Humans are Anatomically Vegetarian
"I think I'm sophisticated
"'cause I'm living my life like a good homo sapien
"But all around me everybody's multiplying
"Till they're walking round like flies, man
"So I'm no better than the animals sitting in their cages in the zoo, man
"'cause compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees
"I am an ape man
"I think I'm so educated and I'm so civilized
"'cause I'm a strict vegetarian
"But with the overpopulation and inflation and starvation
"And the crazy politicians
"I don't feel safe in this world no more
"I don't want to die in a nuclear war
"I want to sail away to a distant shore
"And make like an ape man
"'cause compared to the sun that sits in the sky
"Compared to the clouds as they roll by
"Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies
" I am an ape man
"I look out my window, but I can't see the sky
"'cause the air pollution is fogging up my eyes
"I want to get out of this city alive
"And make like an ape man..."
--the Kinks, "Ape Man" (1970)
****
Dr. Milton Mills' "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating"
www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm
(Dr. Mills is a graduate of the Stanford School of Medicine)
Which category are humans most suited for?
*Facial Muscles*
CARNIVORE: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
OMNIVORE: Reduced
HERBIVORE: Well-developed
HUMAN: Well-developed
*Jaw Type*
CARNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HERBIVORE: Expanded angle
OMNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HUMAN: Expanded angle
*Jaw Joint Location*
CARNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HERBIVORE: Above the plane of the molars
OMNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HUMAN: Above the plane of the molars
*Jaw Motion*
CARNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
HERBIVORE: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
OMNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side
HUMAN: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
*Major Jaw Muscles*
CARNIVORE: Temporalis
HERBIVORE: Masseter and pterygoids
OMNIVORE: Temporalis
HUMAN: Masseter and pterygoids
*Mouth Opening vs. Head Size*
CARNIVORE: Large
HERBIVORE: Small
OMNIVORE: Large
HUMAN: Small
*Teeth: Incisors*
CARNIVORE: Short and pointed
HERBIVORE: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
OMNIVORE: Short and pointed
HUMAN: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
*Teeth: Canines*
CARNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HERBIVORE: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
OMNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HUMAN: Short and blunted
*Teeth: Molars*
CARNIVORE: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
HERBIVORE: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
OMNIVORE: Sharp blades and/or flattened
HUMAN: Flattened with nodular cusps
*Chewing*
CARNIVORE: None; swallows food whole
HERBIVORE: Extensive chewing necessary
OMNIVORE: Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing
HUMAN: Extensive chewing necessary
*Saliva*
CARNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HERBIVORE: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
OMNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HUMAN: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
*Stomach Type*
CARNIVORE: Simple
HERBIVORE: Simple or multiple chambers
OMNIVORE: Simple
HUMAN: Simple
*Stomach Acidity*
CARNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HERBIVORE: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
OMNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HUMAN: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
*Stomach Capacity*
CARNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HERBIVORE: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
OMNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HUMAN: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract
*Length of Small Intestine*
CARNIVORE: 3 to 6 times body length
HERBIVORE: 10 to more than 12 times body length
OMNIVORE: 4 to 6 times body length
HUMAN: 10 to 11 times body length
*Colon*
CARNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HERBIVORE: Long, complex; may be sacculated
OMNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HUMAN: Long, sacculated
*Liver*
CARNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HERBIVORE: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
OMNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HUMAN: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
*Kidney*
CARNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HERBIVORE: Moderately concentrated urine
OMNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HUMAN: Moderately concentrated urine
*Nails*
CARNIVORE: Sharp claws
HERBIVORE: Flattened nails or blunt hooves
OMNIVORE: Sharp claws
HUMAN: Flattened nails
http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2013/01/humans-are-biologically-built-vegetarian.html
Humans and other natural vegetarians have four times longer, convoluted
intestinal tracts perfect for slow digesting fruits and starches, whereas
omnivore/carnivores have four times shorter intestines to quickly push out
the acidic, putrefying animal flesh they eat.
