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Comment by captainmuon | Hacker News Reader

One reason I dislike "plant-based" that's not in the article: it singles out plant-based food. But for most of history, for most people, food based on plants was the default and still should be. Food should have labels when it includes stuff other than plants (or other than what we humans evolved to eat typically).

The other thing I don't like is that "plant-based" always sounds like marketing. Especially here in Germany where companies have started to use the English term, even though we have plenty of normal German terms. It sounds like a brand or a fad.

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> But for most of history, for most people, food based on plants was the default and still should be.

Right, and all those cave paintings depicting hunting scenes were entirely for sport. There are no instances in the wild of any species similar to humans eating meat I guess. Ancient writings where they reference meats, they were really talking about Beyond Meat.

We've evolved to eat plants, yes. We've also evolved to eat meat. We've been eating meat for many millennia. I'll agree, not at the ratio that's common in the normal US diet these days, but its disingenuous to suggest that plants were the sole default of food, and it is only a modern thing to eat meat.

Evolved to eat plans as an option, yes, but not as a preference. It is so hard to get enough plant calories without being bloated and with difficulties digesting, and that's with modern, highly selected for plants... My bet would be we evolved to eat animal fats and protein, and that is most of the selection pressure for our big brains too. Hunting while being a rather frail primate takes brains.

There are heaps of people who thrive strictly on plants who aren’t bloated or struggling to digest their food or get calories in.

Yeah, I mean you can even do a keto vegan weight gainer diet if you go fairly processed. It isnt hard at all if you allow carbs. Coconut oil, brown rice protein and pea protein for the keto. Use actual brown rice and legumes for the carb version. But to the point of the GP, I can't tolerate legumes (even fermented) and I don't think very many people at all tolerate brown rice protein, that is why they lowered it so much in soylent.

Some people have different dietary needs. I haven't found a way to get sufficient protein without animal products that doesn't leave me with digestive issues. Even just using broccoli and greens, along with oatmeal ended up being unpleasant. And this is just for normal fda levels of protein, not adding muscle mass after an injury or illness levels of protein.

Maybe so, but protein is a different story. How many professional athletes are true vegans for extended periods outside of Tom Brady, who is kind of psycho to begin with.

That doesn’t say anything though since there are so few vegans to begin with. Protein is also trivial to supplement.

Not hard to google that. There's even a website: https://www.greatveganathletes.com/

I think that's a silly argument anyway, if we're discussing health. Professionals do plenty of stuff that is awful for them to get performance gains. Steroids, exercise routines that are very punishing on the body long-term (plenty of power lifters who can barely even walk after retirement and they aren't that old), etc.. I am not sure you can say it's good for you if professionals do it... maybe good for short term performance, but not "good for you."

It's actually easier to get protein if you like legumes (including tofu and peas, not sure if these are technical legumes), gluten, and/or nuts. All of these have amazing nutrients, are really cheap, and easy to digest for most people. If they aren't for you that's ok - some people can't digest meat either.

Not saying you don't need to take some supplements as a vegan. You probably do, at least b12 and maybe omegas, but you're getting those from "supplements" anyway from meat (it is just fed to the animals first).

I think one exception is that some fish seem to promote health in moderation. I personally don’t find it worth supporting the fishing industry or killing countless animals to get the fish I want, so I’m content without that in my diet. And like you mentioned, supplementing omega is an option (even if it isn’t as effective with vegan options — I’m not sure).

The protein problem is a myth. And what percentage of the population is involved in athleticism that requires significant amounts of protein? This scenario is so uncommon as to be irrelevant to the average person.

I run, dive, lift weights, and rock climb without any issues. If I did it competitively I could easily supplement with plant proteins. Virtually anyone I know who eats meat and trains hard has also supplemented with whey or something similar. There doesn’t appear to be a meaningful difference when eating plants.

> It is so hard to get enough plant calories without being bloated and with difficulties digesting

I'm sorry, but this is an absolutely preposterous take. Are you suggesting that the ~80 million vegans and ~1.5 billion vegetarians worldwide are dealing with constant bloating and digestive issues? In fact I'd make the case that a _far_ greater number of people deal with poor digestion due to under-consumption of plants- leading to low intake of dietary fiber- than vice versa.

Also we did not "evolve to eat plants as an option." We evolved from primarily frugivorous apes, so plants were the starting point and the default. And some of the key changes to our biology were to support the consumption of additional plants, not just meat. Relatively large molars, a long GI tract, and enzymes for the digestion of starches.

