Comment by geddy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geddy | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

We are biologically herbivores, and we are built to process plants (jaw moves side to side and we have long intestinal tracts, the exact opposite case applies to carnivores). We don't "eat dirt" because we are built to eat plants. Your argument on that is a silly one.

You're running anywhere from 5-12x the amount of plant calories (depending on the animal) through animals (that need to be fed water in addition to plants), to produce fractions of calories on the other end. It's highly inefficient and that by itself is a terrific argument for stopping the consumption of animal products. Not to mention all of the potent affects on climate change, and the water usage associated with producing meat. We're paving the rainforests to plant more crops to feed back to animals, despite having millions starving to death.

Go search for `animal agriculture inefficient` and read the metric ton of studies if you don't believe me. I can't fathom how you could think that spending 12,000,000 calories of plants to get 1,000,000 calories of beef is worth it "for the nutrients".

I'm curious as to what nutrients you think are so critical here, because literally every vital nutrient can be obtained from plants, and in the cases of Vitamin D and B12, they are both supplemented into animal feed as it is, and can easily be taken in pill form.

Our intestinal tracts are smaller than that of herbivores. As a matter of fact our intestinal tract has the length ratio similar to that of other omnivores, similar to that of pigs or dogs for example.

We don't have the teeth of carnivores, but we don't have the teeth of herbivores either. That's because we evolved to use tools and fire, which meant we could predigest our food, which also allowed us btw to eat tubers. Thus comparisons with other animals is silly.

We aren't like cows, we cannot synthesize essential amino acids from grass, we don't have the gut or the gut flora for it and we don't stay around all day chewing leaves like gorillas. Our big brain evolved with foods high in calories and in paleolithic this meant animal fat and starch.

Yes, you can live on a whole plants based diet, with the proper supplements. Whether that's optimal or not is another question entirely and there are plenty of studies available from African countries showing that children could really benefit from more meat and dairy in their diet.

---

> "We're paving the rainforests to plant more crops to feed back to animals, despite having millions starving to death."

References please.

While in the 19th century most of the human population lived in extreme poverty and suffered from malnutrition, the percent of people living in poverty and suffering from malnutrition has dropped to a historically low in 2015, afaik less than 10% of the world population. We are living in the best times of humanity, from all points of view, literally.

Therefore bringing starvation into this discussion, despite the absolutely amazing progress we've made since 1960 (which is around the time when meat consumption went up btw), shows ignorance.

I'm not denying that meat should be more expensive and reflect its actual cost to the environment, but really, stop it with the quackery.

Marked as favorite.

Please explain how it is efficient to feed anywhere from 5-12 units of calories to an animal, to get out 1 unit of calories. Running plant food through an animal does nothing to increase it's value, and all you're adding to it is a) saturated animal fat, which raises your cholesterol, c) trans fats, and b) cholesterol itself, which yes, does affect your serum cholesterol levels, albeit less so if you already have a high intake of animal products.

Source: https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...

Two out of three 12-year olds have early signs of cholesterol disease. A meat and animal-product heavy diet, causing disease? Incredible.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2912430

And to address your initial comment, human-created wildfires have been on the rise to make room for grazing cattle and soy growth - to feed back to the cattle. A 3 second search will show you that. How else do you think animals are being fed?

Be honest - you want to eat meat because you like it. I understand, meat tastes good, but it doesn't justify this. A whole foods plant based diet is the only diet proven to reverse heart disease and chronic illness, period. Furthermore, it's bad for the planet and is the direct cause of these pandemics that have plaguing humans for ages, but particularly in the past 20 years.

"We are biologically herbivores"

I stopped reading after that. No, we are not.

Feel free to elaborate. Why is it that carnivores have short intestines, teeth for gripping into and tearing flesh, and don't die of colon cancer?

We have long intestines for lengthier breakdown of plant fibers. Not so dead animals can rot in it.

EDIT: Let me elaborate on this more, actually. Humans are omnivores in the sense that they can consume and not die from eating meat, but you will be void of fiber and other nutrients. Everything is not found in meat, no matter how much HN's god Shawn Baker says so.