Humans have alkaline saliva ptyalin to pre-digest grains, alkaline urine,
and weak stomach acid whereas all omnivore/carnivores have acidic saliva,
acidic urine, and ten to one thousand times stronger hydrochloric stomach
acid essential for digesting meat. All natural flesh-eaters also secrete the
enzyme "uricase" necessary to metabolize the uric acid in meat, but uricase
is not produced by our human bodies.
Humans have lateral jaw movement and flat molars for grinding grains and
vegetables whereas natural flesh eaters have no lateral jaw movement and
scores of huge fangs for biting and ripping. Humans have short, weak
fingernails whereas carnivores and omnivores have long, strong, sharp claws
for cutting through skin and flesh.
Humans must take in Vitamin C from our food whereas all carnivores and most
omnivore's bodies produce their own Vitamin C. Natural omnivores and
carnivores also have a microbial tolerance far higher than humans. For
example the botulinum toxin which is deadly to humans but is easily and
safely digested by natural flesh-eaters.
Human vision is easily able to differentiate various colors making it simple
to discern ripe from unripe plant foods, whereas the color vision of most
omnivore/carnivores is far less discerning.
Humans sleep only six to twelve hours a day like most herbivore/frugivores,
whereas most omnivore/carnivores sleep eighteen to twenty hours a day.
Humans sweat from pores all over our bodies whereas all carnivores and most
omnivores release perspiration from their tongues.
Humans have single births and two mammary glands whereas most all omnivores
and carnivores birth litters of several babies have have rows upon rows of
mammary glands.
Dr. John McDougall writes:
"Our evolutionary history clearly shows that humans developed primarily as
herbivores (plant eaters), not as carnivores (meat eaters). Most of our
teeth are flat for grinding grains and vegetables. They are not designed to
tear apart raw meat. The residual canine teeth cited by some people to
justify eating meat are in no way comparable to the teeth of true
carnivores. Our hands are designed for gathering, not for ripping flesh. Our
saliva contains alpha-amylase, and the sole purpose of this enzyme is to
digest complex carbohydrates found in plant foods. It is not found in the
saliva of carnivorous animals. Our intestine is long like that of other
herbivores, in order to allow for the time needed to digest the nutrients
found in plants.
"Carnivores have short intestinal tracts that rapidly digest flesh and
excrete its remnants. Carnivores also have a great capacity to eliminate the
large amounts of cholesterol consumed in their diet. Our liver can only
process and excrete a limited amount of cholesterol, which leaves the excess
to be deposited in our tissues. Also of interest is the observation that
carnivores lap up water and cool their bodies by panting. Like other
herbivores, we sip our water and perspire to cool our bodies."
Whether we "evolved" is subject to serious debate, but it has been reported
that one of the first things Charles Darwin, an agnostic, did upon
formulating his theory of evolution, and thus recognizing the kinship of all
life, was to become a vegetarian. Primatologist Jane Goodall is a vegetarian
and supportive of animal rights issues, and evolutionist Richard Dawkins, an
atheist, has referred to the animals as our "cousins."
In his 1978 book, The Vegetarian Alternative, Vic Sussman writes:
"We are all mammals, but humans belong to the order Primates, suborder
Anthropoidea, family Pongidae. Our immediate relatives are the great apes:
chimpanzees, gorilla, orangutang, and gibbon. If we want to consult the
animal kingdom for clues to our true nature, we should turn to the apes
rather than to carnivores or herbivorous animals.
"Humans are not direct descendants of apes, of course; ape and hominid
branched off at some point within the last twenty million years, each going
in its own evolutionary direction. Precisely why and how that branching
occurred is still a mystery, but the divergence of man and ape happened late
enough -- perhaps within the last five million years, according to some
theories -- to leave definite links between humans and apes (not monkeys).