We are biologically omnivorous, no one should deny that, but to suggest that we evolved primarily as meat eaters is a bit absurd.

That's an interesting theory, but do you have anything to back that up with? Plenty of people throughout the world live quite well on plant-based diets without these problems you mention. I know, because I am one of them.

I don't know how similar to humans are baboons. They are exactly the kind of omnivores [1] which savanna-inhabiting proto-humans are often described to be. They also hunt in organized groups, sometimes pretty large.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baboon#Habitat_and_prey

The quote you used says “food based on plants was the default.” Seems pretty deliberately worded to not claim that most humans never ate meat.

They're directly suggesting that food should have labels to let people know when foods are not wholly plant based. It seems they're really arguing that people should only rarely (if ever) eat non-plant-based foods and should avoid foods with animal products in them, because by default we should be eating plants not non-plants.

We didn't eat plants by default, we ate a mixture of plants and meats and other animal-derived products since we lived in caves.

You are now challenging the statement about plants being the "default" food. (Maybe you are not the original responder; I can't tell on my phone UI)

I think you're going to have to back that up with a citation.

For most of history, ordinary people could afford only plant based food. Meat was occasional. Industrial meat production in the West changed the economics of that.

Vegans are not the only people who care about our unsustainable practices. We all should. We could start by properly accounting for the externalities, ecological footprint, worker exploitation, and yes, the built-in cruelty to animals. I think the OP's suggestion to label animal parts is a step in the right direction.

> For most of history, ordinary people could afford only plant based food.

Most of history predates the idea of money.

That’s not true either. It was only plant based when they couldn’t obtain meat. Supplementing plant foods was the default when there was no prey available is more accurate.

Do you have a source on that? I don't think that's an accurate statement, or at least not one you can claim with confidence.

Evidence? We're talking about agricultural societies, too, not about hunters.

Not sport in the sense of exercise purely for the sake of burning calories, but sport in the sense of fitness display for status, bonding through teamwork and practice for warfare, definitely. The amount of calories and protein that can be achieved from hunting large game is just far too low compared to the same amount of effort and risk expended on trapping, fishing and gathering.

Of course humans were eating meat in prehistory, and more than once agriculture began. But we make art of the ideal and aspirational more than of the everyday.

Does Germany not have an ingredient list on food products? Unfortunately it's usual full of things we didn't evolve to eat, but that's the place to look

Also, while actual plants are pretty great, the "plant based" products aren't imo. I find that they are very processed. They aren't throwing the "plant based" label on the salad mix. Every now and then it's put on something that was already plant-based prior to the fad, like falafel, but that's not the norm. The label in itself is tantamount to non-meats "other than what we humans evolved to eat"

Chimpanzee's still eat meat as part of their diet, they don't eat highly processed soy topped with thickener laden vegetable oils.

Homo sapiens is something like 100 to 300 thousand years old from the latest estimates I’ve seen. Agriculture is maybe six to twelve thousand years old. I don’t think there’s a strong evolutionary argument that humans are meant to primarily eat plants, but rather quite the opposite.

And then there’s the amusing observation that cows are entirely plant-based.

Indeed, "animal-free" could look more cool. It also is more strict, and may get you sued.

Say, crepes with fruit jam are definitely plant-based, but they may not be animal-free: the jam may contain bits of gelatin, and the easiest way to make nice-looking crepes is to fry them on lard.

Yeah, but the non-rational parts of the brain aren’t good with negation. Reading “animal”, even when suffixed by “-free”, the brain feels it doesn’t want that thing with “animal” on it. Better give it something with “plant” on it.

Why? "Animal-free" means that animals are free, not taking part in the food.

It’s a priming effect. Once your brain sees “animal”, it associates the product or label with animals right away, before higher-level linguistic processing, an association which then has to be undone by the “-free”. That undoing is time-delayed and incomplete.

One common analogy is how when someone says “don’t think of X”, it’s hard to not think of X.

Are you implying humans evolved to only eat plants? Every documentary and paper on early humans I see points to otherwise, and that our large brain was directly a result of access to extra protein from hunting meat.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/04/eating-meat-l...

Do we know this for sure, though? I don't think we do. Sounds like self-congratulatory hogwash to me.

Creatures eat what they can. Some purely carnivorous species have been around way longer than us, and yet, the stars did not align just the right way for them.

> Do we know this for sure, though? I don't think we do.

