Plant based "news" is a misnomer unfortunately. They operate as an activist org rather than news. Nothing necessarily wrong with that but they can conveniently leave out facts that don't align with a plant based philosophy.
Here are authors, they don't seem affiliated with the OP's "Plant based news" article.
Can't really fault an organization from promoting a study that aligns with them.
Authors and Affiliations Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France
Katherine L. Bryant
Hungry Heart Farm and Dietary Consulting, Conley, GA, USA
Christi Hansen
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Erin E. Hecht
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/02/did-fermented...
IMHO HN staff should, as the often do in such cases, update the OP link to point to the Harvard Gazette article.
As for the questioned passage, it appears to originate from the author of the Harvard Gazette article, reading there:
"This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the human large intestine is proportionally smaller than those of other primates, suggesting that we adapted to food that was already broken down by the chemical process of fermentation."
Thankfully, the perspective study itself appears open access:
.https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05517-3
And we can thus check it for addressing the meat consumption hypothesis, and indeed, we find:
"[…]
A smaller colon may reflect a reduction of dependence on fibrous plant material, given that a major function of the colon is to house bacteria that aid in the breakdown of enzyme-resistant carbohydrates to SCFAs. Did a shift to meat-eating, as suggested by Milton, permit this drastic reduction in colon size in the human lineage? Indeed, humans and members of the order Carnivora share a small colon size. However, the gut transit time in Carnivora is much faster than in humans. Although Milton postulates that this difference is due to our evolutionary history as plant eaters96, another explanation is that colon reduction follows from a reduced need to break down fibrous plant material within the digestive tract due increased bioavailability of nutrients before food is consumed—i.e., external fermentation (Fig. 1).
[…]"
As for the affiliations:
I can't find much on the obvious outlier among the author list, albeit I didn't check for very long, only an old interview here which appears partially misleading NOT due to content but due to what seem like incorrect social media references:
https://voyageatl.com/interview/meet-matthew-bagshaw-christi...
And an archive of their website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190122012150/https://www.hungr...
The work breakdown given at the end of the paper in the contributions section looks like the following:
"K.L.B. and E.E.H. conceived the paper, K.L.B. and E.E.H. compiled data and analysis, K.L.B., E.E.H., and C.H. wrote the manuscript, with E.E.H. focusing on metabolic and nutrition components, E.E.H. on human evolution components, and K.L.B. on fermentation and culture components. All authors contributed to the final editing process."
Hope that clears things up for people arriving later to the comments section, and perhaps offers further avenues for exploration, albeit I'd advise caution as to avoid accidentally creating a tempest in a teapot
The study was in Nature, not 'plantbasednews'.
Just because a blog with a bias, like 'plantbasednews', reports on a study, doesn't invalidate the study.
The 'blog' is just cherry picking the studies that align with their bias.