"Humans and African apes, say physical anthropologist S.L. Washburn, 'are
biologically so close as to be nearly inseparable in many essentials.'
"The DNA structures of human, chimpanzee, and gorilla are almost the same;
the amino acid structures of hemoglobin (the blood's oxygen-bearing protein)
are identical in man and chimpanzee; immunological studies show man, chimp,
and gorilla alike with correspondingly wider differences between humans and
other primates; the alimentary system, skeletal structure, and central
nervous system in humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas are virtually identical.
Almost every one of our organs correspond; we all share the
characteristically mobile face and grasping hands..."
Vic Sussman writes:
"For a long time, vegetarian theorists used the startling similarities in
man and ape as prima facie evidence that humans were vegetarian by design.
Since our nearest relatives didn't eat flesh in their natural state, went
the logic, neither should humans.
"The argument suffered a bit when Dr. Jane Goodall conducted her famous
field studies of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. Dr. Goodall saw that chimps
ate a diet of fruits, buds, leaves, seeds, larvae, termites, ants, honey,
birds eggs, and fledgling birds.
"Her observation that chimpanzees ate flesh startled primatologists and
vegetarians alike. Wild chimps had never before been seen eating flesh. Yet
Dr. Goodall watched chimps kill and eat monkeys, infant bushbucks, bushpigs,
and small baboons. Chimpanzees have also been known to kill and eat human
babies. 'Horrible,' says Dr. Goodall, 'but understandable. Baby humans are
no less appealing than baby baboons.'
"Besides, 'It should be equally horrifying to reflect on the fact that in a
great many places throughout their range, chimpanzees are considered a
delicacy by humans.'
"But chimps are hardly as rapacious meat eaters as the average North
American. Dr. Goodall reported that the chimps she observed seemed to eat
flesh only in cycles or crazes that were stimulated by an accidental or
chance capture of prey. This incident then triggered a period of deliberate
hunting and flesh eating.
"After a month or two, the craze seemed to wear off, the result of a
'satisfaction of [their] craving' or a loss of interest due to the
difficulties of hunting. The chimps then returned to their staple diet of
vegetation, insects and fruit.
"Such meat-eating crazes are infrequent, according to Dr. Goodall. The
chimpanzees she studied only made about twelve kills a year. Nor do the
Goodall observations prove that all chimps eat flesh. Vernon Reynolds, who
carried out a similar study of wild chimps in Uganda's Budongo Forest, never
saw them eating meat or using tools."
Vic Sussman writes:
"The other of our close relatives, the gorilla, has an undeserved reputation
for being a ferocious beast with a murderous temper. While a few gorillas
may learn to eat meat in captivity, in their wild state, they are shy,
peaceful eaters of plants and fruits. George Schaller, whose two-year study
of mountain gorillas in East and Central Africa is described in The Year of
the Gorilla, says, 'I never saw gorillas eat animal matter in the wild...no
bird's eggs, insects, mice, or other creatures...even though they had the
opportunity to do so on occasion.'"
According to Vic Sussman:
"The full story of human evolution remains clouded. Anthropologists and
paleontologists are constantly sorting through old and new evidence,
discarding theories almost as fast as they devise them. They admit that
speculation and hypothesis about our past far outweigh hard facts.
"How can we speak authoritatively about what we ate, when who we were is
still largely unknown?" reams of material have been written about the habits
of our ancestors, the Australopithecines, who roamed the African plains
fourteen million years ago.
"Yet Australopithecine remains amount to only about a dozen bone fragments.
Ramapithecus, an earlier hominid, is represented by only half a palate
bone."
...in other words, Vic Sussman admits, evolution is mostly speculation.
Flesh-eating animals lap water with their tongue, whereas vegetarian animals
imbibe liquids by a suction process. Humans are classified as primates and
are thus frugivores possessing a set of completely herbivorous teeth.
Proponents of the theory that humans should be classified as omnivores note
that human beings do, in fact, possess a modified form of canine teeth.