We know for sure we have evolved to be omnivores. This can easily be determined based on e.g. our teeth and the length of our digestive system.

Well, of course. We don't even need science to determine that humans are omnivores. Just look around - not everyone eats meat.

Because meat is expensive, primarily. Especially from poorer backgrounds there is a culture of minimizing meat consumption and saving it for children just because of it's rarety.

That's the meat of the argument for me.

I grew up in eastern Europe. Yes, meat was more expensive 30 years ago. These days, thanks to endless subsidies, meat is way cheaper than quality vegetables and most nuts.

And yet, people choose not to eat it. Earth shattering, I know. Damn, some people really get pissed off when you make the "wrong" choice of not eating meat.

Meat is cheap where I live and about 10% of the population doesn’t eat it. It’s actually 13% according to surveys, but let’s say 10% to be safe.

I could also hunt or spearfish like I used to. Meat is easy to get. There’s no need for it though.

Meat is amazing if you’re starving because it contains a lot of stuff a hungry person needs. Kale is not going to do the same things for you. However, it’s unlikely anyone on here is starving. Meat has rapidly diminishing returns as you stop starving and have a more stable diet of plants. Eventually eating meat becomes harmful, but eating plants does not.

It's obvious that we ate meat as early humans, but the article and theory that meat evolved our brains is just that, a theory.

There's also been theories that fire and cooking is more associated with brain development since we're able to absorb more nutrients from meat and tubers that we forged.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-fire-makes...

Hypothesis - not theory

Here's an article citing research published this year that disputes the idea that our large brain was directly a result of access to extra protein from hunting meat:

"They concluded that the evidence for increased carnivory in our ancestors is merely an effect of increased sampling of the archaeological record at certain time intervals starting around two million years ago, meaning that there is no strong relationship between eating more meat and the evolution of larger brains in our ancestors."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/fourt...

There are as many (or more) studies indicating that human coprolites contained more plant than animal matter. It seems it would depend largely on the season, climate, location, and other factors. Some human populations had little to no reason to hunt. Others more recently would have needed to hunt due to relentless cold conditions from long winters. We are opportunistic and diverse feeders. It doesn’t seem like there’s a clear advantage to eating animals outside of calorie density and availability when plants are absent.

It seems more helpful to view meat eating simply as diversification. Our plant based diets would have supported large brains, and they still do. There’s no clear reason to believe that eating other animals enlarged our brains.

For much of pre-history it seems our diet may have been largely carnivorous.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24247

Or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNIoKmMq6cs - Anthropologist Debunks the Paleo Diet

Did you read this? It's like a carnivore fan-fic, it's absolutely hilarious. I've almost never read a clearer example of starting with a conclusion and trying to bend the evidence to fit it.

It’s a new term in English, too; I assume because people found ‘vegan’ off-putting? Not really sure; it turned up about a decade ago, and as the article says is poorly defined.

Veganism is a moral and ethical lifestyle choice with wide ranging implications whereas plant-based is a descriptor of the things that go into a foodstuff.

A vegan will only eat plant-based food (and so “plant-based” and “vegan” are often used interchangeably to describe a food) but someone who follows a plant-based diet might buy leather goods (and is therefore not vegan).

A good example of this nuance is the Impossible Burger. The Impossible Burger is plant-based but not vegan because it was tested on animals.

Interesting. Apparently they had to do it or they wouldn't get FDA approval. Probably a necessary step for wide adoption. I'd still consider them vegan.

1. https://www.greenmatters.com/p/does-impossible-foods-test-on...

I don't think "not tested on animals" is something generally accepted as being required to be vegan.

AFAIK, the main qualifier is "does not consume animal products." Impossible meat does not have animal products in it and is not currently being tested on animals. Similarly, most medicine is animal tested, yet I've never heard someone claim that medicine isn't vegan.

> plant based was the default

My canine teeth tell a different story. Meat was eaten when it was available. Certainly they also ate berries and what not as cavemen. However, it wasn't like grug, or medieval grug, went out of their way to eat 3 square meals consisting of mostly vegetables. Grains, probably. But vegetables were often times as much of a luxury as meat.

"Beyond meat" etc are all poisons as far as I am concerned. To turn vegetables into a meat-like substitute requires some seance with dark magic. Their entire marketing gimmick is to compare it to Tofu. Tofu is minimally processed. Beyond meat and things like it are typically processed more than your average bag of potato chips.

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