as Blondie will sit waiting to be let out into the enclosure after breakfast so she can have herself a "mixed greens".

As the question in the OP is for human's "natural diet", would someone care to elaborate on what they consider "natural" to be? In other subjects of what is "natural", the emphasis has been on the human body's design. The human body is, in fact, poorly designed to be a carnivore, unless the meat side comes from being carrion eaters. Not only are human bodies not designed for killing and eating prey without the use of tools, they're not even capable of fighting other animals for prey that's already be taken.

We can't fly, can't dig, can barely climb, and are not fast at all. In fact, au naturel humans would be way, way down the food chain.

How true! Oliver loves fresh spinach.

Yep, even some ferrets (the most obligate of obligate carnivores) enjoy a green snack now and then. Doesn't make them omnivores.

I interpreted natural to be the historical diet to which the human body is adapted to function. Thus why information from experts regarding human physiology such as lip strength, saliva and stomach acidity, jaw design, similar species such as chimpanzees, and evidence of a mixed meat and plant diet going back to hominid ancestors even before the advent of homo sapiens has been parroted.
That is, in fact, a patently false statement. Please show what logic you base this statement on.
Nothing could be more wrong. I would recommend you watch the series "human planet" and do some research on primitive hunting practices.

Research suggests that early homo species, even long before the advent of homo sapiens, had learned to use primitive tools and maintain a large social structure. This allowed them to keep many sentries available for spotting predators, and could gain access to the most nutritiously dense part of a large kill, the bone marrow, by using stone tools to crack the bone which no other animal on the planet at the time had access to. We see this evidence via stone cut marks and the like on fossils.

Humans are also capable of driving off far larger predators through cleverness. By working as a group and feigning complete lack of fear humans can drive lions off of prey as an example, using no force whatsoever. Watch human planet for an example of this hunting technique still practiced by some today using no force whatsoever and carrying only a wooden spear.

Humans are also one of the most efficient distance runners on the planet in warm climates. Bipedal locomotion is very efficient, and we have one of the most advanced cooling systems of all animals, by being hairless, with a large surface area to mass ratio, and the ability to release water from our entire bodies for cooling. This allows for one of the most ancient hunting practices, which is an endurance chase. Quite simply, a pack of humans could chase a large prey, using their advanced brains to track prey (no other creature on the planet that we know of is able to look at tracks on the ground and identify the species, direction, and speed of the creature that made it) until they die of heat exhaustion. This is called persistence hunting, and is still practiced by some tribes today. There is also a modern day race known as the Man versus Horse Marathon that occurs annually in the UK, and you will see that the fastest man is typically faster than the majority of horses, with the fastest man actually winning the race against all horses in 2007 and 2004.

Divorcing humanity from tool use is also nonsense, as tool use has been common in the homo genus long before the advent of homo sapiens. The fact remains that by the time homo sapiens evolved on this planet, the anatomical design resulted in the top apex predator in just about every climate around the planet, and humanity has proven itself the most adaptable of all species that has lived to date, with no other creature having covered such a wide range of habitats and niches.

And cows are often fed some amount of animal protein in their diet, but you are absolutely correct.

Which is how BSE (Mad Cow Disease) developed. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

On the fact that there is no record of any human routinely killing prey animals with his/her hands or teeth.

I just read the rules of that race. How many prey animals will give the human a 15 minute handicap?

Why would a carnivore that can identify and track prey animals by scent, which we can't do, need to be able to identify a track? That's a rather inefficient way of doing things, as scent can be trailed over rocks, while tracks cannot.

Compound tools do not occur naturally anywhere. Therefore, what you are calling "natural" is in fact an adaptation. As it only occurs in a single species, then it can in fact be considered a mutation.