However, these so-called "canine teeth" are much more prominent in animals
that traditionally never eat flesh, such as apes, camels, and the male musk
deer.
It must also be noted that the shape, length and hardness of these so-called
"canine teeth" can hardly be compared to those of true carnivorous animals.
A principle factor in determining the hardness of teeth is the phosphate of
magnesia content.
Human teeth usually contain 1.5 percent phosphate of magnesia, whereas the
teeth of carnivores are composed of nearly 5 percent phosphate of magnesia.
It is for this reason they are able to break through the bones of their
prey, and reach the nutritious marrow.
Dr. Gordon Latto notes that carnivorous and omnivorous animals can only move
their jaws up and down, and that omnivores "have a blunt tooth, a sharp
tooth, a blunt tooth, a sharp tooth -- showing that they were destined to
deal both with flesh foods from the animal kingdom and foods from the
vegetable kingdom...
"Carnivorous mammals and omnivorous mammals cannot perspire except at the
extremity of the limbs and the tip of the nose; man perspires all over the
body. Finally, our instincts; the carnivorous mammal (which first of all has
claws and canine teeth) is capable of tearing flesh asunder, whereas man
only partakes of flesh foods after they have been camouflaged by cooking and
by condiments.
"Man instinctively is not carnivorous," explains Dr. Latto. "...he takes the
flesh food after somebody else has killed it, and after it has been cooked
and camouflaged with certain condiments. Whereas to pick an apple off a tree
or eat some grain or a carrot is a natural thing to do; people enjoy doing
it; they don't feel disturbed by it. But to see these animals being
slaughtered does affect people; it offends them. Even the toughest of people
are affected by the sights in the slaughterhouse."
Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), responds to the argument that
killing animals for food is natural:
"This is quite an admirable argument. It explains practically everything;
why we do not eat each other, except under conditions of unusual stress; why
we may kill certain other animals (they are, in the order of nature, food
for us); even why we should be kind to pets and try to help miscellaneous
wildlife (they are not naturally our food)...
"The main problem with this argument is that it does not justify the
practice of meat-eating or animal husbandry as we know it today; it
justifies *hunting*...
"The distinction between *hunting* and animal husbandry... is obvious to an
ecologist. If one defends killing on the grounds that it occurs in nature,
then one is defending the practice as it occurs in nature...
"As it exists in the wild, hunting is the preying upon isolated members of
an animal herd. Animal husbandry is the nearly complete annihilation of an
animal herd. In nature, this kind of slaughter does not exist.
"Why are hunters, not butchers, most frequently taken to task by the larger
community for their killing of animals? Hunters reply that if hunting is
wrong, then meat-eating must be wrong. The hunter is right -- the larger
community is hypocritical to object to hunting when it consumes the flesh of
domesticated animals. If any form of meat-eating is justified, it would be
meat from a *hunted* animal."
How did agriculture arise? One particularly interesting theory is put forth
by Mark Nathan Cohen in his book The Food Crisis in Prehistory. This view is
startlingly simple: agriculture developed because the world was
overpopulated. Relative to the existing hunter-gatherer technology, the
environment was incapable of supporting the existing population.
"It seems odd at first to think of the world as being overpopulated... when
the population was only a fraction of what it is today or to think of the
world as environmentally exhausted, when it was more fertile then than it is
now,'" observes author Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook.
"But we must remember that the hunter-gatherer technology is extremely
inefficient with respect to land resources. It is estimated that each of the
Kung bushmen (a modern hunter-gatherer society) requires over 10 square
kilometers of land -- more than 2500 acres. At this rate of land use, the
world could hardly have supported more than a few million hunter-gatherers."
According to one theory, primitive men were anatomically ill equipped to be
full-time predators. Plant food was thus the basis of their diet, and meat
was eaten infrequently. Hunting with primitive weapons--bones, sticks, and
spears -- is far more difficult than most people realize. Even throwing a
rock with accuracy demands great practice and skill. If this theory is
correct, primitive man's time was spent mostly gathering and foraging for
plant foods.