You can absolutely thrive on a whole foods plant based diet, not destroy the planet, and not pay to support torturing animals, and that is where the fact that we "adapted to be omnivores" becomes irrelevant. We simply don't have to artificially breed billions of animals and feed them all the water and plants, just to survive. We can easily survive on plants alone, and would be much better off for it.

Or we can keep enslaving animals and breeding disease and stay quarantined forever. Whatever gives you five minutes of pleasure though, right?

Oh, so you're ideologically entitled to this debate. Good to know.

You're right, mostly imo.

I don't know where you're from, but where I grew up meat was an occasional food. The diet was mostly vegetables/fruits/grain, with meat from hens/ducks once a month or so, cows and pigs were slaughtered right before winter so there was more meat during winter but still for a family of 5-8 that's like a serving or two a week.

IIRC that's the standard diet for millennia - mostly plants but still occasional meat.

I don't think humans are made for vegan diets, but the current consumption of meat is absurd - we're eating better than kings and nobility used to.

How is it possible that meat can be cheaper than vegetables, it's rather ridiculous. Industrial farms are quite literally animal Auschwitz, yet people don't see the problem with that because they're "just animals"? Funny how that works.

I think slowly raising taxes on meat would gradually lower demand, and soon enough, production. Can't see us getting off meat completely, maybe lab grown will be successful.

> I don't think humans are made for vegan diets

I've been vegan for around 6 months now, and haven't dropped dead yet. If anything, I feel the same as I did before - on a vegetarian diet - and before that - on the standard Western diet.

As long as you eat a balanced diet with enough protein, fat, and carbs humans can thrive on a vegan diet just fine.

That's nice, but 6 months is nothing. Yes, I've read about people going vegan for years. I've also read about people going back to eating meat/eggs/dairy and feeling better. Afaik there's some nutrients that are simply missing in a purely vegan diet.

If someone showed you a picture of a morbidly obese person and ask you what you thought they ate, what would your first thought be? I'm fairly sure it wouldn't be 'they need to cut down on the vegetables'.

How many super overweight people do you know who eat all vegetables and whole grains?

There are always outliers but the cliche western 'bad diet' is too much meat, fat, processed carbs and dairy.

I'm a reluctant part-time vegetarian - pizza is my spirit animal. But I cannot ignore the cognitive dissonance I experience with a lot of the 'bargaining' style diets being pushed. My animal brain really wants to believe there is a healthy diet that lets me pile on the bacon and chorizo and still lose weight but the evidence just doesn't support it.

What does that even have to do with this thread? But w/e, the diet you're looking for is keto - zero carbs, which incidentally is mostly from grain, works. Meat and fat alone do not cause obesity, but together with carbs they fatten you up more effectively.

They don't necessarily cause obesity, but they sure don't help. I lost tons of body fat when I stopped eating meat and dairy/eggs. Literally the only thing that changed was I ate more fiber and less fat. And of course removing trans fat and cholesterol from my diet, because they are only found in animal products.

Too much refined sugars + animal products = fat population.

Vegan for a year and a half and still crushing PRs and feeling incredible. Wife's pregnant and has had zero complications, no sickness, nothing. Also, she probably deadlifts more than more people on this thread.

The only nutrients "missing" are B12 and D, which are easily supplemented and/or found in fortified foods (cereals, plant milks etc). And the funniest bit - they only exist in meat because they are supplemented into cow feed. That's right - you're already supplementing D and B12.

I think we are omnivores.

There's a difference between being able to eat meat, and requiring meat. Sure we can eat it and we won't die, but we'll certainly be losing years off our life.

The science doesn't lie - you can thrive for a lifetime on only plants, but you won't get far on a lifetime of only meat.

Everything you said is true, except the other way. Meat is way we thrived and evolved on. Plants was for survival only.

You're right the science doesn't lie. There is no science that shows a lifetime of meat doesn't get you far (there are some that show you excel though). There are questionable questionnaire studies that show association with processed food (and for some reason they put meat in this, further confounding it) has a very small increase correlation with risk of cancer.

Meanwhile all those athletes "thriving" on plans actually saw their performance drop.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com