A study of the bush people of the Kalahari in Africa found that, even during
a serious drought, the most important source of food came from vegetables.
Four out of eleven males never went hunting. The others killed 18 animals in
eight days. Their chances of obtaining meat on any day was about 25 percent.
On the other hand, the women always returned from their gathering
expeditions with food; a 100 percent success rate. The entire tribe was able
to comfortably feed itself if each member contributed 15 hours of work per
week--even better than our own society's achievement.
"It seems... the real heroes of our Stone Age period were the women, not the
men," observes British author Peter Cox in his 1986 UK bestseller, Why You
Don't Need Meat: "...our ancestors ate much more plant food than is
popularly believed."
Zoologist Desmond Morris makes a case for vegetarianism in his 1967 book,
The Naked Ape:
"It could be argued that, since our primate ancestors had to make do without
a major meat component in their diets we should be able to do the same. We
were driven to become flesh eaters only by environmental circumstances, and
now that we have the environment under control, with elaborately cultivated
crops at our disposal, we might be expected to return to our ancient feeding
patterns."
In The Human Story, edited by Marie-Louise Makris (1985), we read:
"...recent studies of their teeth reveal that the Australopithecines did not
eat meat as a regular part of their diet, and were mainly peaceful
vegetarians, rather like chimpanzees or gorillas. The popular image of the
murderous ape is now as extinct as the Australopithecines themselves."
In The Natural Diet of Man, Adventist physician Dr. John Harvey Kellogg
observes:
"Man is neither a hunter nor a killer. Carnivorous animals are provided with
teeth and claws with which to seize, rend, and devour their prey. Man
possesses no such instruments of destruction and is less well qualified for
hunting than is a horse or a buffalo. When a man goes hunting, he must take
a dog along to find the game for him, and must carry a gun with which to
kill his victim after it has been found. Nature has not equipped him for
hunting."
According to Dr. Kellogg, "The statement that man is omnivorous is made
without an atom of scientific support. It is true the average hotel bill of
fare and the menu found upon the table of the average citizen of this
country have a decidedly omnivorous appearance. As a matter of fact, man is
not naturally omnivorous, but belongs, as long ago pointed out by Cuvier, to
the frugivorous class of animals along with the chimpanzee and other
anthropoids...
"The bill of fare which wise Nature provides for man in forest and meadow,
orchard and garden, a rich and varied menu, comprises more than 600 edible
fruits, 100 cereals, 200 nuts, and 300 vegetables — roots, stems, buds,
leaves and flowers... Fruits and nuts, many vegetables — young shoots,
succulent roots, and fresh green leaves... are furnished by Nature ready for
man’s use."
Dr. Kellogg further notes that "the human liver is incapable of converting
uric acid into urea," and this is "an unanswerable argument against the use
of flesh foods as part of the dietary of man. Uric acid is a highly active
tissue poison... The livers of dogs, lions, and other carnivorous animals
detoxicate uric acid by converting it into urea, a substance which is much
less toxic and which is much more easily eliminated by the kidneys.
"Flesh foods are not the best nourishment for human beings and were not the
food of our primitive ancestors," observes Dr. Kellogg.
"The human race in general has never really adopted flesh as a staple food,"
explains Dr. Kellogg. "The Anglo-Saxons and a few savage tribes are about
the only flesh-eating people.
The Ladrone Islands were discovered by the Spaniards around 1620. There were
no animals on the islands except birds, which the natives did not eat. The
natives had never seen fire, and they lived entirely on plant foods — a
vegan diet! -- fruits and roots in their natural state. They were found to
be vigorous, active, and of good longevity.
Although writing in 1923, Dr. Kellogg’s words confirm a statement by the
American Dietetic Association, that, "most of mankind for most of human
history has lived on vegetarian or near vegetarian diets."
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